What Students Are Saying About the C.D.C. Report on Teen Sadness

New York Times, March 2, 2024

Teenagers reported record levels of sadness in the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the recently released survey, which was given to 17,000 adolescents at high schools across the United States, nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, double the rate of boys, and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide. The data also showed high levels of violence, depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth.

While the collective response was a sad resignation to the persistence of this problem, many students also said they felt validated and hopeful that this crisis would be addressed. In this article, students share their experiences of struggling with their mental health, offer insight into what may be contributing to the decline among teenagers, and propose their own solutions.

Parents Have A Problem With Screen Time, Too, Teens Say

The Washington Post, March 11, 2024

One topic that seems to vex most modern families is technology and the use of smartphones. It’s not just teens struggling with too much screen time — their parents are also attached to their devices.

Almost half of teenagers say their parents, at least sometimes, get distracted by their phones during conversations, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. The disconnect is just one of the many complicated issues parents and teens are navigating when it comes to phones. When we are educating students in schools, we often bring up the topic of technology addiction. When we ask the students if they can think of someone who is addicted to their phone, students often respond with the answer that their parents are.

End The Phone-Based Childhood Now

The Atlantic, March 13, 2024

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data. We see these statistics play out when we speak to students in schools and see that more and more parents are taking notice of their children’s screen time.

On Popular Online Platforms, Predatory Groups Coerce Children Into Self-Harm

The Washington Post, March 13, 2024

“You just don’t realize how quickly it can happen,” says a mother whose child was preyed upon by predators on social media. The abusers were part of an emerging international network of online groups that have targeted thousands of children with a sadistic form of social media terror that authorities and technology companies have struggled to control.  The perpetrators – identified by authorities as boys and men as old as mid-40s – seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera. They belong to a set of evolving online groups, some of which have thousands of members, that often splinter and take on new names but have overlapping membership and use the same tactics.

Our goal as Cyber Safety Consulting is to reduce student’s vulnerability to predators by sharing very specific predator tactics they could encounter online and suggestions to prevent contact with predators.

Leading Adviser Quits Over Instagram’s Failure To Remove Self-Harm Content

The Guardian, March 16, 2024

A leading psychologist who advises Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) on suicide prevention and self-harm has quit her role, accusing the tech giant of “turning a blind eye” to harmful content on Instagram, repeatedly ignoring expert advice and prioritizing profit over lives.

Lotte Rubæk had concerns that the tech giant’s ongoing failure to remove images of self-harm from its platforms is “triggering” vulnerable young women and girls to further harm themselves and contributing to rising suicide figures. Such is her disillusionment with the company and its apparent lack of desire to change, the Danish psychologist has resigned from the group, claiming Meta does not care about its users’ wellbeing and safety. She said the company is using harmful content to keep vulnerable young people hooked to their screens in the interest of company profit. Similar statements and accusations were made at a Senate hearing earlier this year.

Why Gen Z Won’t Be Raising ‘iPad Kids’

The Daily Beast, March 19, 2024

As Gen Z become parents, they’re planning on de-introducing things that Millennial and Gen X parents led with—one of the biggest is not raising an “iPad Kid.” The term itself refers to a generation of children born into the boom of smartphones, growing up reliant on technology like touchscreens and constant internet access.

Age restrictions are among the biggest ways that the generation plans to regulate screen time. It is interesting that this will be the first generation that was raised on screens becoming parents themselves. For Gen Z who will soon take the reins of parenthood, shifting away from the iPad trope is the goal—especially considering the overwhelming evidence of harm to children.