If Twenge is apocalyptic in her warnings, Dr. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.” “It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. “Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011,” Twenge wrote. ‘We must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit,” Biden said. President Joe Biden referenced the influence of social media on teen mental health in his State of the Union address in 2022. “When not deployed responsibly and safely, these tools can pit us against each other, reinforce negative behaviors like bullying and exclusion, and undermine the safe and supportive environments young people need and deserve.” “Too often, young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth - telling them they are not good looking enough, popular enough, smart enough or rich enough,” Murthy wrote. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm. In his 2021 advisory on youth mental health, U.S. “iGen’s oldest members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and high-school students when the iPad entered the scene in 2010.”īrooks was born in 2004, Halepis in 2005. “Born between 19, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet,” Twenge wrote in The Atlantic. Jean M. Twenge, an author and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, describes them as “iGen,” the first generation whose social life has been dominated by digital communications. Grace Halepis speaks about the impact of social media on youth mental health at the Exeter Library on Monday, July 18, 2022.īoth young women describe the hurt of seeing their friends doing things on Snapchat and they were left out.īrooks, Halepis and their peers have been described by social psychologists as canaries in the coal mine when it comes to unfettered access to social media on ever-present mobile technologies. “All-or-nothing mindset”: What TikTok's viral 'That Girl' trend isn't showing you – and why that matters I bet I’m speaking for most of the teenage community when I say that.”ĭon’t see what it took: On social media, teens find inspiration, dangerous trends “At times it has influenced my feelings of self-worth. "It definitely has heightened my insecurities about my body and about how much I’m doing or not doing,” Halepis said. It puts a lot of pressure on the way you appear every single day.” “If you fall short of those expectations, you can go into a depression because of it, so eating disorders can also come from looking at those images and just a lot of generalized anxiety about the way you present yourself in society. “For girls, more specifically, there can be a lot of body dysmorphia coming from seeing pictures of models, creating unrealistic expectations for yourself,” Brooks said. But both teens don’t hesitate to describe social media’s negative impacts on them, particularly the photoshopped expectations of what they are supposed to look like and how they are supposed to act. Brooks has been able to stay in touch with friends who have gone off to college and Halepis is able to do activist work on behalf of the causes she’s most passionate about. “It’s just such a strong addiction that people have normalized that they’re going to be like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ The anxiety of not being with your phone is worse than realizing that there’s a problem and that you really need time away from it.”īoth young women point to the many positives of social media. “Every teenager you talk to will admit that how much they use their phone is a problem, but they don’t want to do anything to fix it,” Brooks said.
While Brooks is fully aware of the influence of social media and ubiquitous mobile devices on youth mental health, she’s not immune to it. She is one of seven rising seniors creating a conference for administrators and students in schools to talk about mental health, including the impact of social media.
#Dartmouth social scene series
Editor's note: This is the third story in a year-long mental health series in a partnership between Seacoast Media Group, The Union Leader and Dartmouth Health.Īfter three students in the class ahead of her died by suicide, she became involved in peer-to-peer counseling and is a member of the school’s mental health initiative.
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