1 out of 3 Teen Girls has considered suicide. The church needs to step in.
There are some prominent legal voices calling for stricter government control on smartphones & social media. Is that good enough?
In a previous post I referenced the Ethics & Public Policy Center’s “Social Media & Harm to Children” report by Clare Morell dated from August 2023.
It is around eight pages long and worth a read for anyone who is seriously looking at how we solve the mental health crisis among our youth that is so prevalent today.
Since this is a public policy report much of the focus is, unsurprisingly, on what can be done by the government to fix the problem. Before you jump up and down and declare that the government should hold Big Tech accountable OR get all “Don’t Tread on Me”, let’s look at what she has to say.
She starts with a bold statement, “America’s children and teenagers are literally dying from social media.” Dramatic? Yes. Truthful? Also yes. Instances of the TikTok “Blackout Challenge” and other dangerous activities from social media have certainly led to deaths. But what Morrell is focussing on appears to be suicides. This particular claim that social media is causing death is a bit more nuanced, but suicide rates have increased for people ages 10-24 over the past fifteen years. To back up her claim, Morrell cites a few different data points about anxiety and depression. The one that I want to dive into a little deeper, because I often reference it in my talks and articles, is the CDC data released last year. In that report, the CDC documents that 6 in 10 teen girls felt “persistent sadness or hopelessness for two weeks or more.”
I know what you’re thinking. That’s a big number but haven’t teen girls kind of always felt sadness and hopelessness? Isn’t that, you know, part of hormones and the teenage years? I dug back through years of CDC research and found that for decades prior to 2011 the rate of sadness/hopelessness was largely stable, around 35%. I grew up during this time. Thankfully, I don’t count myself in the 35% of my peers who felt this persistent sadness or hopelessness, but I do remember what it was to be a teen girl. Anybody else remember Y2K causing some mild anxiety? Feelings of inadequacy, social rejection, peer pressure, hormonal changes, academic struggles, boys, and a brain that wasn’t fully mature (despite what I believed). Emotional turmoil? Sure. But not “persistent for two weeks or more”.
So why has this 35% number jumped to 6 in 10 since 2011? You guessed it: smartphones. The first iPhone was released in 2007 and became popular with teens shortly thereafter. With the smartphone came social media. Facebook became popular in 2011, Instagram followed soon thereafter and TikTok came on the scene in 2017.
Having been a teenager in the late 1990’s means that I’ve now crested into my 40’s and count motherhood as one of my great joys. When I look at my sons’ classmates, those sweet young girls and think that 6 out of 10 of them are headed toward feeling persistent sadness and hopelessness, that really puts things into perspective. On top of the sad/hopeless narrative, 1 in 3 teen girls has seriously considered attempting suicide.
For the non-math majors out there… when I was a teenager 1 in 3 girls were really, really sad a lot of the time. For a teen girl today, there is a 1 in 3 chance she has considering killing herself.
Males tend to commit suicide at rates far higher than girls. Girls tend to internalize (anxiety, depression), boys tend to externalize (violence, suicide). Another post is forthcoming on what this means for boys but for now, this is a great resource. Mrs. Morrell’s assertion that teenagers are “literally dying” might be viewed as dramatic, but not without factual basis. Dramatic or not, other indicators clearly show that the kids are not alright and the main culprit is the phone-based childhood.
Big Tech wants “their users to be addicted. They are not looking out for the user’s well-being. Rather, they prey on human vulnerabilities, especially those of children, in order to maximize their profits,” states Morrell’s report. She goes on, “TikTok and Instagram have been shown to send teens down rabbit holes of eating disorder content and sexual content. Pornography is everywhere…. YouTube, Spotify, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and SnapChat.”
“We are losing what it means to be human”
Morrell continues laying out the problem. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) from 1998 set the internet age of consent at thirteen. That’s right, when I was in my late teens and dial-up was the way to know “you’ve got mail" the age of internet consent was set. This was long before we would all be carrying around computers in our pockets. Clearly this law needs an update. Morrell calls for that update and lots of groups are working on COPPA 2.0 which would raise the minimum age of internet consent. Another piece of federal legislation is KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act). Enforcing what’s already on the books would be a good step in the right direction. There are myriad ways to do this: require age-verification, require parental consent, regulate online porn industry, etc. Morrell even suggests regulating smartphones, “Smartphones are at the root of many of the problems posed by social media and online porn, because of the constant access they provide to these platforms and websites… Smartphones are clearly a technology that require maturity and training to use safely.” Much like not being eligible to get a driver’s license until you're 16, Morrell says, “the government could similarly regulate (smartphone) use and ownership by minors.”
Here’s the thing though. This kind of already exists. If my son wanted to walk into Verizon and buy a smartphone with a service plan, he can’t. He’s not 18. He’s not a legal adult and as my friend Melanie with ScreenStrong.com frequently points out, kids can’t sign legal contracts. This means they can’t, on their own, get a cellphone, much less a smartphone.
We Can Wait or We Can Act
Morrell’s report is great and she correctly brings up that kids lie about their age to gain access to social media when they are younger than 13. Not all parents are even attempting to shield their kids from online harms. Anecdotally, most parents aren’t even aware of how bad things are. Did you know that 20% of 13-15 year old Instagram users have nudity pushed to them on a weekly basis?
So, federal legislation is needed. 1998 was eons ago in the internet age. Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to vote for COPPA 2.0 and KOSA. They are good bills. But, we could also just not give our kids smartphones.
Six out of 10 teen girls feel persistent sadness or hopelessness every day for two weeks or more. These are real girls in real cities and towns, in schools and churches, in neighborhoods and houses. These are our daughters and their friends. Let’s take their phones away and be sure to not give one to their little sister. These kids, they need us to be the adults. They aren’t going to like it this week or next week. The data says that after about 4 weeks kids adjust and are okay; they kind of even like not being tethered to social media and smartphones. So, Dear Christian Parent, it’s time to be the parents our kids need us to be and say no to the phone-based childhood. Because, my word, if I was one of those teenage girls I would hope my parents would have taken away my phone.