The NEW Mental Health Conversation you Need to Start with your Teens

It’s a whole new world out there for our kids, teens and young adults. How do we possibly keep up?

We all know that our teens and young adults are struggling with mental health in our culture. Suicide is STILL the 2nd leading cause of death amongst teenagers and young adults in America. And this is despite the efforts of awareness, talking about it, of research — and mental health generally becoming a more regularly approached subject. Despite organizations and campaigns, suicide text lines and hotlines. We are still seeing such deep struggle within our youth that they are contemplating, or attempting to take their own lives.

Why?

As a clinician, it is something I see daily. Every single day! These are not novel situations. The Depression, the Anxiety, the Suicide Ideation. And it’s coming in younger and younger.

My experience as a mental health clinician, as well as someone who struggled with significant depression and anxiety as a teenager puts me in an interesting position. I get it, for starters. I truly, right down into my bones, understand the fog of mental illness and suicidal thoughts. I feel this belief, this pain and panic — I have known this. And I also understand the science, the therapeutics, the healing. I’ve studied it, worked with it, and revisited it. It’s a topic I have come to know so intimately, from both sides of the wellness spectrum.

I have written and developed a project specifically for teens and young adults dealing with Depression, Anxiety and Suicide ideation, which focuses on honesty and openness about the subject, as well as coping and healing. And while I believe that on-the-ground work and connection is vital in the approach to mental illness and suicide, I also know that there are larger societal and cultural themes that have to be addressed. There are so many rapidly growing toxic social factors that are negatively impacting all of us. That are making us sick. The difference with kids, teens, and young adults, is that they are still growing and developing as humans. Their brains are so malleable and ready for input. If you consider development in terms of what is being input and inhaled from the external world, what is the backdrop that most of our kids are getting? What is their baseline starting point?

While times have certainly changed since I was younger, many of these changes are only increasing and exacerbating the pressures we have previously known of “growing up”.

The three biggest societal factors I am seeing are not really surprising. Yet they are leading to some of the common stressors that are impacting our teenagers’ mental health and have links to suicide ideation. There are numerous issues being driven by online life, social media influencer culture, and the filtered lens. And some of the ways we are seeing this include a disconnect from others and the world, a distorted sense of reality and worth, and more weighted and immediate-feeling social stakes. These issues are very real issues for our young adults — their impacts can’t be discounted. The following explores the biggest current factors I am seeing and what they are bringing up with our younger generations.

Online Living and Real-Life Disengagement

Humans need connection, and more than just text and online connection. They need people. Phones and the internet cannot be a substitute for in-person connection. And yet, our phones have become so vital to us, that we often can’t be easily without them. We have become reliant on certain aspects, and dependent on others. Our kids are growing up on this. They are developing and becoming on this — and they are losing their social skills, their communication ability. They are growing socially anxious and unaware, hesitant about their own abilities to engage. They are connecting via text and social media, but they are disconnecting out in the world with other humans. Teens are spending increasing amounts of time on YouTube, social media and video games; they are physically out experiencing the world less and less. Not only does this mean they are socializing in person and interacting less, it also means they are being less active and having fewer general life experiences.

What’s coming up with this: Ghosting, online/text bullying, shaming, disconnect from knowing people in person and easier ability to be unkind. Very immediate and far-spreading social and relational consequences. Avoidance of in-person situations and activities, social anxiety, struggles to communicate effectively. Boredom, low energy, lack of motivation, addictive scrolling/gaming/phone use. Common misunderstandings, miscommunications and assumptions. Regular intensive social stressors and heartbreak, at their finger-tips.

Social Media and “Likes”-Oriented Lifestyles

Social media has certainly spewed a new brand of culture. Publicity, popularity, image focus, competition, and keyboard bullying are just some of these components. There is also constant hourly updates and ‘lifestyle’ oriented accounts that glamorize and skew what everyday life truly looks like. Our youth are left feeling less-than, in a constant comparison and competition. And this comparison is against a perfectly (falsely) crafted world. Again, they are growing up on this, they are developing on this narrative of perfection and popularity and filtered beauty. As if it is truth.

What’s coming up with this: Negative self-image and self-judgement, obsessions with image, body image and perfection. Disengagement with life and the real world, and focus on “likes” and approval. Shifting sense of worth and value. Quantity of connection seeming preferable to quality of connection. Inaccurate sense of the world, of other people and what is occurring in real life. High sense of pressure socially regarding image and popularity, and the possibility of quickly spreading bullying or fractured social relationships. High comparative, intensive social stakes and sense of inadequacy.

Image and Perfection, “Influencer” Focus, Filtering, and Changing the Understanding of What is “Real”

Abandoning what is real is skewing our kids’ expectations of themselves and the world. The stark contrast of this can be disheartening and overwhelming. Our brain takes in what it sees, even if we tell ourselves something different. Teenagers are constantly bombarded with filtered images, Photoshopped images — and now it is constant, and at the tip of their fingers all the time. They are constantly seeing non-stop input of (highly edited) image and body focus and judgement and rating. This has become so much of the world that it’s hard to avoid. Our kids are seeing it, though, and feeling it every day. And so, they are taking it in, making comparisons, internally criticizing every day.

What’s coming up with this: Inaccurate sense of the world, of other people and what is occurring in real life. Negative self-image and esteem, obsessions with image, body image and unattainable levels of perfection. Defeat orientation of “not good enough” or “could never compare”.

Consider the weight of all of that. Consider how it is now a constant.

Consider experiencing all of this before you’ve really grown and come to know yourself as a person.

As adults, I know we are not immune to these pressures and struggles either. And we can look back and consider our own similar societal pressures at formative ages. Sure, there may have been photo manipulation, celebrity culture on the news stand, body and image focus. Undoubtedly, the pressures were real, and there were many of them. But we were still forced to exist in the world with our peers and our family. We still experienced the world ‘in real life’ more than we did from a skewing. With in-person necessity dwindling so much, we are changing the world our kids are growing up in. And while the internet and social media and phones have their perks, allowing them to be the entire lens through which we see and experience the whole world is unhealthy. It is not real, nor representative. And our kids are comparing themselves to these things that are not real or representative. That are fake and filtered and angled perfectly. Or choreographed and edited.

It is no longer just Photoshopped magazines, its Photoshopped friends and peers. It’s filtered everything. The baseline of what is perceived as “real” is shifting, because our kids are breathing in a whole world in filters alone in their rooms. Their brain is growing up on this.

A New Conversation

In Real Life is important. Real life activities and experiences, relationships and connections. Real, real life. True representation of image, body image, culture, strength, ability, beauty, connection, love, and everyday living. And so, you need to talk about real life, and you need to experience real life.

All of this is hard. I know it’s not realistic to scrap the phones and the social media and the internet. I know keeping our kids in a cave without Wi-Fi isn’t necessarily the answer. The truth is that it DOES have its good and helpful components. It IS leading to aspects of community and connection where it may have been hard to find before. It IS helping during quarantine, and social isolation and loneliness. But, following a balance, and having a basis of truth and an understanding of real life and the value of their worth as a person (not as a Tik-Toker, or by like-count) is now becoming a vital continuing conversation to be having.

So why does this connect to mental health and suicide? Well, all this input is impacting us. It is changing the way we view ourselves, others and the world, and it is very often not for the best. It is often harsh, and fake and unkind. It is fast and public. The social world is a vital need for teenagers. But what happens when the whole framing and experience of the social world is changing? And in a way that doesn’t always line up with reality? Social and relational stress on a developing brain may offer up a lesser ability to think critically and logically within emotional responses. And their social existence is experienced as vital to their survival. Within our emotional responses, or panic/fight or flight responses, it can be difficult to get to the point of accessing our more calm and rational selves. Our teens are feeling the lows of it, the panic, the social and relational stressors and losses. And these losses are hitting the survival nerve of teenhood. This not outlandish, people need people; relationships and fitting in is a basic need and crucial in adolescence.

The social world is a vital need for teenagers. But what happens when the whole framing and experience of the social world is changing? And in a way that doesn’t always line up with reality?

As parents, all of this is hard, I know. We are doing our best and we are overwhelmed, and maybe even out of the constantly-changing loop (What is Tick-Tock even?). Talking to our kids about what is real and what is valued is important now more than ever, because they are hearing the constant scream of phone and filter. And while we may think they know and understand what to take to heart, and what is ‘real’ and representative, the reality is that they are developing on the opposites. Most of which, we don’t even see or hear about. It is everywhere, and all the time. So much of it is the world now. Because of that, it has become important to counterbalance that endless stream they are drinking in, and continuing to make sure they are engaged in and seeing the real world, too. (Easier said than done, I know.) The best thing (short of the island without internet) we can do is keep the conversation open, honest and on-going. Ask questions, instill some critical analysis. Bring them back, again and again, to real life, to real beauty and love and purpose. Every day. Life and parenting are adapting to phones and Wi-Fi and technology, I know. It’s easy to get lost in the convenience factors, to forget that this evolving requires new avenues of mental and emotional support. And it does. We have to find ways to keep up with the effects of these rapid cultural changes on our younger generations, in real life, too.