There, she learned to starve herself and found a “sponsor” who encouraged her to do so.
“I posted a picture of my completely malnourished body and had people comment on it,” Rhiannon said.
• Mental health is important: Details about this project
Rhiannon, now a senior at Springboro High School, experienced depression during her freshman year. Her mental health struggles, from stressful and time-consuming extracurricular activities to an eating disorder, were exacerbated by the people she met online.
But she finally found hope.
“It’s been a very tough situation for a very long time,” Rhiannon said. “Then last summer, I was starting school and it felt like something clicked and I thought, ‘This isn’t going to be my life anymore. I’ve got to be better.’ , I did that. That’s when I stopped self-harming and got rid of everything that was bad in my life.”
Dr. Kelly Blankenship, director of psychiatry at Dayton Children’s Hospital, said social media can be difficult to navigate. For children, this is an important way to connect with friends, but parents didn’t grow up seeing it, so they don’t have the experience to navigate it as teenagers.
“Social media isn’t bad,” she says. “It has to be safe for children to use.”
This article is part of the Dayton Daily News special reporting project, “Mental Health Issues: Children in Crisis.” The Dayton Daily News investigated the role technology and social media play in worsening youth mental health and found that:
- Today’s children and teens are some of the first to grow up using technology such as texting and instant private messaging, as well as social media, allowing young people to constantly communicate with others. You can keep it.
- Teens who spoke to the Dayton Daily News said that even if social media didn’t affect their own mental health, they saw it affect their friends. Ta.
- Experts in youth behavior and neuropsychology agree in multiple studies that heavy social media use is associated with poorer mental health.
world on the web
Online, there are perfectly curated photos of people looking their best and living their best lives, displayed for others to see.
The downside, according to one local expert, is that young people start comparing themselves and their lives to online photos, and everyone on social media has a better life, more friends, more It’s about making people feel like they look good.
“This movie really presents, especially to adolescent women, a world that they can never achieve or be satisfied with,” Blankenship said.
including some research 2023 Yale University Research A study of brain scans of 9- and 10-year-olds found that overuse of the platform was associated with poorer mental health.
Today’s young people are the first generation to grow up with so much technology at their fingertips. The iPhone wasn’t invented until 2007, and smartphones became popular in the 2010s. Instagram was released in 2010. Snapchat was released in 2011. TikTok has grown significantly in 2020. At this time, the pandemic forced millions of people to leave work and school and return to their homes. And the pandemic has changed the number of social media users.
“Kids don’t have a lot of social interaction, they don’t have routines that predict their wake-up and sleep schedules, and they’re scared about how the pandemic will unfold,” said Shelley Coffman, Northmont School’s student support coordinator. He may have experienced it.” “Many children rely on social media to connect, which can lead to poor mental health.”
Rhiannon was in the midst of a mental health crisis and was looking for someone to empathize with, but the support she and others found perpetuated the damage.
“I use Twitter as a way to connect with others who are going through similar experiences, but it’s not a healthy way,” Rhiannon said.
They set rules for each other, which made the eating disorder worse.
“Some of them were younger than me,” Rhiannon said. “There were 13-year-old kids on that app, and they were pretty much just having group chats like, ‘What did you eat today?’ and ‘How many calories?'”
Rhiannon’s mother, Cheryl Ferenczi, and Rhiannon’s father, Rick Price, spoke of the shock they felt when they learned what their daughter was going through, and the other ways Rhiannon hid her eating disorder. He talked about cleansing, etc.
“I felt my heart stop,” Ferenczi said. “I just can’t explain it. There are no words.”
“It’s shocking to say the least,” Rick Price said.
Rhiannon also struggled with self-harm. I first encountered self-harm in seventh and eighth grade, and it really took hold in first grade.
“It was really bad,” Rhiannon said. “It was very difficult to overcome. It was something I struggled with very much. It was one of the only things that produced dopamine for me.”
Ferenczi knew something was going on because Band-Aids were always in short supply, she said.
Looking back, Rhiannon said she realized that she had suppressed many of these memories and tried to forget them.
“I completely forgot how serious it was…When I talk about it now, I’m like, I can’t believe I did that,” she said.
But she said she’s not opposed to reminiscing about this time in her life because she knows it’s something others are still going through.
Hundreds of notifications per day
Other teens have found themselves struggling with social media use.
Grace Weigand is a senior at Vandalia High School. She deals with anxiety and said limiting her time on social media has helped her manage her symptoms.
Weigand said she found herself comparing her life to others on social media.
“You have to remember that it’s not real,” she said.
She has to stop scrolling and ask herself what she can do about it.
“There’s nothing I can do to change that,” she said. “I just want to focus on who I am, you know?”
Weigand said he limits social media on his cell phone. iPhone allows parents, guardians, and even themselves to restrict apps using the Screen Time feature.
To better concentrate while doing homework, Weigand puts away her phone and turns off notifications.
Weigand said she received between 126 and 162 notifications on her phone during the week of Aug. 31 to Sept. 4.
According to common sense media researchYouth ages 11 to 17 receive a median of 237 notifications on their phones each day.
Oakwood High School sophomore Will Ross said he spent a lot of time on his cell phone when he was in middle school. Ross’ experience at the middle school coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with children out of school, learning remotely and unable to see friends. Ta.
“I was playing video games and doing TikTok all day long,” he said.
He and his friends still use a lot of technology to connect. They FaceTime each other just to spend time together. They plan to film a TikTok together. They send Snapchat messages.
However, Ross says she became sadder during middle school, when she spent more time on her cell phone.
“I’m really happy with this usage because I’m so busy right now,” Ross said. “I think that’s the best way to limit screen time.”
But just like Weigand, he found himself falling into the trap of social media comparisons. For him, it’s about comparing himself to other teenagers who go pro in soccer or lift better than he does. (Ross said he was not dealing with any mental health issues.)
“I think I’m pretty resilient. I’m pretty confident,” he said. “But sometimes that can make you lose confidence in yourself.”
Trotwood High School sophomore Jerry Smith said he thinks he spends too much time on his cell phone. Instagram and Snapchat are his main social media platforms, but he said he also likes to FaceTime and text his friends.
Smith attended school near Columbus for several years and still has friends who live there. His phone is the main means of keeping in touch.
But he says he knows he averages about nine to 10 hours of screen time per day, more than many of his friends.
“Most kids my age aren’t on their phones all the time,” he says. “Some kids play sports, some kids are outside. Spending almost 10 hours a day just on their phones? Whoa…is that good? Is that good for me?”
“It’s that feeling that’s completely destroying you.”
For Rhiannon and her family, the healing journey has had setbacks to overcome, including Rhiannon not being ready to deal with her depression.
“I didn’t really want to go. I was okay with having it, but it was also very miserable for me,” Rhiannon said.
Rhiannon found comfort in the feeling, she said, because it had been familiar to her for so long.
Rhiannon was hospitalized four times. There, she met other young people who felt the same way, she said.
“You need to be aware of the fact that it doesn’t mean you need to stay. It’s the emotions that are completely destroying you that are telling you that you should stay. ” said Rhiannon. “I think it’s good to identify that.”
Rhiannon’s depression continued until one of her friends, who was going through a similar experience, decided they both needed to make a change.
She quit stressful after-school activities and set boundaries on social media.
“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” Rhiannon said.
mental health is important
Dayton Daily News Project
Mental health issues affect all segments of the community in slightly different ways. This year our in-depth coverage focuses on children through our Mental Health Issues: Children in Crisis series. This project addresses the larger community at risk by examining how mental health issues impact higher education, the workforce, and older adults.
