We need to build a better path through a culture that harms the mental health of Kansas teenagers

Kansas Reflector welcomes the views of writers who share our goal of broadening the conversation about how public policies affect the daily lives of people across our state. Inas Iounis was born in Mosul, Iraq, and emigrated to the United States as a child. She is a writer and commentator who has been widely published in various magazines, websites and anthologies.

When terrible things happen to good people, our first instincts are to formulate great explanations that alleviate our anxiety and allow us to conclude that “this could never happen to me.” We choreograph our answers and try to move on with our lives. But when tragedy strikes a little too close to home, we can no longer afford to rely on our safety stories.

When it comes to the horrific statistics of depression and suicide, we were all affected, either because we suffered a major depressive episode and were thinking of ending it all or knowing someone who is.

Nearly 47,000 people died from suicide every year in the United States. In Kansas, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 24. Kansas 15th in country for suicide rates.

Traditionally, mental health professionals and policy makers have been in charge of identifying and understanding the reasons for what we now routinely call “Mental health crisis.” But a crisis of this magnitude requires that we all start paying attention.

Many professionals in this area attribute the increase in mental health problems to the COVID-19 pandemic, but according to social psychologist and bestselling author Jonathan Hajdu, we need to look back to 2012, not 2020, to understand what is happening.

In fact, just before the pandemic, rates of depression among teenagers nearly doubled. This sudden increase was not for the reasons we suspect. This was not because of the willingness of young people to diagnose themselves, nor because of the willingness of clinicians to over-diagnose. These are just security narratives that we have been telling ourselves.

The data offer us a less convincing explanation.

Prominent advocate for teen mental health, Haidt testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Privacy and Law on May 4 that smartphones and social media contribute significantly to teenage depression and suicide. Between 2012 and 2015, smartphones went from optional to universal among teenagers.

Haidt claims that social media “transformed childhood activities, attention, social relationships and awareness in the years between 2009 and 2012.” According to the data, by 2015, the mental health centers that served teenagers and students became flooded, and now hundreds of suicidal teenagers sleep in emergency rooms every night.

Although Haidt does not believe that social media is the only cause of the crisis, he argues that there is no alternative hypothesis that can explain the suddenness and enormous magnitude of the problem.

Known for his counter-intuitive sociological conclusions, renowned social scientist and author Malcolm Gladwell does not directly blame social media, but instead offers us a data point that could give more credence to the social media hypothesis. Gladwell claims that statistics show that the suicide rate has historically been higher in countries where citizens describe themselves as happy, compared to those in which citizens describe themselves as not very happy.

He summarizes his conclusions by coining the phrase “relative deprivation”, which is the notion that people may feel deprived of something desirable in relation to other people and social groups in their vicinity. The phenomenon is facilitated by the widespread use of social media, where teenagers spend hours saving their image for public consumption and where foreigners can literally rate you by clicking and sharing.

Gladwell explores this development in his own bestseller book David and Goliath, who applies this theory to high school graduates. He notes that once high school heroes from a small town enter the world of Ivy League status and influence, many of them experience a crisis of self-esteem and experience a breakdown.

Since they have spent their entire lives as a big fish in a small pond, being a small fish in a big pond endangers their image of themselves. Applied to social media, the theory of relative deprivation leads us to conclude that in a world as huge as Instagram, we are all small fish in a big swamp.

Unfortunately, the solution to this is much more complicated than just restricting or banning the use of social media. Taking away social media when someone’s peers use these platforms to organize their social life can make teenagers feel like they are no longer involved in the conversation.

We need a more nuanced approach that allows socially acceptable ways for teenagers to escape technologies that worsen their anxiety and jeopardize their self-esteem.

We need a countercultural movement that causes the constructed dependence of these spaces. We need to facilitate the creation of a common culture led by teenagers that rejects the idea that social interactions should be managed by a third party who does not want to profit from their joy or achievement, but from their anger, anxiety and need for social approval.

It will take decades before we have a solid science that identifies the causes of the increase in suicide rates. Meanwhile, business leaders of the community, such as this year Leadership Overland Park class 2022 they took on the task of leading these difficult conversations and discussing fundamental questions: Why? Why now? What can we do about it?

Mental health is public health and I am encouraged by these efforts and the work of the newly formed Overland Park Crisis Team or OPCATwhich provides support regarding mental health and traumatic information during emergency calls.

When it comes to the mental health of our teenagers, some of us may be tempted to refer to the old parental saying that we should “prepare the child for the journey, not the journey for the child.”

While adversity can help children develop the skills to recover and triumph in difficult times, we must also understand that bromides from the past may no longer be enough. In today’s world, the road is a constantly changing virtual landscape that is algorithmically hostile to healthy development. No one can or should be ready for that.

Maybe at this point in our history, that is the path that needs to change.

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