suicide

Our Youth Mental Health Emergency

March 20, 2023 by GetKidsInternetSafe

The CDC recently released its Youth Risk Behavior Survey reporting that an alarmingly high percentage of American teens, particularly girls and LGBQ+ youth, are suffering from distressing mental health symptoms. With stressors like isolation from the COVID-19 lockdowns, too much screen use, frightening news reports, increasing college pressures, increasing financial strains on families, and the compare and despair dynamics that arise from social media, kids are feeling the pressure. Child experts and advocates have called for the Biden administration to declare a youth mental health emergency and are begging schools to adopt better trauma-informed health and sex education. What are the contributors, and how can we help?

The Highlights

The CDC report data comes from 17,000 U.S. high school students who were surveyed in the fall of 2021 when most schools returned to in-person teaching. The good news is that overall sexual activity, substance abuse, and in-school bullying are down. The bad news is that teen safety concerns due to violence, sadness, hopelessness, and suicidality are up, especially among girls and LGBQ+ students (trans students were not identified for this survey).

Here is the Summary of Findings from The Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011–2021

Sexual Behavior

Substance Abuse

Experiencing Violence

Mental Health and Suicidality

Parental Monitoring

Teen Girls

The survey suggests that nearly 3 in 5 (57%) U.S. teen girls felt so sad or hopeless that they couldn’t engage in regular activities for two weeks or more. Nearly 1 in 3 (30%) seriously considered attempting suicide—up nearly 60% from a decade ago. And 1 in 5 (18%) experienced sexual violence in the past year—up 20% since 2017.

LGBQ+ Youth

Almost 70% of LGBQ+ students said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, and 20% reported attempting suicide. Fifty-two percent of LGBQ+ teens had poor mental health symptoms in the past 30 days compared to 29% of all teens.

Possible Contributors?

It’s important to consider that the survey occurred at the end of the isolation from COVID-19. Although I am still seeing significant fallout among kids, tweens, and teens, they have recovered somewhat from that dark and frightening time.

We must also consider that this is a survey. Without experiments where we expose one group of teens to possible causal variables (e.g., social media or isolation) and don’t expose a control group, we can’t determine what is causing the distress.

Surveys simply state and analyze subject report. It’s impossible to tell the causes from this type of data. We are left to guess with our observations and experience, forming hypotheses and looking for evidence to support them. As the Founder of GetKidsInternetSafe, a mother, university faculty member, author, and clinician who has treated kids, teens, and families for over 25 years, I have some ideas.

PHONELY: Our kids are phonely. Because we were hunters and gatherers for 90% of human existence, our brains are wired to thrive with face-to-face tribalism. Online relationships just don’t do it for us long-term.

ISOLATION: With the isolation of COVID-19, kids lost friends and confidence and regressed in their social skills.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Social media and the internet offers a constant onslaught of online ads and marketing influencers for kids and teens. This unfiltered exposure can lead to chronic fears of being judged and ridiculed as well as feelings of inadequacy and exclusion. The CDC report demonstrates that there is an epidemic of online bullying and cybersexual violence, especially toward girls and LGBTQ youth.

PARENTING: Parenting strategies have become overly protective based on anxiety and fear resulting in less child independence and more fear of failure. Plus, they spend more time online than with us. It is difficult for parents to overcome the influence of strangers and taking away all screen activities has become nearly impossible.

NEWS: Sensational and divisive news expertly and manipulatively communicates fear-inducing trends like mass shootings, climate change, and inflation. This has got most of us rattled, especially the most vulnerable among us.

FINGER-POINTING: We have tolerated and participated in an ugly, divisive climate of entitlement, bullying, and blame rather than accountability and positive action.

GROUP-THINK: The internet speaks the language of mental health – but this may result in a group-think phenomenon of looping on mental health suffering instead of increasing agency and growth.

LACK OF APPLICABLE EDUCATION: Trauma-informed, evidence-based health and sex education isn’t being offered equitably among out schools. Parents don’t want to leave this important job to schools, but they’re also not doing a great job themselves in many instances.

NOT ENOUGH MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES: There aren’t enough mental health services available to our youth.

LACK OF FAITH AND COMMUNITY: Pulling together as a loving, cooperative team is critical for kids to feel a sense of belonging and community. As our families get smaller and we have fewer extended family to offer support, our kids are left to fend for themselves.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. But it does summarize much of the research findings and conjecture that has surrounded these issues. There are more ideas for the list. But for the purpose of solving the problem, how can we take these stressors into consideration as we discuss possible solutions?

Considering the complexity of the question, what can we do to improve the situation? Reverse Engineer!

Reverse engineering refers to the process of looking at possible outcomes (like the causes posited above) and slowly working backward for a solution. Although this is clearly a messy mission, I watch kids regain the mental health ground they lost every day in practice. Despite what some may think, effective psychotherapy isn’t simply listening and reflecting feelings of despair. As a cognitive-behavioral therapist, I employ techniques specifically designed to facilitate positive movement forward. I’ve found that, if I set the tone and get everybody started, parents can take it from there.

Here are some tips for improving mental health and well-being at home:

As a family, negotiate a set of measurable goals and revisit them often for direction and motivation. Praise and reward movement forward and maintain and warm and encouraging tone along the way.
Use storytelling and a sense of humor to normalize failure and encourage curiosity and confidence.
Turn off the news and divisive influencers who are selling toxic ideas and products.
Reassure kids that they are capable and loved and that grit is what matters the most, far more than being attractive or innate skills.
Encourage kids to detox off their phones occasionally and engage more in real-life exploration and socialization.
Stay moderate. Avoid shaming lectures and demoralizing consequences.
Offer mindfulness, problem-solving, and communication strategies to help kids gain independence and confidence.
Offer outcome- and science-based education that empowers informed action rather than create fear.
Support parents in not personalizing child behaviors and help them set fair and reasonable limits with warmth, encouragement, and love.
Lead our kids toward post-traumatic growth rather than feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and fear with expert mentorship, fun, and opportunity.

How can GetKidsInternetSafe help?

I founded GetKidsInternetSafe so I could be part of the prevention effort – rather than just the treatment effort. If you’re not sure where to get started, we have a comprehensive suite of tools for parents, tweens and teens, educators, paraprofessionals, and professionals who work with families and kids.

Start healthy conversations about social media use for free using our GKIS Connected Families Screen Agreement.
Check out our agreement supplements, the Cybersecurity & Red Flags Supplement (with three tools in one) and our How to Spot Marketing Red Flags Supplement.
Dr. Bennett’s book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, is a comprehensive and easy-to-read parenting guide for families with kids of all ages. Available on Amazon in print, e-book, and audible!
Tighten up parental controls and monitoring with the help of our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. This toolkit helps to empower parents and provides them with a resource list of smart tech tools to filter, monitor, and manage online behavior.
For families with younger kids, our home setup Connected Family Course is an awesome place to start.
To help your tween or teen get prepared for safer internet use and social media, help prevent digital injury, and optimize wellness, check out our most popular course, the Social Media Readiness Course.
If you need more support and accountability, sign up to work with Dr. B directly for an online parenting workshop or individual coaching.
Want to work for screen safety as a community? We’ve thought of that too! Dr. Bennett offers live presentations and webinars for adults and kids from schools, churches, corporations, and conferences.
If you work with kids as an educator, youth counselor, professional, or paraprofessional and want to be a go-to screen safety expert, get SCREEN SAFETY CERTIFIED! Also available for those who work with Christian families!

If you want all of our supplements and courses at a low cost for parents and kids, tweens, and teens, you’ll want our mega Screen Safety Essentials Course! This online course offers a set of four modules that will help you walk your kids through the essentials of screen safety.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Photo Credits

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Photo by ALMA on Unsplash

Forum Website Used to Stalk and Harass People Online and In Real Life

November 22, 2022 by Liliana Esquivel

How do you like to use the internet? To watch videos of puppies and kittens? Or posting pictures of your family and friends? Maybe to satisfy your shopping addiction on Amazon? Maybe your internet use has not been so innocent. Many use the internet to get a thrill or get their anger out. Online harassment is not uncommon, so much so that there are websites built to support it. Kiwi Farms, for example, is a forum website where users are encouraged to harass online personalities and communities. Today’s GKIS article details the targeted harassment done by Kiwi Farms users and how the website facilitates this behavior. If you’re concerned your kids may be victimized by harassment or overstep and do the harassing themselves, check out our Screen Safety Toolkit. With this online course and resource guide, you can learn how to protect your family online.

The Start of Kiwi Farms

Joshua Conner Moon, a former administrator of the 8chan message board, started Kiwi Farms in 2013. It was first established as a forum website to troll and harass a webcomic creator. Before the term “Kiwi Farms” was coined in 2014, Kiwi Farms was known as “CWCki Forums.”

Organized Harassment

The Kiwi Farms website targets a wide range of victims, including Internet celebrities, minorities, women, neurodivergent individuals, LGBTQ people, members of the far right, and people who Kiwi Farms users believe to be “mentally ill” or “sexually deviant.” Both Moon and the Kiwi Farms user base have been labeled as anti-Semitic.[1]

Kiwi Farms members use tactics of harassment like

organized group trolling
stalking
doxxing (publishing someone’s private information)
harassing their family members and friends
attempts to get them fired from their jobs
swatting (reporting crimes at their addresses to have police dispatched to their homes)
real-life attacks

People Who Have Fallen Victim

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed in an interview with NewsMax on August 24, 2022 that she had been swatted twice by someone posing as a Kiwi Farms moderator “AltisticRight.” She urged for the website to be taken down. In reaction, Cloudflare shut off a feature on the website that lets users modify error messages.

Clara Sorrenti, a transgender advocate and Twitch broadcaster who goes by the handle “Keffals,” was doxxed on Kiwi Farms as well. Users of the website shared both her personal information and those of her friends and relatives, including addresses and phone numbers. Users also threatened her life and leaked sexually explicit images of her. In August 2022, after someone hijacked her identity and sent false emails to local lawmakers threatening widespread violence, she was later swatted, imprisoned for more than ten hours, and arrested. She was ultimately exonerated of all charges, and authorities determined that the incident was a swatting effort.

Users also shared the address of a stranger who lives in the same city and has the same last name as Sorrenti. Police were subsequently dispatched to his home. Sorrenti claimed that she left her house and checked into a hotel for her protection following the swatting event. After she uploaded a picture of her cat lying on a hotel bed, Kiwi Farms members recognized the establishment from the bedsheets and sent several pizza orders to it using her dead name.

Later, Sorrenti left the country after her whereabouts were discovered, allegedly by someone who had hacked her Uber account. Sorrenti says that she intends to file a lawsuit and that the occurrences were being investigated as criminal harassment.

Suicide

A hate campaign against transgender game creator Chloe Sagal was started in 2013 by Kiwi Farm users. Sagal is well-known for creating the well-liked, independent horror game Homesick. After Sagal started raising funds for gender reassignment surgery, they began to attack her. Users hounded and harassed Sagal for years after they started a post specifically to target her. Sagal lit herself on fire in 2018 in a park in Portland and died at 31 years old.[3]

According to images of chat boards and videos published by DropKiwiFarms.net, an initiative was passed to shut down the website after Moon posted a live YouTube video celebrating Sagal’s passing while other Kiwi Farms users laughed and made fun of the game developer.

The Short End of Kiwi Farms

After the harassment effort by users of Kiwi Farms against Sorrenti, a movement to persuade Cloudflare to stop hosting the site was launched in August 2022. Cloudflare is a company that provides hosting and online security services. This, according to NBC News, was done to allow Kiwi Farms to be the target of “debilitating virtual attacks.”[2]

Although Cloudflare first defended its choice to continue working with Kiwi Farms, the company formally banned the website from utilizing its services on September 3, 2022. However, on September 6, VanwaTech supplied content delivery network services to the website, returning it online according to The Daily Dot.[4]

How to Protect Your Child

Unfortunately, many parts of the internet are unregulated. And when children have easy access to it, they can fall victim to being harassed online or fall down a dark path of harassing people themselves. Luckily, Dr. Bennett can help you protect yourself and your family from online harassment.

One helpful tip for parents is to make it a habit to hold GKIS Family Meetings with a teaching agenda that covers important online issues that your children will face. This provides opportunities for mutual education and skill building, and it also builds a close family alliance. Get ideas for your discussion with our GKIS Blog and learn parenting strategies with Dr. Bennett’s Screen Time in the Mean Time Parenting Guide.

Thanks to CSUCI intern, Liliana Esquivel, for detailing the targeted harassment done by Kiwi Farms users and how the website facilitates this behavior.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Works Cited

[1] (2022). Kiwi Farms. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

[2] Collins, B., Tenbarge, K. (2022). Anti-trans stalkers at Kiwi Farms are chasing one victim around the world. Their list of targets is growing. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-keffals-anti-trans-rcna44834

[3] Dress, B. (2022). Why anti-trans web forum Kiwi Farms was erased from the internet. The Hill.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3642685-why-anti-trans-web-forum-kiwi-farms-was-erased-from-the-internet/

[4]Goforth, C. (2022). Kiwi Farms gets back online thanks to the same service that’s kept 8kun alive. Daily Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/kiwi-farms-back-online-vanwatech/

Photo Credits

Photo by Victoria Heath (https://unsplash.com/photos/MAGAXAYq_NE)

Photo by Hugo Delauney (https://unsplash.com/photos/YicAtc9n7pU)

Photo by Carolina Heza (https://unsplash.com/photos/0lD4hF1fBv0)

Kids Watched a Facebook Live Suicide That Turned Into a Trending Meme

October 7, 2020 by Avery Flower

A 33-year-old army veteran named Ronnie McNutt gruesomely killed himself in a Facebook Live video on August 31, 2020.[1] Soon after, memes and jump cuts to his suicide were floating around social media sites like TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. From there, reaction videos between friends and siblings began trending. Unfortunately, this is not the first time an online suicide began trending and turned into a meme. This subculture of macabre shock humor not only desensitizes kids to violence, but it can also cause copycat behaviors and serious trauma symptoms.

How Kids Fall Victim to Traumatizing Shock Humor

The extremely popular TikTok has a customized feed called the “For You” page. The For You page shares trending videos that may be relevant to the user’s view history with a few random videos added in for variety. This is the reason disturbing videos may appear out of nowhere on a user’s page.

Users often save and forward the most gruesome content to their friends on a variety of social media platforms. That means that, despite being reported and removed by moderators, the images and videos live on and on. Users even troll each other by hiding a gruesome clip in the middle of a seemingly unrelated video for the GOTCHA effect. Whether your kids are on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook, they may have a difficult time avoiding gruesome content.

Why do kids troll with gruesome videos?

Reaction Formation

Kids are particularly susceptible to videos that make them feel interested, curious, and shocked. The more shocking the video, the more social cred kids get which helps them fit in, gain popularity, and seem cool and edgy.

Because processing this type of content is horrifying, kids often morph their uncomfortable feelings into humor as a way of coping. The father of psychology, Sigmund Freud, called the tendency for people to have an opposite emotional reaction than expected, reaction formation.

Modeling

Modeling is defined in psychology as a type of learning that results from watching behavior and replicating it. Kids are particularly wired for learning through modeling because it helps them grasp useful life strategies such as social cues and dealing with emotions. Seeing peers laughing at these videos or attempting to make funny reactions, makes this type of behavior seem okay and leads them to abandon their initial reaction of revulsion. As a result, the cycle of sharing gruesome videos is repeated.

An example of this is seen in a popular response video created by Jorobe on TikTok. This video highlights a clip between a girl sharing the McNutt video with another girl. The victim gets wide-eyed, leans away from the phone, looks at the camera and then back at the girl who is showing the video, lets out a nervous chuckle, then covers her face. Her raw response shows shock, revulsion, and an uncomfortable attempt to process what she has seen. As she struggles to make sense of her distress, the other girl laughs. She then laughs in response. The transformation from revulsion to humor is, all by itself, the joke.

Most adults tend to be upset at this kind of “gotcha” humor, but kids tend to love it. Without life experience, they do not yet have the empathy skills to pull back before somebody gets hurt. Kids simply get carried away. Powerful and even stressful emotions can release the neurotransmitter, dopamine, which can be interpreted as pleasurable to immature brains.

Viewing Violence Can Cause Psychological Stress: The Impacts on the Mind and Body

Some videos may cause extreme stress and may even be traumatizing for children. In an article published in 2017 by McFadden, it is noted that the brain areas that play a role in complex thought and emotion—the prefrontal cortex and amygdala—are affected by stress. When we are exposed to a threat, our amygdala (commonly called the smoke detector in our brain) determines whether we need to go in crisis mode or problem-solving mode. If we go in crisis mode, the signal is directed to our brain stem so we can fight, flee, freeze, or fold. If we go into problem-solving mode, the signal is directed to our prefrontal cortex to calmly work the problem out.

McFadden found that, with prolonged stress, the brain cells in the prefrontal cortex will begin to deteriorate, while the amygdala will begin to strengthen. This impact then affects other parts of the brain—and therefore, one’s headspace—like a domino effect.[2]

If a person is exposed to traumatic or threatening material often, the crisis pathway overdevelops and the subject panics too easily. They can also lose their problem-solving abilities when stressed.

Further, trauma memories encode in the brain differently than factual memories. Unlike factual memories where we can retrieve the information at will, trauma memories may intrusively come back into our awareness uninvited. In extreme cases, these memories can be very upsetting – like a flashback of the originally traumatizing event. Psychologists recognize these behaviors as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by serious sleep problems, social isolation, anxiety, and mood disorders.

Desensitization

Desensitization in psychology is explained as a decline in emotional response due to repeated exposure.[3] This could be from something as simple as a joke becoming less and less funny when it is heard many times to something as serious as becoming more and more emotionally numb towards upsetting events. For example, psychological research has demonstrated that violent video games can desensitize children to violence due to frequent exposure to battery, weapons, blood, and death or murder. Similarly, exposure to videos of real-life gore and violence can cause desensitization and lack of empathy.

How to Protect Your Child

When shock videos are trending, it’s best to stay off social media apps until the trend dies down. For young children, your best resource for blocking, filtering, and management is the GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. With this resource guide, we offer links to the best parental controls, safety centers, and third-party tools and apps to help you protect your family.

For school-age kids, tech tools are simply not enough. GKIS also offers a free digital contract called our Family Agreement. With this powerful tool, you can set rules and regulations, teach important problem-solving skills, and discuss family values. An informed sensible parent-child alliance pays off for years to come. Our Connected Family Course complements the agreement with 10 steps for best-learning and safety.

Finally, we created a tool for tweens and teens that encourages more independence and accountability: our GKIS Social Media Readiness Course. Like driver’s training but for the internet, this course offers 10 lessons for your kid to work through with matching mastery quizzes at the end of each lesson. Not only does this course teach the risks of digital injury and how to avoid it, but it also offers Dr. Tracy Bennett’s hand-picked, outcome-based psychology wellness tools to help with resilience and mental health. We cannot keep them away from screens entirely, so it’s important that we offer them tools to avoid trauma.

Thanks to CSUCI intern, Avery Flower for researching how traumatic videos can affect childhood development and co-authoring this article.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty

Photo Credits

Photo by Ryan Plomp on Unsplash

Photo by Solen Feyissa from Pixabay

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Works Cited

[1] Steinbuch, Y. (2020, September 08). Army veteran Ronnie McNutt commits suicide in Facebook livestream. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/army-veteran-kills-himself-in-facebook-livestream/

[2] McFadden, J. (2017). Treatment of developmental stress disorder: Mind, body and brain—Analysis and pharmacology coupled. The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62(5), 744–755. https://doi-org.summit.csuci.edu/10.1111/1468-5922.12361

[3] Krahé, B., Möller, I., Huesmann, L. R., Kirwil, L., Felber, J., & Berger, A. (2011). Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(4), 630–646. https://doi-org.summit.csuci.edu/10.1037/a0021711

GKIS Recommends Some Favorite Mental Health Apps

May 18, 2020 by Makenzie Stancliff

Surveys reveal that depression and anxiety have increased for adults, teens, and kids. It’s unclear what is causing these increases, but longer workdays and overtasked lives may be strong contributors. Increased screen time on video games, social media, video and movie streaming, texts, and emails can be super fun and even improve productivity. But too much screen time can also lead to a mental brownout, a type of anxious fatigue that we may not even recognize until it leads to mental illness. Giving up screens to avoid it simply isn’t possible for most of us. But the good news is we don’t have to! Learn how smartphone health and wellness apps can benefit you without having to give up screen time!

Mental Health

Did you know that anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide is up 78% among teens?[1] In fact, by some estimates 1 in 6 children between the ages of 2 and 8 have a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder. Left untreated, child symptoms may lead to more issues in adulthood.

Among children ages 3 to 17:

4% or 6.1 million have been diagnosed with ADHD
4% or 4.5 million have been diagnosed with a behavior problem
1% or 4.4 million have been diagnosed with anxiety and
2% or 1.9 million have diagnosed with depression.

Boys are more likely than girls to experience a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder.[2]

Social Media Impacts on Children’s Mental Health

Sleep Deprivation

Social media has various effects on mental health, especially in children. Dr. Bennett writes in her book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, says that she feels sleep deprivation is the most common contributor to mental health problems today. The blue light on devices interrupts the sleep pattern and makes it more difficult to fall asleep. Many people also develop a compulsive impulse to check notifications which can also delay sleep.[3] Teens with sleep deprivation demonstrate lower achievement motivation, more teacher-child relationship problems, a poorer academic self-concept, and poorer school performance.

Self-Comparison

Too often, we see the best sides of our friends on social media. After all, nobody wants to read about the doom and gloom of a breakup or the fight someone just had with their mother-in-law. Positive posting can lead to friends feeling left out and generally bad about how their lives don’t compare. The GKIS article The FOMO EFFECT: How Fun Friend Posts Can Lead to Clinical Anxiety provides more information on self-comparison.

Distraction

Social media poses a major risk of distractibility. We tend to go on an endless cycle of content on one social media app or we cycle between multiple social media apps. This causes us to spend a longer amount of time on social media and forget about what we are supposed to do in the “real world”.

Mental Health Apps

Dr. Bennett recommends mental health apps to her clients all of the time. Free and convenient, they can be a great addition to psychotherapy. Even for people who aren’t in treatment, mental health apps can help us get to where we want to be by offering mood-enhancing toolkits, mood monitoring, and breathing and meditation ideas.

Mental health apps are awesome in that they are convenient, inexpensive, and even free, and available. They can be a comfortable first-step to wellness prior to (or even while) seeking out help from a mental health professional.

CAUTION: Keep in mind possible privacy issues due to the risk of data breaching and the release of private information to third parties. Many psychologists also agree that the apps are not as effective as seeing a mental health professional.[4]

Here are some mental health apps that GKIS is happy to share with you:

Sanvello

Sanvello is an app that aims to help you relieve symptoms of depression or anxiety by providing a complex toolkit of strategies and resources. It allows you to record your mood and health activities in order to track patterns.

There is also a Sanvello peer community that allows users to share stories, encouragement, and personal insights on any topic. The Terms of Service state “You must be over 13 years of age to use the Services, and children under the age of 13 cannot use or register for the Services.”[5]

The toolkit provided by Sanvello includes:

Meditation: Lessons focus on specific topics like relaxing, mindfulness, stressful situations, and calm down.

Health: Helps you track health habits that may be affecting your moods such as exercise, drug use, and water or caffeine consumption.

Hope: This tool provides the user with a space to save photos, quotes, activities, and community content.

Thoughts: Provides a place for journaling, analyzing events that have occurred, or discovering characteristics that have contributed to a feeling.

Goals: Allows users to select a challenge such as reconnecting with a friend or saying hello to a stranger.

Guided Journeys: A series of journeys that encourage a user to accomplish something they have never done before.

Porchlight: Being There

Porchlight is an app that is designed to allow loved ones to easily check in on each other’s mental health. The app prompts you to “check-in” once you enter the app where you can share your emotions using emoji. Users can connect with others which will send daily check-in notifications to the connected users. Porchlight provides prompts to check in with the connected users depending on what emotion they check in as.

Porchlight’s Terms of Service states “you must be 13 or older to register as a user or to use the app. If you are a minor, you must have your parents’ permission to donate through the App.”[6]

Headspace

Headspace is an app that provides guided meditation exercises to help the user become healthier and happier. Headspace claims that it can increase happiness by 16% with just 10 days of use. It is also a popular app with over 60 million active users.

There are 4 main guides to mindfulness within the app:

The Wake Up: Daily short stories and small meditations to help you start your morning on a good start

Move Mode: Exercises to help strengthen mental and physical well-being

Sleep: Sleepcasts, music, and audio experiences to aid a restful night of sleep

Meditation: Teaches everyday mindfulness to help at any time of the day[7]

According to the Terms of Service for Headspace, “You must be 18 years of age, or the age of majority in your province, territory or country, to sign up as a registered user of the Products. Individuals under the age of 18, or the applicable age of majority, may utilize the Products only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, under such person’s account and otherwise subject to these Terms.”[8]

Calm

Calm is an app designed to assist users to develop healthy mental fitness, relax, and good sleep habits. The goal of the app is to introduce people to the benefits of mindfulness through meditation.

There are 6 different items of focus in the app:

Meditate: Teaches the skills of meditation

Sleep: Tools to have a restful sleep

Music: To help you relax, focus, or sleep

Body: Demonstrates mindful movement and stretching

Masterclass: Audio programs taught by experts

Scenes: Nature scenes and sounds to help relax and focus[9]

Calm’s Terms of Service state “you may only use the Services only if you are 13 years or older. To make a purchase via the Services, you must be 18 years or older and capable of forming a binding contract.”[10]

Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Makenzie Stancliff for providing insight on mental health apps. For more information about how electronics can impact our health, check out Dr. Bennett’s GKIS article, Is Wi-Fi Dangerous to Our Health?

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.

Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty

GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Photo Credits

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

Photo by Julia Coimbra on Unsplash

Works Cited

[1](n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/mental-health-issues-on-the-rise-among-adolescents-young-adults

[2]Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health. (2019, April 19). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html

[3] How does social media impact the mental health of young people? (2019, October 28). Retrieved from https://www.internetmatters.org/blog/2017/04/12/social-media-impact-mental-health-young-people/

[4]Technology and the Future of Mental Health Treatment. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/technology-and-the-future-of-mental-health-treatment/index.shtml

[5]Home. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sanvello.com/

[6]Being There. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.porchlightapp.io/

[7] “Meditation and Sleep Made Simple.” Headspace, www.headspace.com/.

[8] “Terms & Conditions.” Headspace, www.headspace.com/terms-and-conditions.

[9] “About.” Calm Blog, www.calm.com/blog/about.

[10] “Terms of Service.” Calm, www.calm.com/en/terms.

Is Your Child Screen Addicted? How to Avoid Screen Rehab

September 20, 2018 by Dr. Tracy Bennett

Screen addiction is officially a thing. As a mom and clinical psychologist for over 25 years, I recognized and identified it in 2014 when I founded GetKidsInternetSafe from treating hundreds of families in my private practice. Teaching addiction studies at CSUCI also highlighted the similarities between drugs and screen behaviors for me. Like everybody else, I too was having a hard time chasing my kids off our screens. Honestly, even I was getting lost in my research and on Facebook, losing the ability to chill and read a novel. I started to worry about my family. From there, I wrote my book Screen Time in the Mean Time, offered keynotes and presentations, consulted with tech companies, coached families, built and tested my online courses, and created a weekly blog. And, after all that, the World Health Organization finally confirmed what I’ve been screaming from the rooftops. Big tech creates screen products that are manipulatively designed to trigger the pleasure centers of our brains, and we are, in fact, clinically addicted.

Gaming Addiction

Nearly 60% of parents think their teens are addicted to their mobile devices. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified gaming addiction (IGD) as a mental health disorder. In the last twenty years, the tech revolution has affected every aspect of our lives. Studies have shown that, for some subjects, compulsive screen use impacts the reward and pleasure areas of the brain in the same ways that alcohol, drugs, and other behavioral addictions do. Screen addiction treatment centers have been popping up in Asia for the last decade and are starting to be in the United States as well. Do you worry your child may be showing signs of screen addiction?

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“Remember, when Betty Ford first admitted she was an alcoholic, we didn’t have people believing it was actually a problem until she came around and talked about her own problems with it. This is a place for people to go for help, and that we hope will help everyone around them stop taking Internet addiction so lightly.”

Kimberly Young (founder of The Center for Internet Addiction in 1995)

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Who is to blame?

Parents

Of course, we have some accountability for what happens under our roofs. Pester power breaks us down, and we allow too much screen use even though we know better. We need a break in our overtasked, screen-saturated lives. We can’t entertain our rug rats 24-7.

Kids

They are so persistent! They CRAVE screen use and are master manipulators. Children are vulnerable to screen addiction because their brains are not fully developed, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and decision-making. Children who suffer from trauma like bullying, divorce, and abuse, as well as from psychological vulnerabilities like ADHD, anxiety and mood disorders, and autism are particularly vulnerable.

Schools

Schools are increasingly adopting curriculums that require screen use and Internet access during classroom and homework time. Without digital literacy, our kids academically falter. If you are reading this as part of your Social Media Readiness Course, then either your parents or your school are doing an awesome job prepping you to avoid addiction issues down the line.

Big Tech

Screens are programmed to addict us. Big tech, like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are experts in how to keep us coming back for more. Using secret computer algorithms, our online behavior is studied, collected, and aggregated. This data is used to create and deliver content in the ways our brains will effortlessly absorb it. That translates to targeted ads for clicks and money leaving our bank accounts. Big profit indeed.

The Gaming Industry

The gaming industry made 183 billion dollars last year. Multi-level, high-sensory games, like Fortnite, are intentionally programmed for addictive use. Players are rewarded for staying on and punished for getting off. This keeps kids on-screen, vulnerable to hours of autonomic overarousal. That means they burn too much brain fuel and are left fatigued and in mental brown-out.

The Government

Where is the regulation to protect kids? Are civil liberties really that strong that legislators can’t step in to help parents protect their kids against known harm like online pornography? Or is it that research and treatment organizations can’t compete with rich lobbyists who get direct access to our legislators? Did you know that the advertising budget for Budweiser alone exceeds the entire budget for research on alcoholism and all drugs of addiction?

How common is Internet Gaming Addiction?

Recent studies claim that around 1 – 5% of the US population could be classified as Internet game addicts. It is most common among single young males. Male Internet addiction most typically involves video gaming, cyber-pornography, and online gambling. Women are more likely to show addictive use patterns with social media, texting, and online shopping. IGD commonly cooccurs with depression, anxiety, AD/HD, self-harm, obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositionality, suicidality, and personality disorders.

Other risk factors include living in the city, not living with a biological parent, low parent involvement, parent unemployment, and not having a reliable friend.

Consequences of IGD include skipping school, lower grades, family conflicts, lack of offline sociality, sleep problems, and unresolved developmental problems. These factors, along with emotional problems, often result in the addict lacking the very resources necessary to break out of the addictive cycle.

What do brain studies say?

Brain imaging studies have found brain changes like those seen in subjects with drug addictions. In other words, the more we play video games, the more our brains change and adapt.

Activation pattern changes that result in brain tissue changes are called adaptive neuroplasticity.

More specifically, subjects with video game addiction show a reduction in gray and white brain matter and reduced cortical thickness in various areas of the brain. The more the gamer plays, the more brain changes. Studies have also found evidence of dopamine release and higher activity in the brain’s pleasure center when playing video games. Heavy gamers have significantly more difficulty calming their emotions and making sound decisions than nongamers.

Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Katherine Bryan for contributing to this article. Screen addiction is real and now universally recognized. If you worry you are seeing red flags in your home, remember that screen addiction is preventable!