Park City parents and district employees met at Ecker Hill Middle School Wednesday to continue the conversation on the effect cellphones can have on youth mental health. A previous meeting was held in May.
Katie Wright is one of the parents who helped organize the meeting. She said discussions about youth mental health have been going on for a while, but she didn’t realize how big of a problem it was for a long time.
“Then I had that horrible wake-up call, and like so many in the community, realized how big of an issue this is that we as the adults need to make sure that we are creating and co-creating a world that our kids want to live in and that they thrive in,” Wright said.
Wednesday’s meeting was just the start of that effort. Panelist Pamella Bello, director of behavioral health prevention for Summit County, shared data from the Utah Student Health and Risk Prevention Survey. The survey is conducted every other year in grades six, eight, 10 and 12. The data show in the past 12 months, more than 50% of Summit County students who used their phone five or more hours a day had felt sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks. That’s compared to over 20% of students who use their phone four hours per day. Bello said the data show kids’ mental health and cellphone usage is related.
Treasure Mountain Junior High principal Caleb Fine agreed cellphones impact youth mental health. He said phones are the source of a lot of harassment in schools, especially Snapchat, the messaging app allowing users to exchange pictures and videos that disappear after being viewed.
“Snapchat is my version of the devil. I've not yet seen anything positive happen in that mode of communication because the kids feel like it's going away,” Fine said. “Some of the worst anti-semitic things we dealt with and our students have been exposed to, happened on Snapchat.”
Fine said some Treasure Mountain students have sent nude pictures to each other via Snapchat, which then required the administration to involve police. He said he’s aware of an uptick in students experiencing suicide ideation, which he said could be related to social media.
Jill Thompson, a second-grade teacher at McPolin and parent, shared a personal experience about bullying on social media platforms. Her youngest daughter got a cellphone at age 12 and that’s when bullying and harassment started.
“She posted a picture of her riding her horse at 12 years old, her very first post, and some boys at schools were sending very inappropriate messages,” Thompson said. “From that point forward, she was very sexualized anytime she posted anything.”
Thompson said the harassment led to her daughter getting an eating disorder, which she spent six weeks in the hospital for. She said part of the problem is many people use social media as a mask.
“I knew some of these kids, and I know they would not say these things to her in person, and [it’s] very easy for them to hide behind a screen,” Thompson said.
Jadyn Ackerman, the Park City High School president of an antibullying and suicide prevention club called Hope Squad, said she also was the victim of online bullying. The bullying went on for months and Ackerman said she reported it at the end of the school year because she didn’t want it to follow her through the year.
“In the end, this was happening to other kids who didn't have the strength to report it that I did, and they all came forward once I came forward,” she said.
Bello said kids also lose sleep because of cellphones. There was one instance where Park City High School reached out to the Summit County Health Department because they couldn’t figure out why specific kids kept missing school. Bello said after investigating, her team found it was because the kids stayed up so late texting and on social media, they were too tired to go to school in the morning.
There wasn’t a clear solution to help kids negatively impacted by cellphones and social media identified on Wednesday. While having a no cellphone policy in school might help kids stay focused, it wouldn’t solve online bullying outside of school hours. Further, some kids use cellphones to aid learning, like students whose first language isn’t English.
Most panel members agreed it would be best to wait to give kids smartphones until they’re 16 and to not allow phones in kids’ bedrooms at night. However, if students do have cellphones, Ackerman recommended setting screen limits and ensuring parents know what their kids are looking at. And whether a child has a cellphone or not, panelists also agreed students should be encouraged to report bullying and harassment. Students can make reports online with the Park City School District’s new standardized system.
Holland Lincoln, a parent who also helped organize the panel, said parents should start by having conversations with their kids about technology and social media.
“We need to start having these conversations all the time to explain to our kids how they fit into this ecosystem and that they're becoming products when they're using these tools and and give them some agency.”
Then, she said, it’s time for community conversations and finally policy changes in schools and local government.
Parents and the district plan to continue discussions surrounding cellphone use.
