We keep pouring money into our personal electronic devices like there’s no tomorrow, always wanting more, always wanting the latest, and schools are no different. In fact, $ 3.8 billion is spent each year on classroom technology, but 27% do not meet any learning goals!

Translation: $ 1 billion of your education technology tax dollars is wasted annually.

At the same time, in the name of funding problems, only three states provide children at least one school counselor, formerly known as guidance counselors, for every 250 students, as recommended. Equally concerning, only three others have at least one school psychologist for every 750 students, according to federal data.

Put them together and what do you have? Increasing rates of anxiety and depression in our youth without much of a safety net prepared for them.

It’s more …

  • In a 2019 Pew research survey, 70% of teens surveyed agreed that stress, anxiety, and depression are a major problem among their peers.
  • A 2017 survey by the American Psychological Association on stress in the United States found that 60% of parents worry about the influence of social media on their children’s physical and mental health.
  • A recent NBC News / Survey Monkey poll found that nearly 33% of 1,300 parents of children ages 5 to 17 blamed social media for their children’s mental and emotional health issues.
  • From 2009 to 2017, the CDC says rates of depression between the ages of 14 and 17 increased by more than 60%.
  • According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 32% of adolescents suffer from an anxiety disorder, and 12% of our youth ages 12 to 17 reported a major depressive episode in the past year.
  • Between 2005 and 2017, the proportion of adolescents, ages 12 to 17, who reported severe depressive symptoms increased from 8.7% to 13.2%, according to data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

On these facts and arguing that adolescents turn to their smartphones as their “preferred social outlet,” says San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge, “suggests that something is very wrong in the lives of young people and that everything that went wrong seemed to happen around 2012 or 2013. ”

And that’s the time when, as Twenge points out, smartphones became commonplace and “social media went from being optional to mandatory for young people … What you get is a fundamental change in the way you teenagers spend their free time, less time with their friends “. face to face … It’s not something that happened to their parents … “

Varun San, Vice Chancellor for Wellness and Crisis Intervention at the University of Southern California Campus, adds: “The root of all this is a sense of disconnection. These are students who are very connected online. These are students who They may have 1,000 friends online but they struggle to make friends in real life. “

Also of note:

  1. Of the 1,800 young people ages 19-21 surveyed, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that the top 25% of social media users are at higher risk of depression than the bottom 25%.
  2. University College London found that teens using social media more than 5 hours a day showed a 50% increase in depressive symptoms among girls and a 35% increase among boys compared to users aged 1 to 3 hours.
  3. According to a study by the UK Millennium Cohort, 43% of girls said they spent 3 hours or more on social media, as did 21.9% of boys, and 26% of those girls and the 21% of those children had higher depressive scores than those who spent less. 3 hours.

And now this has just come in: An analysis from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Albany, and New York University Langone Medical Center found that babies as young as 12 months experience nearly an hour of screen time. every day, and 3-year-olds put on more than 150 minutes.

In other words, pay attention and set limits, following the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines that recommend NOT screening infants / toddlers under 18 months, gradually adding between 18 and 24 months, and not more than one hour per day for the whole of 2 to 5.

And then tell your kids …

  1. No more than 2 hours a day on any device, other than computer-related tasks.
  2. There are no devices on the dinner table or during quiet study / homework time, except for online assignments.
  3. No device is used an hour before bedtime, too stimulating, plus blue light wreaks havoc on sleep.
  4. Don’t go to bed with your smartphone in hand. If you use it as an alarm clock, buy an alarm clock instead.

Oh yeah, and take your own good advice for your own good …