Mental health issues among teenagers have been rising for more than a decade, and many experts have pointed a finger at social media as one of the culprits. In 2023, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory in which he wrote that “frequent social media use may be associated with distinct changes in the developing brain in the amygdala (important for emotional learning and behavior) and the prefrontal cortex (important for impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior), and could increase sensitivity to social rewards and punishments.”
In his latest book, The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that Gen Z experienced a “phone-based” childhood. “Gen Z got sucked into spending many hours of each day scrolling through the shiny happy posts of friends, acquaintances, and distant influencers.” They became the first generation in history “to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and […] unsuitable for children and adolescents,” Haidt wrote.
GRIND CULTURE CAN GRIND YOU DOWN
Some commentators have suggested that our children are being subjected to an inadvertent social experiment. “Like it or not, children and teenagers today are live participants in an unprecedented experiment, as the sudden ubiquity of smartphones and hyper-engaging social media influences their development,” Erin O’Donnell wrote for the March-April edition of Harvard Magazine. “Parents and educators who are not as digitally savvy wonder how to help youths navigate this landscape, amid evidence that the prevalence of anxiety and depression has increased sharply among teenagers during the last 15 years, the period that overlaps with the arrival of these technologies.”
Researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Center for Digital Thriving have been trying to detail the pressures teens face and to understand the role screen-based technology might play.
The researchers surveyed 1,545 US teens in the fall of 2023, asking about six areas in their lives that are potential sources of negative pressure, such as academics and social relationships. “The findings reveal that young people are feeling squeezed,” reported O’Donnell. “81 percent of respondents struggled in one of six domains while more than half felt negative pressure in three or more.” This provided a detailed picture of how teens experience so-called ‘grind culture’ which they described as “this sense of always needing to be productive, to be striving in all these different areas, even at the expense of your health,” explained Emily Weinstein, co-director of the center.
Interestingly, 19 percent of the teens surveyed did not experience pressure in any of the domains identified in the study. Looking specifically at those teens, “several practices and patterns emerge,” wrote the authors. They tend to get more sleep, are more likely to spend time outdoors, and tend to have more open schedules.
HEALING THE MENTAL WOUNDS OF GRIND CULTURE
At Turning Winds, teenage clients get reacquainted with life without phones and constant internet use. It is a safe place for teens to unplug and heal. “Kids today are so bombarded with societal expectations, the internet, social media, and so much of the demands that society puts on them,” says Turning Winds therapist Kim Sparks, LCPC. Parents bring their teens to our remote place in Montana “to make them kind of disconnect and have them only focus on themselves.”
“Many of our clients have a very limited range of activities when they arrive here,” says clinical director Jared Sartell. “They may be using drugs or are constantly playing video games. At Turning Winds, we expose these kids to all kinds of different ways to cope with stress. We give them the opportunity to experience new things. We expose them to life in a healthy place, an experience they can build on after their return home.”
Therapeutic approaches—many particular to the Turning Winds boarding school environment—include character education, wellness of body and mind, outdoor experiential education, evidence-based clinical care, and academic success, along with continuously improving each aspect of our therapeutic program through measuring outcomes in each area. Together, these constitute what we call the “Five Pillars of Change.”
At Turning Winds, the mission is to rescue teens from crisis situations, renew their belief in their own potential, reunite them with their families, and put them on a sustainable path to success. Contact us online for more information, or call us at 800-845-1380. If your call isn’t answered personally, one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.
