His parents were asleep when 16-year-old Carson Bride
hanged himself in the garage of the family home
.
He was tormented by bullying and humiliating messages from his classmates, hiding his identity in the vast universe of social media.
An
“extreme” addiction to Instagram and Snapchat
forced Selena Rodríguez to receive mental health treatment.
For months she suffered from depression and the inability to sleep.
The disclosure of photos with sexual content that, under pressure, she uploaded to the networks completed the picture.
She was just 11 years old when she took her life.
“Depression pins you might like.”
That's what Molly Russell's father found when he checked her 14-year-old daughter's email after finding her dead in her bedroom.
It was not the only thing: in the six months prior to the tragedy, the girl had visited more than
2 thousand posts on Instagram related to suicide
, depression or self-inflicted injuries.
Injuries that caused death.
Janet Majewski's daughter had the same end, at the same age as Molly.
TikTok, Snapchat and Meta were sued for the tragic outcome.
Stories like these multiply around the world.
With varying luck, some complaints reach the courts;
Others become desperate calls for attention to officials and responsible adults to react to a phenomenon that seems to be out of control.
“A perfect storm.
That was the phrase that internal Meta researchers used to describe the effect that their platform, Instagram, is having on the mental and physical health of adolescents,” Carson Bride's mother said in USA Today.
And he warned: “
The rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, self-harm
and suicide between the ages of 10 and 24
grew by 60% between 2007 and 2018
, and suicide is the second cause of death between the ages of 15 and 24 in the United States.” Joined".
Research by stem4, a youth mental health charity, shows that
3 out of 4 kids up to 12 years old hate their bodies
due to the influence of social media.
The figure rises to 8 out of 10 among those aged 18 to 21.
In the same study,
four in 10 young people
admitted to having
mental health problems
and one in five admitted to having serious discomfort with their physical appearance.
Nihara Krause, founding psychologist of the organization, warned about the negative impact of networks on the mental health of children and adolescents and pointed out “the reinforcement created through algorithms.”
The survey indicates that
97% of children up to 12 years old
participate
in social networks
, circumventing the requirement of non-admission of children under 13 that many platforms require.
And although 70% acknowledged that networks make them feel stressed, anxious and depressed and two thirds expressed regret for the time they spend on them, the average stay is 3.65 hours.
In Argentina it is estimated that 90% of young people aged 13 to 17 have some profile on the networks and
60% of those aged 11 and 12 have an account.
The city of New York, along with the district's public schools and hospitals, has just sued social networks for “
addictive and dangerous
.”
Days before,
Marc Zuckerberg
, executive director of Meta,
apologized to relatives of young people
who, they claim, were victims of
abuse and violence on the networks
, although he denied that they affect mental health.
The kids at home stopped being a guarantee of security a while ago. Are we ready to understand it?
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