Speakers: Social media encourages suicide

MOSES LAKE — If you want to tackle youth suicide, it is important to deal with the fact that as a society, we have abandoned our children to an online world that fosters isolation, dependency and despair.

“We are in charge, we’ve got to take control, or we are looking at a catastrophe in five years,” said Katey McPherson, an author and former Arizona school administrator.

McPherson was in Moses Lake on Tuesday with self-described social activist and youth activist Collin Kartchner to speak to kids and parents about social media and the effects it has on the well-being of young people.

They both spoke at the Empowering Our Communities gathering, organized and sponsored by Grant Integrated Services, Samaritan Health Care, Moses Lake Community Health Center, New Hope, Confluence Health Care, and Grant County Commissioner Cindy Carter.

“Suicide is 100 percent preventable,” Carter said.

McPherson said that the goal should be for parents to show good “digital leadership” and to promote “good digital citizenship” among young people. This means modeling good behavior — not just with devices, but also in the real world.

“We need to stop talking at them, and start showing them,” she said.

Mobile phone apps are designed to hook kids and keep them hooked by delivering boosts of dopamine — a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good — to the brain at just the right time. But the same apps can also work on kids’ insecurities, foster bullying and emotional isolation.

“I’m instantly seen, heard and loved,” she said. “My brain is awash in dopamine, I’m on cloud nine, and I want it 24/7.”

But the same thing that can give constant approval also means kids now bring their bullies home, that there is no escape, McPherson said.

“There is not a day that goes by that kids don’t talk about playground conflicts,” McPherson said of her time as a school administrator. “Online allows it to fester and ruminate overnight.”

McPherson said she has a digital contract with her kids that outlines how much time they can spend on their devices and what they can do, as well as outlining consequences for misbehavior. She also makes sure that none of her kids can take their devices to bed with them — they are all kept at a central charging station overnight.

This helps break the rumination and reward loop that online activity encourages, she said.

McPherson said it’s also important for parents to stop trying to fix their children’s lives, to listen and let them learn to advocate for themselves.

“When they talk, they’re not asking you to fix the problem, but asking us to feel their pain,” she said. “They’re saying, ‘this is what I’m going through. I need you to listen to me for three minutes.’”

“The village,” as McPherson referred to our neighborhoods and communities, that kids are no longer allowed to work things out for themselves.

“If someone bothers you, you go to the adults and see if they will help,” she said. “There’s no self-advocating. Parents are afraid, kids are afraid.”

“We are all truly, truly in this together,” she said. “I want my kids to know you have a voice and your voice matters. No one has the right to take your child’s dignity away.”

“I don’t think our kids know that,” she said.