Interesting article.
FWIW, I graduated from Redwood High School in Marin County, CA in 2014. Redwood had ~1600 students and many were high achievers, and many came from middle-class or upper-class families. We were a blue ribbon school, probably with a hefty PTA budget and a myriad of AP courses and honors classes available. We had some dedicated teachers too. We even had a ceramics room, a music building, a beautiful gym, track, and field. There was a drama program, and of course the drama room smelled of illicit substances, but they did deliver impressive improv shows. Our graduating class had a record number of students who had achieved honor roll or higher GPAs.
To my knowledge, there were some bullying incidents at our school, but the rate was said to be relatively low. I knew at least one person who had been cyber-bullied. We had one suicide that I can remember — a girl who I didn’t know very well but shared maybe one or two classes with my freshman year. It was tragic to hear of her family’s loss when it happened, and looking back at the few interactions I had with her, I would not have pegged her to be at risk. She seemed like someone who would have no trouble making friends or performing in school. Most of the suicides we heard of came out of different schools in the Bay Area that were even more academically challenging. St. Ignatius or “S.I.”, a private school in San Francisco was infamous for their suicides.
In reflection, I didn’t invest as much as I should have in getting to know more of these individuals while in high school — I was shy, but mostly bored, fixated on keeping my grades up to impress a favorable profile to universities, and fatigued about how fake so much of life seemed to be. During our graduation ceremony I realized if that I could have and should have taken more of an interest in getting to know more of my peers, and participating in their lives. High school students aren’t fake people, even if high school feels fabricated and pointless. Social media wasn’t a huge problem for me, but it did have an effect of making me think that some people appeared quite dull — I have learned my lesson not to be deceived.
For me, social media amplified the feeling of being stuck — a feeling that was already exuded by the physical form of our school, which was designed by the same architect who did San Quentin State Prison. It also amplified a story people could create about themselves or others. We saw that gave people an opportunity to weave themselves into a web of negative self-image or belief about others, or the world. It seems to do this effortlessly, while excluding the human contact that usually comes along with in-person communication. For kids who have an abusive parent, I suspect that this was particularly insidious because social media empowered parents to be more involved in their children’s social dynamic than before. While a lot of people were saying that it’s important to keep an eye on your child’s internet activity, I suspect that some parents with abusive tendencies took advantage of this and misused it to the detriment of their children.
There is the apparent option to delete one’s profile, but that doesn’t stop others from mentioning you or posting photos that you are in. And someone’s absence on social media is potentially a statement itself. What would you make of a job candidate has no presence at all on LinkedIn? (To clarify, this last question is posed to ask you to consider it and I don’t mean to plant a particular answer in your head).
Perhaps the most damning impact of it on our generation is that it was a pervasive opportunity for kids to fail forever. The school would undoubtedly respond in some punitive way to anyone with online presence or interest that may, in any way, be deemed negative, and on top of all that, the media itself has its own algorithm and presumably saves all the data forever. Kids had to either censor themselves more carefully in communications online, or risk the consequences. This is the biggest issue I see that has contributed to a whole generation of people that doesn’t feel safe to express a unique opinion, and perhaps fears being judged. It’s one thing to be surveilled by the government. It is another entirely to be surveilled by people in your peer group, your community, and your friends. We’ve been taught that if you appear to think a certain way, then you are done. Period. Until then, come play in school rallies and don’t mind the police officer who is watching you the whole time.