##VIDEO ID:tRIqlImOe7M## hi good evening everyone um we're GNA get started uh give um our presenters here a chance to um get our full presentation in this evening um on behalf of the district Wellness committee and nj4 S we are super excited to present to you this evening um supporting youth mental health in a social media World um but before we get started I just wanted to do a few introductions my name is Jenny Jacobs I'm one of the school counselors at TB school um I am also a co- facilitator for the district Wellness committee um standing over here to my left is Dr Alysa Shiri um Dr shelir is um principal at North Boulevard school and joining us virtually we have miss Helen Bronco she is the director of student services for prek 5 um I want to give a big shout out to Mr Shay in the back Mr Shay is our director of Technology thank you Mr Shay for coming out tonight um and over here to my right I have David Mills and Megan Gabe and David and Megan are prevention Consultants from New Jersey Statewide student support services so that's nj4 s that's a tongue twister so that's where the 4S's come in um NJ 4S provides mental health education to schools in and around Morris and Sussex counties so I am going to turn the presentation over to them and thank you so much for coming out this evening thank you so much Jenny and we're uh Megan I are excited to be here to talk about um youth mental health and social media I know this is a topic that a lot of parents are struggling with and it's new right like mental health is on the Forefront of all of our minds and then we have this thing called social media that all of our young people are very invested in and I think us ourselves are also very involved and invested in so we're excited to uh present this catchy title that we came up with supporting youth mental health and social media World a guide for parents and caregivers you can see this kind of as your Survival Guide so Jenny kind of talked a little bit about what um NJ fors does and I could tell you a little bit more about what we do I want to start with everything we provide is free to schools um and families so we provide three levels of um programming so we have Community Education which is what we're doing here tonight just on different mental health topics for students parents uh School faculty and just Community me community members in general um we also have um prevention programming where we go into schools and provide programming in the classrooms to students on different topics like suicide prevention substance substance use prevention and a bunch of other topics just overall social um emotional learning program and then we also provide free counseling to students in Morris and Sussex County so we have clinicians who can come into schools and provide free counseling to um students in need so it's a really cool program and Megan and are grateful to be a part of uh be a part of it so I do just want to give a a Content warning um we are going to be talking about mental health and with that comes discussions around depression anxiety and suicide right we can't really talk about mental health without talking about the the risk of suicide um so I just want to give that that little warning and if at any time you feel like you need to like turn your screen off take some time away you know mute yourself please feel free to do that um Megan and I will be around after the presentation if anybody would like to talk we have some really great resources so we are here um and I'm G to hand it over to myself it's not mg just yet um so here's our little agenda for the evening um we're going to talk about social media and we're also going to talk about mental health and the relationship between the two and how it may help to promote the mental health of our young people but also the um some of the consequen can have for their mental health so it's a very you know complex topic and we're gonna we're going to dive into some of this stuff with you all tonight and then I will hand it over mg hello everyone and thank you for joining us so I will get us started with uh the distinguishment between mental health and mental illness so for starters everybody has mental health okay and it it is just like your physical health the example that I like to use is people like to go to the gym or go on walks to work out their physical health work out their muscles their body get it moving and it's very important to focus on your mental health and think of it the same way right filling things or filling your life with things that make you happy or that can you know test your mind keep it moving keep it working like it's supposed to now your mental health has to do with your emotional psychological and social well-being and all of those aspects play into how we think how we act how we feel and everything like that now mental illness is something that discusses diagnosable conditions now not everybody lives with mental illnesses um but these mental illnesses could affect the way you're thinking your feeling your behavior and your mood um these mental illnesses can be diagnosed by um Sorry by a mental health professional um and we just like to bring up the distinguishment between the two because like I mentioned before everybody has mental health not everybody lives with mental illnesses now I'd like you all to just take a minute to yourself and reflect on your own relationship with that you have with social media okay so think to yourself number one did you use any social media today I know I did a lot of people will do um it is very difficult to not use it especially with the world that we live in number two is social media where you get the information about things that interest you I know a lot of people might say yes to that um I don't really foresee anybody saying no like a hard no number three does social media make you feel connected to friends and family if you ask my mom that's 100% yes she loves Facebook and she posts everything on there number four do you sometimes feel like you can't go day without social media so that's where we kind of start getting into the warning signs like okay you might be a little dependent on it might need to take a step back number five do you think social media is good bad or both I'm sure today we're going to discuss there are both positives and negatives and ways around both of them and number six do you sometimes stay up later than you planned because of social media use again that is a very common one that we get now after you think of your own relationship with social media I'd like you to think about your teens's relationship with social social media or how you think they might have responded to those questions thinking of these questions and having that self che check in with yourself is how we could not uh start to take note of patterns of maybe negative social media use or if something is affecting us more than we think about so we're going to start with the benefit of social media so like I mentioned before it is a great way to utilize communication you could connect and stay in touch with friends and family you could receive things you could share things that you know you might not be able to share over the phone or something like that it's a great way of self-expression and to U uh to magnify your creativity there's plenty of apps and programs out there where you could express yourself in different ways it's a great way to build a Community um I follow one of the influencers I follow um has you know invited all of her followers um and it's just a positive kind of group um so you could build any community that you want to there and it's also a representation of your culture and your sense of identity in the outside world and then it's also good for entertainment you could always indulge in something that brings you Joy or funny things or something like that back to David yeah thank you for those like thoughtful things to think about our own social media use and we have conversations with our young people we have to reflect on our own use when having those conversations with them so it's really important so with the benefits there are also some negatives and we're going to go into each one um individually explore them talk about them um talk about how they affect our you mental health so comparison um one of my favorite quotes is comparison is the thief of joy and I think we can all relate to that right we're always even without social media um we're always comparing ourselves to others and now we have this device that allows us not only to compare compare ourselves to the people that we see every day physically but people all over the world and we're seeing people living these lives that you know make us feel like we're not really making the most of our lives or or we're not doing things that are as interesting and that and as adults we can reflect on that and have you know we have we have conversations with ourselves and we're more comfortable with where we're at in like we got to remember our teens that's not really conversations that having with themselves they are much more insecure about where they're at in life they haven't really figured out who they are yet so seeing you know always seeing people to compare themselves to it really affects their their self-esteem and their confidence and their overall mental health um so just some statistics and the statistics the statistics here are not to like scare anyone they're just just we want people to see what you know the the what the science is saying right so um according to the Surgeon General three hours of social media use or more a day um has a negative impact on um teens mental health and I think we all know that Most teens are you know on social media for more than three hours a day um and 70% of teens and young adults and US experience social media addiction so it is something that's widespread but we're going to talk about you know how you can use social media to connect with your young the young person in your life kind of use it as a tool in your favor uh so another downfall of social media oh this is mg here you go so like David was saying another downfall of social media is fomo what a lot of kids call it or the fear of missing out so the fear of missing out is the feeling that you know you're seeing other people live all the these exciting and fulfilling lives and I'm just s going to work every day and you know I have some fun things here and there um but either I don't have the money for this or I don't have clothes as fancy as that or I have never done that activity or anything like that right so that constant comparison um could lead to an increase in feeling of loneliness depression reduced excuse me reduced emotional well-being okay dissatisfaction with social Wellness right so all of these feelings right they stem from that comparison and it's really important to remind yourself that comparison is the thief of Joy like David loves to say right now cyber bullying is a very very important and prominent topic um in our world today bullying could happen any anywhere right but cyber bullying Could Happen anywhere at any time it could be 247 and it could show up in many many different forms so some of the forms that we see are posting inappropriate or private pictures of somebody else tagging someone in hurtful posts or commenting hurtful things under a post texting negative things about someone or sharing harmful content or hurtful content so it's very important that when you see cyberbullying whether you are another teen and you see somebody else being Cyber Bullied or you're a parent or anything of that sort it's very important to jump in as soon as you can okay these things can uh rise drastically in a very short period of time and the other thing I want to point out about cyber bullying is it could reach a very big variety of people very very quickly a lot quicker than if somebody was talking about somebody behind their back in school so excessive use of social media it could lead to many negative things so I know a lot of times it's very difficult to unplug right or to disconnect from social media I find myself struggling with it a lot but these teens or these kids and the youth right they're running around they're doing school after school activities everything like that and then they get onto social media at home and they find their themselves indulge in it right engulfed in it so it could be very difficult to disconnect which could affect their sleep their Sleep Quality how much they're sleep sleeping which could lead to poor grades or poor work performance loss of interest in former Hobbies that's a big warning sign right so a lot of parents you guys know your kids right you know them better than we would you know them better than their teachers would so if you're noticing that they're not doing their same Hobbies or getting the joy that they used to from their those Hobbies it might be a sign that they're on social media a little bit too much or having a tough time disconnecting it could also lead to isolation from friends and family back to thank you I'm the stati I'm the statistics guy so um you're going to see some uh statistics starting in 2017 through 2021 and these are not directly related to social media use it's just showing a increase in um rates of depression especially among um young people who identify as female um and the relationship that social media has on this is really kind of unknown at this point there's some arguments that it helps to um helps teens feel more connected right there might be some teens who don't have any really like friends at school but they have a whole Community um on a social media platform that they connect with and um so it's important to to think about these statistics and really think about the relationship that social media might have on young people's mental health as a protective Factor but also a risk factor um and these are some uh mental health statistics directly related to social media use so um we see that it can have a negative effect on Young a Young Person's mental health and like uh Megan was saying cyber bullying is a huge part of social media and I think as um you know parents and teachers and people that work with youth we see the effect of cyber bullying and since we are talking about the relationship between social media and mental health and cyber bullying we have to have a conversation about the risk of suicide in our young people when it comes to social media use and their mental health so first I wanted to debunk some myths around suicide um because when you have a teen in your life and you might be noticing Behavior changes it can be scare especially around social media use right it can be scary to ask them if they are thinking about suicide and it's an important conversation to have um something if you have that gut feeling you should ask um and these are some myths that are going to help hopefully make that a little less scary um so myth number one if people talk about suicide they won't actually do it it's just a cry for help that's a myth if someone's talking about um dying or suicide um it means they've been thinking about it and somebody should ask if they need some support and some help um if people don't talk us talk about suicide they won't do it that's also true right there's some people who are thinking about suicide but do not express it and sometimes you can you can sense that and when you sense that it's important to ask ask the ask the teen in your life especially as parents right you know your teen best so don't be scared to ask the question talking about suicide will put ideas into people's heads and increase the likelihood of a suicide attempt that is also a myth talking about suicide does not make someone have the thought like oh this is an option now if someone's been thinking about um suicide they'll be grateful that you started the conversation with them um if someone appears half happy after they've talked about suicide they must be over it that's also a myth it's an ongoing conversation it's it's checkins here and there um you know you're always going to check in if someone engages in self harm they must have Suicidal Thoughts too that's also a m the two are related but also they might be unrelated so again these are some really important myths to keep in mind when you're interacting with uh your teen and talking about their social media use and maybe um if they're being Cyber Bullied and things like that all right is this you in mag all right I'm gonna pass it off to mag okay so like David said suicide is something that must be talked about it could seem very intimidating but it is crucial so suicide does not always sound like I want to kill myself right that phrase won't always be used it could show up in plenty of other ways some examples I just want to sleep forever I'm just a burden to everyone I just want this to end why should I bother trying right so when you start to hear these terms it's important to you know a little flag or a little light should go off in your head like hey maybe I should check in maybe I should see where they're really at now navigating the conversation about suicide like I said it could be very very intimidating but it is very very important okay so asking about if they plan to harm themselves or kill themselves does not plant the idea in their head that is very very important it actually gives them space and permission to talk about their suicidal thoughts or what they've been feeling what they've been thinking you are not there to fix the problem I know it's very easy right whenever a problem happens in our lives right we look for the quick fix I just want to fix it I just want to take the pain away right but in this case scenario we're not there to fix the problem right we're there to understand them the best that we can try and meet them where they're at and give them the resources that will help them another another thing is do not promise to keep this conversation a secret right so we go into schools every day we talk about confidentiality a lot of what is said in the classroom stays in the classroom right and there's no law about that confidentiality rule at home but if somebody is planning to harm themselves or someone else it is very important that that is not kept a secret now these are just some examples of what not to say versus what to say now a lot of times I know my parents uh are guilty of this I'm guilty of this right so even if we say something with well- intent right we we're meaning or we're saying it with um good meaning behind it doesn't always me uh mean that it's going to be taken that way so some things could be harmful without us thinking of it right so some examples are don't worry everything will be all right that might not help in that situation we could flip it to you're not alone in this I'm here for you right or what do you need what can I do this is nothing cheer up okay maybe try validating what they are feeling I'm so sorry you're feeling this bad we can get through this together what can I do another one is you're too young to have problems I've heard that one a bunch um this is difficult stage in your life and feeling overwhelmed is okay because this is a very difficult stage in their life and a quick thought yes I would love to be in fifth grade again I had no issues right I did have issues but for that stage of my life right so as we grow up and as we go from stage to Stage there are problems in each stage so diminishing what they're feeling or kind of just wiping away their problems it's not going to help so you're probably thinking as a parent right why would I even let my child use social media if there's all these risks and you know we all like we talked about suicide right we've all heard about the young person who died by suicide because of cyberbullying or because of the influence of social media but social media is a part of our Lives it's part of our teens lives and it's going to continue be right so it's about how do we connect with the teen in our lives um have honest conversations with them and um do our best to make sure that they are using social media in healthy ways um so the Surgeon General advises restrict restricting social media use for youth under 13 years old you know there's no real uh Silver Bullet here of when your um your child should start using social media but um but like doing starting with supervised use I actually had a colleague who told me the way that she introduced her um child to social media was when she was 14 she set up an Instagram account for their dog that she shared with her her um her daughter and it was a very wholesome way to introduce her to social media and kind of supervised her social media use you know her pictures weren't on there she knew exact who she was interacting with and we know eventually that our te is going to be using social media un social media unsupervised right we can't we can't have eyes on them at all times we can't um you know completely monitor who they interact with and things like that so it's about setting them up for Success being honest about social media use and I I thought that that was kind of cute that she like set up a Instagram for her dog and that's how she kind of like guided her daughter's um introduction to social media um and yeah a suggestion to start with 30 minutes of um supervised use per day um so we really don't want to demonize social media because like I said it's part of our world it has a lot of great benefits we're able to connect with people we may have never connected before if it wasn't for social media and the internet so the answer is not to totally stop using social media or have our teens stop using social media it's um it's it's rather to be aware of the impact it has on us and um how we can be mindful in our social media use so you've probably heard some of these tips and tricks before and I know they sound a bit and you might think that stuff doesn't work but I promise you if you do incorporate these um mindfulness tips and tricks when it comes to social media and encourage the teen in your life to um to use them if you are are very intentional about it you will see um positive impact on your social media use so you know finding balance taking intentional breaks so maybe that means you know logging out of your Instagram account or encouraging a young person in your life to log out of their Instagram account for a week or two at a time um creating free uh screen free time eliminating negativity is a big one there's so much negativity on social media so unfollowing those negative accounts or those people who are posting hurtful things and following accounts and interacting with people that spread positivity and have a positive message um and then you know using timer or limits your team might not like that but it's an effective way to kind of have a balance of I'm allowing you to do social media but there's there's some guidelines around it and Meg's gonna go through some more for you yeah so like David said I think it's really important um to set a good example right for the Youth in your life if you are practicing these tips and tricks it will help you it will benefit you and it will also benefit them so some more tips and tricks update the privacy settings so I know on a lot of apps and uh websites nowadays there is some content that you could block there's some users that you could block or anything like that so that's really just you know being nitpicky about what you're allowing um your youth to see what you're allowing yourself to see things like that encourage your child talk to talk to a trusted adult right it doesn't have to be you right I'm sure all parents want to be that trusted adult I hope they trust you and feel comfortable with you right but as long as they have a trusted adult or a trusted someone who can give them that support give them that help or that uh ear to listen for them is very very important encourage your child to talk to friends I think there should be a balance between talking to a trusted adult and talking to your friends a lot of times kids will say oh I talked to my friends about it okay um maybe we need an adult perspective or somebody who's been through something like this before right but it is important we want uh the youth to discuss things with their friends so they could relate to them a little bit more and encourage your child to adopt a self-care strategies right show them what it it what it means to truly unplug to truly disconnect right or to have um no screen time right what are you doing when you're not on your phone what are you doing when you're not on social media it's important now when rules are broken I like to start this off by saying you are the parent you make the rules you run the household right we are not here to tell you how to parent your own child now some suggestions if rules are broken right if they're talking to somebody they're not supposed to be talking to if they're on their phone or social media for longer than their allotted screen time some things could be limit access but make it a conversation with your child don't just snatch their phone away right A lot of times the phone is their only connection to their friends right or they could be friends with somebody who lives in a different state or who moved away who goes to a different school right so snatching away their phone doesn't give them that trusted friend or a trusted adult if it's their aunt or something right so they you can't just rip it away without explaining like hey you know you stepped over this boundary that we kind of agreed on I'm going to take take it away for a little bit right and then communicate the length of time for the restriction and how they could earn it back right explain what they did how it made you feel right why it probably wasn't the best decision to make hey I'm going to take it away for a couple hours why don't you go regroup right spend some time doing a hobby or something like that and then maybe if you do the dishes you can get it back right and it's always a benefit for the parents prohibit high-risk apps for example Snapchat and Tik Tok so there are tons of apps right and cyber bullying or um explicit content or anything like that can be found on all of these apps and that's not to scare you but it's just to bring it to your awareness right so do your own research right look into the apps that your youth is using that your youth is talking about and if you don't like something you can make a deal with them like hey you could have social media but I would feelit a bit more comfortable if you weren't on Tik Tok or if you weren't on Snapchat or if you are you know maybe can monitor it a little bit closer and then use protection apps this one some parents love it some parents think it's overstepping privacy but again you're the parent you get to make your own choice okay so an example of this is canopy um this app actually allows you to you have an account you could log on you could see what apps are downloaded on your youth's phone right you could restrict apps so you could block Snapchat so even if they try to download it it won't download on their phone okay or or if somebody sends your child explicit content you could be notified of that you could adjust the privacy settings and the alert settings things like that now active listening we've been talking a lot about having the conversation with your child it's very important to have the conversation right so you could see where they're coming from they could see where you're coming from now active listening is when you are being fully present right your body language your eye contact you're not sitting there on your phone you're not watching TV you're not doing the dishes while also listening to them right I'm sure that you guys want them to be fully present fully listening when you tell them hey I need you to do XYZ so active listening is important on both sides giving your child full attention leave enough time for that conversation right don't make it a five minute ride to practice like hey talk to me about this I'm listening right and then they get to practice and they have to get out and they have to go or you are leaving for work in the morning and they try to sit and talk to you and you don't have enough time so it's very important to set aside that time listen without judging or jumping to conclusions trying to stay calm those things could be very difficult very difficult when talking about social media mental health right you might hear some things that you are not too fond of or some things that might scare you but it's important to stay calm right it gives them that space it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable to open up about what they're truly feeling what they're truly experiencing the last one that I'm going to talk about is boundaries and limitations again I will stress this you are the parent you make the rules right you run your household okay now developing a balance between your boundaries and expectations while respecting your child's privacy right it's very important that you are monitoring their safety but also respecting their privacy and it's a very fine line to walk and a lot of people will agree on something things disagree on some things but that's where your own judgment comes in now the the question is to follow or to not follow so something we like to suggest is if your youth is using social media and you would one way to monitor them is to follow their accounts right or be friends with them on their accounts you could see without going on their phone you could see what they're posting what they're liking what they're reposting kind of what they're engaging in so it's just another way to monitor their safety and what they are uh joining in and I just also want to add in you know when I was in high school I did not let my parents follow me on social media and it wasn't because I was hiding anything it's just because my mom always wanted to comment she always wanted to you know post pictures and all and you know when you're a teen as much as we love our parents we're embarrassed of everything you do so just be aware of that that right if if your child does not want you to follow them on social media it might not be that they're they're not high they might not be hiding anything it's just they're embarrassed of everything you do unfortunately and then when they're in their 20s they'll realize you're cool and want to hang out with you again um so just be aware of that um and it might be a conversation of all right can I follow you but I won't comment or post anything or anything like that so that's that's a good little tip to think about so we came up with some fun little ideas of how you can actually like use social media H to connect with your child this is you know they they are they are so in you know social media is just part of their development right so we have to use it as parents as a tool to connect with them sometimes right that might be the only way that you can connect sometimes so like the the idea of you know asking your child or teen what the the funniest or coolest post they saw was for the day right and then maybe you could share with them your horny post that you thought was funny and that's just a little moment that you can connect you know using social media um fun rules during family game night um you can make up any right it can be uh you know you're playing Monopoly and the first one to check their phone gets you know gets their their little hotel taken away or they lose board what is it Boardwalk is the best the best area they lose Boardwalk or something like that um I like this one a lot encourage um your child to be an upstander against cyber bullying so I know you know I see some of the people that I follow on Instagram that are just you know sometimes you'll see in the comments people just being really mean to them and maybe just comment you're doing great I'm so proud of you right add some positivity out there on social media even if it's just one little comment you know that can make a big difference for someone um least uh least amount of screen time for the week wins this would be funny to see if some um teens beat their parents in this right wouldn't that be a a funny uh flip of the script so yeah you could do that right that'd be a fun little challenge you could do and you know you could say if you you know amongst your family whoever has the least screen time by Friday they get to choose what we have for dinner you know little things like that um actually I think they send the notification on Sunday for screen time so it might be Sunday dinner not Friday dinner um share positive and inspiring posts right you can send your favorite posts to your child they then that might initiate them hey Dad you know Mom Dad here's some funny posts um or Aunt uncle that that I found interesting or funny and you might find them interesting and funny too um and then yeah create family challenges so that kind of goes into like least amount of screen time or maybe who can go the longest without um you know logging into their Instagram or something like that those are fun little challenges it doesn't mean listen if your teen holds out for years and doesn't check Instagram good I mean that probably won't happen but hey maybe it leads to them not going on Instagram for two days days right and that's a victory so these are just some fun little little challenges you can do to incorporate um you know social media use and things like that um another thing is just there's so much positivity out there on social media too and really amazing Stories and things like that so engage with that part of social media encourage your team to engage with that aspect of social media and avoid the um negative things that are on social media and all those kinds of things so yeah fill your feed with positivity um I like the one the the dogs emergency responder dogs and that's all we have for you tonight um we have some amazing resources here this one pager um has a ton of you know crisis numbers and we actually have physical copies here that I'll leave here so if you wanted to come grab some they'll be here um I'll leave them with with Jenny so any parents are interested she'll have them um for you just you know to access and um yeah anything you wanted to end with Megan that's it all right thank you all so much that's all we have for you there's our contact info thank you