(bright piano music) - It's time to change the conversation about mental health.

- When you know something is wrong.

- When you feel alone.

- When you can't explain what hurts.

- When every day is a struggle.

- And you can't ask for help.

- When your friend or family member seems fine on the outside.

- But hurts on the inside.

- Sometimes I feel as though I'm the only one that feels, but I know that's not true.

- We can change.

- We can change.

- We can change.

- We can change.

- We can make a difference.

- There's power in our difference.

- We can support each other.

- We can fight stigma.

- We say it's okay.

- It's okay.

- It's okay to have a mental health condition.

- We all want to feel heard.

- To find hope.

- And to live in a world without stigma.

- Without discrimination.

- And we are a force to be reckoned with.

- I am not what happened to me.

- I am how I overcame it.

- Stand with us.

- Stand with us.

- End discrimination in mental health.

- You can see the person, not the condition.

- Not the condition.

- You can build understanding.

- You can play your part.

- The conversation changes with me.

- With me.

- With me.

- With me.

- With me.

- We are well beings.

- We are all well beings.

- We are all well beings.

(bright music fades) - Welcome to Wyoming PBS.

We're broadcasting live at the Central Wyoming Boys and Girls Club in Casper as part of a national Well Beings tour on youth mental health, a program that has been created by WETA, that's the primary PBS station in Washington, D.C., along with national sponsors and partners.

Thanks to all of those who are supporting us locally and nationally here this evening, for helping us shine a light on youth mental health right here in Wyoming.

This is a very important issue.

We'll begin this evening with one of our supporters and PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Lab reporters and alumni who are with us to share more about the Well Beings campaign and its mission to demystify and de-stigmatize our physical and mental health through storytelling.

(calm electronic music) - WETA with a coalition of partners welcomes you to the Well Beings Youth Mental Health Project.

- Hi, I'm Bill Pullman, and I'm honored to be with you as we launch this national campaign from Public Media.

Well Beings is a groundbreaking project at a very important point in time.

Mental illness disproportionately affects our young people and the most disadvantaged populations among us.

The growing mental health movement has set the stage for dramatic change to raise awareness, to reduce stigma, to focus on prevention and early intervention, and the promise of more research for new treatments.

Together we can bring mental illness and discrimination out of the shadows, and it's not a day too soon.

So thank you for being here today.

(bright instrumental music) - Welcome to the Well Beings Tour Wyoming.

As part of the national Well Beings Tour, today's Wyoming PBS event will discuss both the negative and positive impacts of social media on youth mental health.

Experts as well as youth will share experiences and resources to help navigate the complex digital world of social media.

Well Beings along with Public Media will produce a wide variety of content through the multi-year campaign.

Here's some of my fellow PBS NewsHour student reporters from around the country to tell you more about it.

- The signature documentary series in the Well Beings campaign, as Ken Burns presents, "Hiding in Plain Sight, Our Mental Health Crisis."

Produced and directed by Ewers Brothers Productions, and written by David Blistein, the film will explore through lived experiences of the youth mental health crisis in our country.

Currently in production, this four-hour documentary is slated to air on PBS station in spring of 2022.

- wellbeings.org and #WellBeings will be adding new content every week, including: - "Brave Teens," additional feature length documentary that offers a candid portrait of the lives teens who have decided it's time to talk about their mental health challenges to support one another and to end stigma.

- "Out of the Dark," a short form digital series, that profiles the stories of three young people who face the greatest mental health challenge of their lives and found strength they never knew they had.

"Little Actions Make A Big Difference."

A new animated series shares easy-to-use, science-based tools, actions and tactics to support your social-emotional health and wellbeing.

And "Tell My Story."

A digital documentary in which a grieving father seeks answers after his 14-year-old son dies by suicide.

Ken covers painful truths about the lives of teens, the impact of social media, and the shocking rise of depression among America's youth.

PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs engaged high school journalism students as correspondents that report in youth mental health, who are in more than 150 high schools across 46 states.

- The Well Beings campaign addresses critical health needs in America through broadcast content, original digital content and impactful local events.

The campaign begins with youth mental health project, engaging youth voices to create a national conversation, raise awareness, address stigma and discrimination, and encouraged compassion.

Tonight, we will work to create awareness on the negative impact of social media and the positive impacts of social media, and how our social media, cyber bullying, and other issues in our environment can seriously impact the mental health of our youth right here in Wyoming.

We will discuss the challenges of navigating the world of social media, and we'll provide helpful Wyoming resources to students, their parents and friends.

We hope to broaden the discussion that youth mental health issues are important, deserve to be discussed, and can be a life-changing challenge for youth and their families right here in our state.

I'm Craig Blumenshine from Wyoming PBS, and I'll be your moderator this evening.

We have a well-rounded panel to help us understand more about the positive and negative impacts of social media on youth.

And most importantly, what all of us, students, parents, family members, friends and others can do to help minimize the negative impacts of social media and also the stigma around seeking care for mental health issues.

I wanna introduce our panel now.

Scilla Andreen is joining us via Zoom this evening, and she's an award-winning producer, director, Emmy-nominated costume designer, author, CEO and co-founder of IndieFlix and founder of IndieFlix Foundation.

Scilla welcome, and thank you for joining us this evening.

- Thank you for having me.

- Dr. Dan Cossaboon is a neurologist and school psychologist at Cody High School, he has been practicing with within the school setting for over the past nine years.

Dan, welcome.

Manny Fardella, to my left, is currently the president of the Wyoming School Resource Officers Association, and has been in law enforcement since 2001.

Welcome, Manny.

And Millie Peck.

Millie is currently an English and psychology double major at Grinnell College, and was born and raised in Jackson, Wyoming.

As someone who has suffered from the effects of mental illness from a young age, Millie has been vocal about and participated in different forums to de-stigmatize mental illness and prioritize mental health.

If you're interested in more detailed bios of our panelists this evening, you can review those by visiting wellbeings.org/Wyoming PBS.

And a quick note to our viewers.

We would love to hear from you this evening.

You can email us your questions right now, to wellbeings@Wyoming PBS.org.

Also, we ask that you later take a survey at wellbeings.org/Wyoming PBS, as to your insights on tonight's program, to help us craft future Well Being events.

I've asked our panelists to provide opening statements this evening as we get rolling.

So if our panelists are ready, we'd like to hear from you.

And I wanna ask each of you, what do you feel is the most important message that youth should consider throughout this evening as we talk about youth, social media, and mental health?

Dan, I'll start with you.

- (clears throat) First of all, Craig, thanks for the opportunity for letting me be here and speak about this really important topic.

Because our youth truly are deserving, and the issue of mental health is really important, especially in this time, post COVID.

And what I would want people to walk away with or hear the message tonight is really to remove the stigma of mental health issues.

I've been in Cody for 15 years, Cody, Wyoming.

And one thing that I really have learned is that there really is a mentality or a culture in Wyoming that we are independent.

And there are good sides to that, and there are some challenges to that specifically with mental health.

And what I've spent my career here trying to do is really try and get kids and people in general in Wyoming, to understand that with mental health, we need to treat these more like we would any physical health issue that we might have.

Say, for instance, if we have diabetes, if someone had diabetes, there's no stigma there.

We go to the doctor, we get the treatment that's necessary.

And if that person really wants to work hard and improve that situation, lo and behold, they get better.

And it is no different.

I'm not sure why we treat mental health differently, we should not.

And that's really what I would really want people to hear is that there is no difference.

And we need to remove that stigma and start talking about these things openly and honestly, because the fact of the matter is if you want help and you seek it, you have a very, very high likelihood of getting better.

And that's what people need to hear.

- Millie, what's your take?

What do you really hope folks take away from tonight?

- Yeah, I think Dan put it really well.

I think it's time to end the stigma.

You know, I've been dealing with mental illness, I was anxious from the time I can remember.

I started going to therapy when I was 12 years old.

And I think that for me, what it boils down to, I think, especially when it comes to social media, is most of my depression, my anxiety, my eating disorder, they've all really resulted from a sense of feeling worthless, from not feeling good enough.

And no matter how many times people tell me, you are who you are, I don't feel that way no matter what do I accomplish, no matter what I set my mind to, I think this next thing will make me feel better.

And I think social media for me, has been something that I decided to remove from my life because I was ultimately able, fortunate enough, to have been to enough therapy to be able to realize how it really made me feel.

And I think that I realized that every time I put the phone down, I felt worse.

And it degraded me slowly but surely, (chuckles) and I think that what a lot of adults don't understand is that how addictive it is and how there is peer pressure.

Like you feel like you have to have it to be a part of the conversation, you feel like you have to have it to be socially relevant.

You feel like you have to have it to be happy, which is ironic, because I think it's what's making so many youth unhappy.

- Thank you, Millie.

Scilla, you're visiting with us from the West Coast tonight.

Thanks for joining us via Zoom.

What are you hoping people take away this evening?

- I think technology is here to stay.

So we have to really understand what's going on, understanding the addictive design, and to learn the ways that we can be in charge of our phones to disrupt our patterns, to discover.

I personally like really fun tools to disrupt my own habits, and to figure out, gamify ways to create healthier habits.

I think ultimately at the end of the day, it's important to find balance.

- Thank you, Scilla.

Manny, how about you?

You deal with this as a school resource officer, multiple times likely on a daily basis.

- Yeah, I think when you look at, let's say over the last 20 years, it's no doubt that social media and mental health are going hand in hand.

And I think it's really important for people to understand that there is help.

The days of ignoring this illness are gone.

And we have to come together, collaborate stakeholders of all avenues to address this issue.

Having worked in the schools for the last 10 years, I see it more in the school setting.

And sadly, it's amazing how many people are embarrassed to address this issue, and there's nothing to be ashamed about.

It's important that our students, adults, everybody knows that there are resources to go to, and where to get those resources.

And I hope that tonight that we can walk away with a better understanding of what those resources are, understanding that mental health just doesn't happen, it can happen over a period of time.

A lot of mental health stems from adverse childhood experiences, where students are experiencing things in their lives from a very young age and it just follows them.

And sometimes time passes before they can understand that, hey, there's a problem I need help.

And where can I get that help?

And we as a society need to make sure that we're ready to address that, and to provide these services to our students, our adults, so that we can have a healthier society, a healthy Wyoming and a healthy America.

- Thank you, Manny.

I'll ask you and Dan a little bit later on whether you believe those resources truly are available in Wyoming, and I'll look forward to your answers.

We will be showing throughout the evening what we call roll-ins during our broadcast, and we hope that those add to the discussion.

Our first is with McKenna Kail, a student from the University of Wyoming.

Time-suck, think about that for just a moment, how much time is literally sucked away from you because of social media?

As we'll see, it impacted McKenna in a big way.

- Hi, my name is McKenna Kail.

I'm a sophomore at the University of Wyoming, and I wanna talk about social media, and the issues that my friend and I have run into with social media, and how I'm trying to stay off of it now.

It wasn't until college that I realized that my biggest issue was with time sucks.

I would spend two, three and four hours on social media.

I realized that I didn't have to obey anyone's rules for phone usage, so I would use it all day every day.

And this really cut into my study time, time with friends, and I found that I was isolating myself when I really didn't have to.

I finally went out and met a friend, and we were talking about social media.

And she mentioned to me that she had had a lot of the same issues with time sucks, as well as body positivity issues and depression and anxiety.

And she said what she liked to do was take hiatuses from social media.

So what I started to do was really just spend time not on my phone.

I would put my phone across the room, I would leave it at home and go on drives with my friends, and it really helped me limit my time on social media.

As for what I did on my phone, once I was more comfortable with not spending more time on social media, of course, I put limits on my time-suck apps.

So I would limit TikTok to say an hour a day, and then shorten it down to 45 minutes, 30 minutes, and eventually I was not on TikTok at all so I just deleted it.

And I find that this is a good way to manage social media usage, it's just to set limits.

Your phone will do it, (chuckles) so I have put a limit on my Instagram, my Snapchat, my TikTok, and I've also put a limit on my entire phone.

There are hours during the day where my phone just completely shuts off, and I am trying to abide by those limits.

And I find that I'm much more happier, more productive, I spend more time with my family and my friends, and really I'm just in a happier place.

- She does talk about time-suck.

And she also brings up another topic that I think is very important.

And Millie, let me start with you.

She kind of talks about this fear of missing out, that we're so worried that we're gonna miss out on something that we can't put away the phone, what do you think about that?

- Yeah.

I think it kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier, where there is that peer pressure, that sort of whatever.

And I think that it's like so much is happening on social media and it's not even like, it's about like how we portray ourselves on social media too.

Like, I mean, I have so many friends that do things just so they can post about it, or trying to be aesthetic or trying to be this, try be that.

And I think that it is like this fear that if we can't present ourselves that way, but I think what social media does the most is give us that huge sense.

I think that like missing out on things is a part of life, like we're not gonna get invited to every event.

We're not gonna do everything.

And normally, that's fine, but instead when you have to sit at home and watch your friends hang out without you, or this thing go on without you, or as I was describing earlier, I can remember back when I had Instagram, I had two friends, we're kind of a trio, and I would count on the Instagram, how many photos does she have with her?

How many photos she had with me?

And it really is this like this feeling of never enough, when you are on Instagram all the time, or, I mean, I say Instagram, it can be Facebook, it can be Twitter, TikTok is huge right now.

It is weird, I mean, I don't have TikTok, and my friends will have entire conversations I don't understand.

And it does make me feel bad sometimes that I'm not socially relevant, I'm not able to contribute to the conversation.

And I think that it's a huge part of the social conversation right now, and I think that it is hard for I think some of the older generations to acknowledge that or realize or understand.

- Scilla I wanna visit with you now.

You are an expert, you are a nationwide expert in social media.

What are your thoughts on this thing of time-suck and fear of missing out?

How should people put this in perspective?

- Well, I actually I directed a film called "Like," which is a documentary about the impact of social media on our lives and the role that technology plays.

We actually addressed FOMO, and also we kind of flip it on its head, so we've already discussed FOMO, and we introduced JOMO, which is the joy of missing out.

Which makes you so present, and it really helps you to center you, and change the brain so you're not really focused on all the things you're missing out.

I think the other thing I learned in making this film is Moment, a company called Moment did a study, and discovered apps that can fill you with regret or apps that don't.

Apps that can fill you with regret are oftentimes social media, gaming, that kind of thing, but the key is don't go over 20 minutes.

There was something about a sweet spot of 20 minutes.

And so if you can create again, balance in your life, and only spend 20 minutes on social media two or three times a day, you're spending an hour at the most in a 24-hour period.

And that immediately is kind of hacking how much you're on social media.

Now, if you're on email, weather apps, meditation apps, music, maps, things like that, that won't fill you with regret.

It's actually, some of them are productive and can make you feel good.

So I think it's really learning where we have power, where we have control.

I was terrible at dismissing my times when they'd say, you're at your limit, you've got to turn it off.

And I was like, skip it.

It was too easy to pass over it.

So I think having that 20-minute idea in your head is a great way to start.

- Dan you see students every day that only 20 minutes, they would be fearful of that.

- That's true.

(clears throat) I really love the idea of balance, because by the time they're coming to see me, things are way out of balance.

And so with the fear of missing out, we have anxiety, Millie and I were talking earlier about the effect that the social media has, and where you're constantly barraged, hours a day of feeling empty, not living up to things, not being good enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, not having the right boyfriend, whatever.

And that's what sucking your time, right?

And so I work with kids constantly who are chasing that, chasing that, chasing that, and constantly feeling like they're missing the mark.

And so that fear of missing out is a very real struggle.

Talk about sucking up time, I mean, it sucks up time from the classroom, it sucks up time from your self esteem and how good you feel about yourself, and leaves you feeling deflated and not living up.

One of the big things that I see is sleep with kids.

They are on their phones all night long, and then now they're sleep deprived, now they're in a classroom and having to learn, and their brains just are not ready to do that because they haven't slept all night, or went to bed at one or two o'clock in the morning, got up at six because they were texting or whatever, were on a social media app, fear of missing out.

And then now their problems are compounded.

So now they're failing their grades, or they're anxious, they're depressed, they're sleep-deprived, and it becomes a clinical issue at that point.

- Do we have best practices or best advice?

You not only visit with students, I assume, but also parents on how to have that conversation about balance that can really help?

- Yeah.

You know, I think balance, it varies.

In my time, and spending time with students, parents, different households have different types of rules.

And so we have to figure out, okay, what is balance?

For some kids balance may be an hour, other kids they don't have balance so there's no time limit, or they can be on it for as long as they want.

But I really think that our kids, our teenagers, their brains are developing by the time they hit their teenage years.

And actually this social media issue that we're talking about they start in an elementary school.

It's, you know, kids who are in third or fourth grade now have these electronic devices, so now we're looking at younger years, But I think we really have to look at finding a way for our kids to understand what a balance is.

Our brains are being wired, especially in the adolescent years, and so when the frontal lobe of that brain, the front part of the brain is the last part developed.

Our kids are working off of the feeling part of the brain, just above the amygdala area, which develops first in the brain.

And so when they go off of the feeling, and they see the likes and they see the comments being made, or they're being left out, and they're feeling depressed because they're excluded or problems and conflict, and these are skills in life that they struggle.

Kids today really do struggle with at times, they're going off a feeling.

And so we as adults, parents, we have to teach what balance is collectively.

Let me just jump in right there.

And anyone on the panel, you too Scilla, if you have advice.

If I'm a parent, and I know that my child spends too much time, it's obvious, but I don't know what to do about it.

What can they say to their child tonight, or this week, Dan?

- When I work with parents, first of all, I think you have to have a role model in the home.

We ourselves can't- - So what you're suggesting is parents need take a look at themselves first?

- We have to model the same behaviors.

Yes, we as parents.

Yeah, we have to look at ourselves first, and it's the same as if I'm abusing drugs or alcohol, and I'm doing it, but I'm telling my child not to, that's not gonna be very effective, is it?

And it makes perfect sense in that scenario.

And it makes perfect sense in this scenario in terms of using social media, and their family finding that balance.

'Cause Manny's right, each family is gonna be a little bit different.

Each family is going to have to communicate about what that sense of balance is.

So that's the first thing, is you have to look at yourself.

And then the second thing is you do have to be a parent, because, and Millie might be able to speak to this, but when an adolescent is in the froze of that, they, at least in my experience, when it's that much of a problem, they're not voluntarily saying, "Oh, you're right mom and dad, "I'm gonna just go to 20 minutes."

It's usually not that simple.

And so, is it Ronald Reagan that said, "Trust but verify."

Right?

So you're going to verify, you're gonna communicate with your child.

You're gonna set those boundaries, you're gonna be an example, and you're going to stick to that expectation.

- Millie or Scilla do you have anything to add there?

- Well, I'm a fan of, I have six kids and they're all on social media, and in fact some of them are in my film.

And I think it's really important, like Dan said, we've gotta be great role models as parents.

And I'm a fan of including your child in the conversation, and having them be like, have some equal say.

Like let's acknowledge that we're all, it's part of our nervous system.

Like we freak out if we don't know where our phone is, 'cause we use it for transportation, and ordering food, and just communicating and doing homework and working.

So let's as a family, come up with a plan that we can at least kick it off and start with.

Yes, don't have it at dinner, don't have it in the bedroom at night, charge it outside the bedroom, come up with some easy rules that we can all be successful.

And then we can add to it.

And as Dr. Dimitri Christakis says in our film, it's really hard to monitor how much time you're online, but monitoring how much time you're offline is a lot more measurable.

And that is, he says to shoot for three hours in a 24-hour period, not three hours in a row, but three hours where you're not on a screen.

And maybe that's cooking, maybe that's eating, walking the dog, meditating, playing an instrument, there's so many, reading a book, like there's so many other things, writing.

There's so many other things you can do.

And just cobble together eventually three hours a day.

- Millie do you have anything to add on best practices for parents?

- Yeah.

I think that having the kid be a part of the conversation is absolutely crucial, because I think as McKenna Kail in the video hit on, even if you implement, I mean, I had rules in my house, no phone in your bedroom, phone has to be plugged in at night, all of these regulations, but the reality is these kids leave the house as adolescents, still as youth.

And a lot of people's mental health declines that first year of college, which I think it really compacts, and I think that they have to be a part of the conversation because they have to understand why they don't wanna use social media.

And I think guys talked about earlier, having conversation with your kid about like, maybe instead of saying, you know, you can't have your phone here or there, after they have their phone asking your kid, "How do you feel now?"

Like, how do you feel after being on your phone?

Because I think for me, I think like, dealing with many of my diagnoses, I think about my eating disorder, right?

And how I dealt with my eating disorder for years, I just went back to treatment this winter, and it took me wanting to recover for me to be able to recover.

It didn't matter how many statistics I heard, it didn't matter what I knew what I was doing in my body, all these things, I wasn't gonna be able to recover until I wanted to.

And I think it's the same thing with social media use, is kids aren't gonna do what they need to do until they want it for themselves.

And so I think if parents can help them to figure that out and be supportive of that, because if you say you can't be on your phone, the first thing you're gonna do is get pissed off, and then want to be on their phone.

It's like, I do the same thing.

It's like my mom tells me to do something, I don't wanna do it immediately.

I don't know why, but yeah.

So I think in involving them in that conversation, helping them figure out like what it's doing to them, how it's making them feel.

- Great advice from everyone.

We wanna continue on with one of our roll-ins One of our local PBS News Hour student reporters had the opportunity to speak about technology and mental health with Dr. Steven Schueller, executive director One Mind PsyberGuide, and associate professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Here is part of their conversation.

- I'm Tashi Mathuin, and I'm a student reporter for PBS Student Reporting Labs.

Today, I'm here with Dr. Steven Schueller, executive director at One Mind PsyberGuide, and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine.

What is One Mind PsyberGuide and what does it aim to do?

- Sure!

So One Mind PsyberGuide is a little bit like a wire cutter or consumer reports of digital mental health products, or mostly, mental health apps.

So there are a lot of mental health apps that are out there.

If you go to the Google Play Store or the Apple Store and you type in depression, anxiety, you'll get a lot of information back at you.

And it's really hard to separate the good apps from the bad apps.

And so what we do at One Mind PsyberGuide is we identify, evaluate, and we disseminate information about these products to help people make informed decisions.

To help decide if this is an app that you want to entrust your mental health to, and download on your phone and use.

So we try to help provide some guidance in this wild west that's out there of these digital mental health products.

- In your studies, between the intersection of mental health and technology, have you seen an impact on the youth mental health?

- Yeah, I think that's a really great question, Tashi, and I definitely think if you read the news, then your perception might be that social media is having a really negative impact on youth and adolescent mental health.

I see a lot of new stories talking about its contribution to rising rates of depression and anxiety for example.

When you look at the research though, what it generally shows is that on average, social media has a very small impact on the mental health of youth and adolescents.

Now, I think the important thing to note there is that that's on average, and what we also learned when you really dig into the data, is that some people seem to be helped by social media.

They might find good opportunities to connect with other people, to find content that's uplifting or helpful to them.

Some people are harmed, they find it distressing, they find themselves comparing themselves to other people, and to most people it has sort of a small impact.

And so those averages really hide the fact that there are some people that it's having sort of a positive or a negative impact on their mental health.

- Do you have suggestions for youth on habits that they can using social media to impact their wellbeing more positively?

- Yeah, I think that there's, I mean, some things like we talked about as you noted, I think being open to taking breaks, or to setting limits in terms of when you use social media.

Some maybe have set periods of time during the day, so I'll go online and manage my social media for like 30 minutes when I come home from school, or right after dinner I'll send some updates or update my content for my friends.

So I think that's one aspect, it's setting limits.

I think also thinking about what you're doing on social media.

I think one thing that we hear a lot, especially from youth is that, it's really a useful medium to connect with people that they really care about.

So spending more time focusing on your good friends rather than your acquaintances.

Everyone looks good on the highlights.

If you show your best moments in your life, it's gonna look positive, and you can't compare yourself your whole life to only another person's highlights, only their best moments.

And so I think if you're spending time on social media in that social comparison, I think that's somewhat challenging, and so I think really allowing oneself some self-compassion when they're engaged in social media.

I think the last tip I would give is curating of social media so that it's content that is uplifting for you.

There might be specific content that might be triggering, or might really play off some of the mental health challenges that you face.

And you don't have to expose yourself to that content.

You can choose to kind of curate your social media, and follow people who really provide that sort of uplifting content, friends, empowering posts, and really using that content sort of appropriately.

And I think one thing that we hear from some youth about the ways that social media can be really useful for them, is they build a social media account that really is empowering and uplifting, so that when they're having those negative stressful moments in their life, they can go to that social media and find some strength and find some support.

So I think limiting time, curating the different content you see on social media, and really providing oneself some self-compassion when using social media are three really good things that you can do to really maximize those positive benefits and minimize those negative impacts.

- Thank you so much for being here with us today, Dr. Schueller, we really appreciate it.

- I'm noticing some common themes here this evening about maybe trying to limit ourselves and trying to maybe get a little more critical on how we're using social media.

But a question I wonder that I wanna explore a little further, is he talks about reaching out to friends or reaching out to acquaintances, yet all of those are in our social media world.

How as parents can we help our students kind of center on the friends part?

Dan, let me start with you there.

- Sure, well, I think a lot of important things have already been said, in terms of including the student or the son or your daughter in that conversation, and like Millie said, you're trying to guide them where they come to their own conclusion about making decisions about how to use that social media responsibly.

That's the best result, right?

And so as parents being open to it, and having those conversations, and having habits and routines that are healthy for us, simple things like not having it at the dinner table, let's put our phones down and actually talk about these things, and start asking those questions and having conversations, and really, truly understanding, well, what did your child just deal with today?

Or what did they see, what was said to them?

And having them open up about those things, I think is one of the best things that we can do as parents.

- Scilla, I have had the opportunity to see your film.

And one of the things that was very interesting to me, is a reminder that social media companies haven't really designed their platforms in my best interest.

They have designed platforms to make money, to be addictive, and they're wildly successful at doing that.

Can you expound upon that?

I don't think people realize that.

- Well, their evaluation is based on time on site, so they don't care if you're going to sleep or going to school or working, or even getting up to go to the bathroom or hydrating.

It's really just, you're a number, you know, we're called users, we're not called customers.

We're a number.

And they call it programming, and they are designing to addict.

And so we have to understand we're the product.

We're part of the product, which is, but we are their creators, right?

We have power.

So we can choose to put our phones down, we can choose to step back, we can choose to have balance, we can choose to, as it was said earlier, which I love that by the way, is curating.

Curating positivity, curating people you like to follow, people who uplift you, just as you would curate what you're gonna read, what you're gonna watch on TV, or what movie, you're gonna curate what friends you wanna hang out with.

Like we have choices in life.

And I think sometimes we forget we have choices in social media, and how we use technology as well.

- Manny, I'm guessing that you become involved with teens and social media after trouble has bubbled to the surface.

Maybe people have been cyber bullied, explore that with us a little bit more on what you see and what problems through your eyes you have to deal with as a school resource officer right here in Wyoming.

- I think one of the important aspects of my job as a school resource officer, and any school resource officer is to build relationships of trust with our students.

That is one of the biggest responsibilities we have, and there's so many ways you can do that in a school setting.

And that helps in ways that, when you have those relationships with our students, we hope that our students will be able to go to adults, go to their SRO in times of need, or when problems are starting to happen.

But to your question, what happens afterwards?

Yeah, I mean, there is so much that comes to the table with social media, video games, whatever, it just seems to feed the concern or the problem at times.

- Is it generally, excuse me for interrupting, generally a case that the parents are like, "I had no idea!"

Is that generally the case?

- Absolutely.

You know, and one of the things I often find with parents, and even myself as a school resource officer, listen, our kids are on social media, they're on technology constantly.

They are so advanced with the current trends of social media, and what's going on with video games and different platforms that we're behind the times.

And between now and three months from now, new products are gonna come out, new apps are gonna come out and these kids are gonna be on it just like that, and we'll be behind.

So sometimes yeah, it does make it hard.

And parents, not to necessarily through the fault of their own, they just are not aware of certain things that our kids are doing on social media.

So when situations come to light, or they find out their kids are doing things, or certain behaviors on social media, on technology, you know, a lot of our time is spent, how do we handle that, how do we address it and kind of make it be an educational moment for the student, the parent, because everything we look at in the school setting and with our children is why?

Why are they doing what they do?

And there's reasons for it, and it's getting to the bottom of that.

- And I wanna stick with this segment with you, just, we have about another minute, Manny.

How are parents learning that their kids have trouble with social media?

How is it coming to their attention?

And what should parents really be looking for?

They've got apps that can hide things, it looks like a calculator, but underneath it, it isn't, there's a lot of stuff under there.

- Yeah.

We could sit here all night and talk about what the kids do, and where do they put things.

It comes down to being informed, it really does.

I think it becomes a community effort.

One of the goals or one of the things that many resource officers do is promote social media nights.

Have parents come out, have kids come out, and talk about internet safety, and different safety with different apps, and what to look for.

And just having it be an educational opportunity, it just takes time, it really does.

- So encourage leaders to have those discussions would be the advice?

- Yeah, it really is.

- I wanna move along.

I do wanna remind our viewers that you still have an opportunity to email us your questions.

We'd love to hear from you if there are some questions that are on your mind, wellbeings@Wyoming PBS.org is that email address.

Onto our next roll-in here.

This is kind of a difficult topic.

Raven Coward-Long is a licensed clinical social worker in Cheyenne, who sees youth in Wyoming who have been impacted by social media.

In this next roll-in, she discusses sexting.

It's not an easy topic for parents and kids to discuss, but you'll hear, she says it's a bigger problem than we realize.

- One of the biggest concerns, and one of the scariest things I think for adolescents and teens with access to the internet and phones is sexting.

The fact that a child can take a photo of themselves in a compromising position, and it can be delivered to somebody else instantaneously.

And as a parent, we try to put those rules in place, and we try and make sure those things aren't happening for our children, but the truth is sexting is much more common than I think parents realize.

And it's something that will continually be in our culture if we are not aware of it, if we don't talk about it with our students, and express what our expectations are for them online, as well as what's appropriate and how that can harm them.

I don't think that an adolescent with a prefrontal cortex that's not developed yet fully grasps what they're doing when they send a photo in their underwear or a nude, and how that is child pornography, and how that can impact them and how it can easily easily get into the wrong hands.

Where they think that you're sending it to somebody they trust, and it is harmless, and it's flirtatious, but it is not.

And it can impact their future, and it can be places they would never want their photo to be in.

If you find out your child is sexting, my advice to a parent would be to check the controls that you have on the phone, what needs to happen to limit their access to that?

Maybe the phone is only allowed to be used in common areas of the home, or when they're in public places, where they don't have the ability to take such photos.

Maybe we need to switch it up and put monitoring software that can lock down certain pieces of the phone, so that they can't send those types of media messages.

A parent can even go as far as downgrading their child's phone to a phone that doesn't have a camera on it, which they still make flip phones without a camera on it.

If it is that big of a concern, a parent can go that route as well.

- Wyoming PBS, along with Well Beings has created a resource toolkit to help you or someone you care about find mental health resources, both nationally and right here in Wyoming.

This mental resource toolkit can be found at wellbeings.org/Wyoming PBS-resources.

- I wanna go right down the line.

First of all, do you agree that sexting is a much larger problem than we realize?

Dan, you're up.

- Yes, it is.

I can attest to that personally at school, it's unfortunately, a fairly common issue that we deal with on a regular basis.

- Millie, what do you think?

- Yeah, I've seen sex of girls, I don't know, that boys have showed me, and that's not okay.

And I think it's not just sexting, it's just also how social media sexualizes such young bodies too.

I mean, I just remember being shocked at seeing some seventh grade girls, the way that they were posing, and it's like, they're copying influencers and things like that.

To me, it was disturbing.

It's like, wow, like that's crazy.

But yeah, for sure, I see it a lot.

- Scilla, your take.

- Yeah, it's huge, and I think there was a study done, like within 10 minutes of being online the first time, that kids can get hit up with porn, it's hidden behind things and the minute you click on it, the algorithm starts to feed you more.

It's kind of hard to get away from it.

- Manny, what happens when you intervene in a situation like this?

And do you think it's a big deal?

- Absolutely!

You know, I think every school resource officer is going to tell you it's a problem.

And I once heard the term sex sells and that is true.

But now we have movies, we have videos, we have gaming, we have different social media apps that reach out to these students and these kids and they know how to do it.

So yeah, it does become a problem.

Now, normally, when I get involved, my biggest goal is to educate.

Because I find that in a lot of these search circumstances, our children, our youth, they're not educated on this.

They have no clue really oftentimes the outcomes that could lead to problems down the road, they're not aware of what they do.

So I like to use those opportunities to educate while holding them accountable, and then collaboratively with parents, come up with ways that we can help students overcome this.

Because this does lead to other problems down the road, which other panel members have already spoken about, and problems with after school life.

So a youth is on their phone maybe right now, and they have that urge, how can we help them understand what it is that they're thinking about?

What's our advice to them right now?

Dan.

- Well, as your social worker said, in that segment earlier, these conversations need to happen proactively, so I would say that.

But what I say to the kids personally, when we're behind closed doors and we're having very personal conversations about that, is really, how is it affecting you?

Why would you do that?

What are the risks?

What are the pros and what are the cons?

What is it doing for you?

- All my friends are doing it.

- Yeah.

What are you getting out of it?

And then having that conversation about what are the long-term implications possibly?

Because a lot of them they're doing it because they're in love, right?

Or all their friends are doing it.

And quite frankly, I feel at this point it's become part of our culture to some extent, it's a way of interacting.

And we have to really, as Manny said, educate people in terms of the long-term consequences.

Because when you send that image, it's out there, and even though you trust that person, like Millie said earlier, she's had images shown to her of other girls, but these were guys showing her these images.

And that's when people, they start to begin to pause and say, do I really wanna do this?

And you have to help them have that conversation and start thinking that through about the long-term implications of where that image might go and who might get it.

- Scilla, this is a tough topic, but it's a very real topic.

- Yeah, you know, you have to understand there's a bit of shame involved, right?

Like when it happens, it's uncomfortable.

It doesn't feel right, I think we all know it feels weird and awkward and it's hard to bring up.

I think it's so important for parents to be proactive.

I've learned from making my films, that studies have shown that kids are upset and angry with parents who didn't lean in and help teach them about what's out there.

Like they were afraid to open up the conversation and figured they deal with it when it happened.

We have to focus on the preventative side, as uncomfortable and as scary as those conversations are, it does give us an opportunity to build trust, open up the communication, be vulnerable ourselves, model that vulnerability, and point to the other things we feel when we experience this.

I think kids are so caught up in whether it's the relationship that they really wanna solidify, or they wanna be cool or they wanna be part of something.

But we also have to address the other thing that they're feeling, which is this feels wrong, this feels uncomfortable.

And they need a place to go where they can talk about it.

I think they don't bring it up sometimes, 'cause they're afraid their phone will be taken away, there'll be limits put on it, and their worst nightmares will come true, 'cause they feel like parents don't help.

But we really can't and we need to start leaning in and just doing it, we are our kids' biggest advocate.

- Don't be afraid to jump in is what you're suggesting?

- Yeah.

- We're gonna continue on with another local roll-in.

To the youth who are watching with us tonight, I'm curious, do you have more than one social media account, one that you show your parents and then one that your friends have access to?

Well, that's what Rhaelle Curry did.

And she's in fact with us here in the audience this evening, and here's her story.

- When I was 12, that's when I started making these anonymous social media accounts, mainly because my family didn't allow me to have social media.

And that's when the problem started arising, I was getting in trouble with the accounts.

You know, my family was hearing back that I had an Instagram account, a Snapchat, you know, different things like that.

And of course, like my family is big, and so we all know everyone, especially back home on the (murmurs), everyone knows everyone.

And a lot of people knew me and knew who I was.

And so it would just get relayed back to my family that I had these social media accounts, and what I was posting on those accounts and all of that.

So this is the first time I am sharing the story, not a lot of people know this about me.

So when my family, like when I started it, you know, I was getting in trouble a lot, and it was causing a lot of stress on young me.

You know, I didn't know how to manage stress or any of the mental health issues that I was going through at the time, because it also just wasn't the social media thing.

I was going through different personal problems as well.

I go to her for support all the time, and I don't know how I lived without that for so long, and that was just something that really hurt me and hurt you too, I think?

- Mm-hmm.

So the way that we manage social media this day and age with our family is we really try to create a balance with what social media app that we're using, because it can be addicting, it can take a lot of time.

- Yeah, with social media now, it's really about just what you surround yourself with, what you wanna see on your feeds and different things like that.

Like if there's something that you don't like, you take it off of your social media, and that's just something that you gotta learn to manage while being active on it.

- And I also think, I stress a lot, is your reputation and your image to my kids of what's out there, what do you want the world to see?

'Cause everything you post on your phone, on an app, on the social media platform, is going to be seen from the world.

So what kind of image do you want to put out there?

And I think through this journey and through the story of social media with our family, we've learned that, and we're continuing learning things with this day and age, and all the changes that are coming and with technology.

But we're learning as we go to that as adults, and also as young youth and teens they struggle, and their learning just as well, because it's a rapid changing world right now.

And so I think we're all learning how to manage social media in a positive light, and really focus on what we want the world to see.

- Rhaelle, thank you very much for sharing your story, we really appreciate it.

And Reinette is with us as well, and she's actually submitted a question.

And I think it's a valid question that many parents struggle with.

What's the appropriate age, the best age to start allowing your children to use social media?

What's the guide there?

And the answer can be 30, right?

(Dan laughs) Because kids are gonna use it.

When is it appropriate to start, and how should parents start with their students in using social media?

Maybe Scilla, you might be best equipped to start the discussion there.

- Sure, we asked that question actually making "Like," and it was all across the board.

It's interesting, I think it used to be like 14, 15, then it started to get younger, kids who come from a divorced home sometimes.

You give the kid a phone because then they can directly communicate with the parent.

I think what we're learning is with all these different movements in the brain science and studies, are showing that the later you get a child a phone, the better off they'll be to have a better chance of self-regulating, no guarantees, because it's even hard for grownups.

But I think, ideally 14, 15, but I think the average age is 12 to 13.

And then there's a whole kind of onboarding process with social media.

Parents should know the password, of course, as the story from Rhaelle just shared, there's Finstas and all kinds of other, the kids are smart, kids are brilliant, kids are our future.

Kids know how to get their way around, so the best thing is to have an open communication.

Again, like build trust, go through these things together, teach them about curating who their friends are gonna be online and what they're gonna look at.

And are you posting to get or are you posting to give?

Like there's a lot of thought that goes into this.

- That's an important point, posting to get our posting to give, that I've tried to remember this evening, it's come up a couple of times.

Your thoughts on appropriate age to be introduced to social media, Dan.

- For me, I agree the later the better, now, with some families, as Scilla was saying, they have to have the phone.

So at that point, that's when the parents need to start having those discussions about the sexting, as uncomfortable as that might be, and they also need to consider, well, what social media are you talking about?

Are you talking about Kik?

Are you talking about Snapchat?

Are you talking about Facebook?

What social media?

And you have to be very thoughtful about what you're giving them access to, because the bottom line is most kids do fine with it, but there's a small percentage that don't.

Whether it becomes an addictive thing or some real harm is done in terms of allowing sexual predators access to your son or daughter.

I mean, that's a reality.

And as parents are having conversations between each other or with their kids, that has to be part of the conversation before the decision is made.

So I do agree, I think later is better.

The brain science is coming back in terms of how that frontal cortex develops, and self-regulation develops, as a neuropsychologist that's very interesting to me.

And I think what we're gonna find is the neural connections to pay attention, to sustain your attention is something that's difficult and not immediately rewarding.

Those neuro connections, I theorize, are not being made, 'cause you're changing and consuming something new every minute.

- We have about 30 Seconds left in the segment, Millie or Manny, do you have anything to add about when you look back Millie or Manny in what you've seen in schools, a better age to be introduced to social media?

- The stuff I cringe about the most or the stuff that was the worst was when I was younger.

So I'm also for older, but I also know what it's like to be a 12-year-old begging for an iPhone, like I've been there so.

- Manny.

- And I'll go older too.

I mean, my son's 18 years old, he just got a phone a month ago.

My daughter is 15 she got a phone a few months ago.

It's gonna vary.

I mean, you have different kids that are at different maturity levels, but again, how can they handle it?

Is it just gonna be a family discussion that they have to be willing to have?

- We're gonna continue this discussion online, but for now, we're gonna wrap up our broadcast here on Wyoming PBS.

If you are watching online, stay right where you are.

If you're watching on television, you still have time to join our continuing discussion online at the link that is on your screen right now.

And you can still also email us questions if you would like to wellbeings@Wyoming PBS.org.

We'll be right back online.

Stay with us.

(bright instrumental music) - The We Are Well Beings Storywall is a central part of the wellbeings.org website, social media platform, and the Well Beings National Tour.

We are asking the public of all ages to submit personal reflections, videos, photos, and short stories to offer hope, to foster understanding, to build community and breakdown stigma.

- What does being well mean to you?

- What is the one thing you wish people knew about mental health?

What is your passion?

What's your story?

Video can easily be submitted via social media using the hashtag #WellBeings, or emailed to info@wellbeings.org.

- Stories can also be submitted by uploading to Dropbox and live at Well Beings tour events.

The We Are Well Being Storywall is made possible through generous support provided by Well Beings' youth mental health project founding corporate sponsor, Otsuka, and Well Beings media partner, People.

(bright music) - Thanks for staying with us online.

Again, I'm Craig Blumenshine from Wyoming PBS, and we're broadcasting from the Central Wyoming Boys and Girls Club here in Casper, with our panel here tonight, talking about social media, the good and the bad, and its impact on youth and mental health right here in Wyoming.

We're gonna continue on with the panel now for pretty much the rest of the evening.

And, Dan, I wanna start with you.

You've talked about, in the past and offline with me, about suicide prevention.

And suicide and maybe it's links to social media and other topics.

Expand on your concerns about the issue, and the issue here in Wyoming, especially for Wyoming's youth.

- Sure.

It's a very serious subject for Wyoming's youth.

In 2019, ages 15 through 24, we lost more of our youth to suicide than anything else, including car accidents and any other disease combined.

And so it's a very big deal.

It's something that I'm very passionate about, and again, I appreciate these kinds of conversations 'cause we're trying to remove the stigma, and let everyone know that there's help, there's support, there really is, and treatment truly does work if you wanna get it.

Myself and some students from Cody High School, along with Park County Suicide Prevention Coalition, and some other folks, we tried to pass legislation this year, we came close, we came very close to make suicide prevention training mandatory in Wyoming school districts, grade six through 12.

'Cause there's a thing called the Jason Flatt Act, that requires suicide prevention training for employees.

Unfortunately, it does not include suicide prevention training for our kids.

And when you look at the studies, the vast vast majority of the time, if you have a suicidal teenager, they're gonna tell a friend, not a teacher, not an SRO, not a parent, they're gonna tell their friends.

And what I'm hearing from the students at Cody High is they're saying, we're not prepared.

we don't know what to do, no one's told us how to react, how to respond.

And so it made perfect sense to us to try and make that suicide extend the Jason Flatt Act and make the suicide prevention training mandatory for students as well.

And like I said, it came close, but it was defeated in the end, we only needed four more votes.

And so we're just gonna bring that in front of the legislation pretty much every year until we get something done on that front, because we need to do something.

- I do you wanna make sure that I say right now, that help is available.

If you or anyone you know is contemplating suicide, the National Suicide Lifeline's phone number is 800-273-8255.

That's 800-273-8255.

And do not wait to call that number if this is impacting you.

- And you can also text 711 711.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Millie several times, more than once, more than twice, more than three times, you tried to delete your Instagram account and struggled.

- Yeah, I think it is that addictive piece.

I don't know what it is, it would always start with some sort of, you know, someone would mention someone and I would wanna look them up or something.

And I think I'd just like download it for a little bit, and it was really hard, like I think I first deleted my Instagram for the first time... Oh, I don't know, like my sophomore year of high school.

And I'm a sophomore in college now, and I just deactivated my account, like actually erased it this past summer.

And that's how hard it was for me.

And I think people don't understand like a term that I've used a lot in therapy is dialectical abstinence.

You know, you do your best to just stay abstinent from it, but it's really hard, and so like you just have compassion about going back.

And I think that that's what happened for me, and I do think it was one of those things where it's like, I still find myself.

You know, I've told my boyfriend, if I asked to see something on your phone, I need you to sit there and be like, ah-ah, like you can't just keep scrolling.

Like, you know, memes are okay, but as soon as I start clicking on people that's off limits.

And it is weird, it's something I don't really know where it comes from, I don't really know how to describe it, but I understand why it's so hard for so many young people to delete their accounts.

- But these companies understand, and that's why they're grabbing us.

And that's why, as Scilla said earlier, we have to take control.

Scilla, I'm gonna come to you in a minute, and offer you an opportunity to talk about maybe something we haven't covered yet tonight.

But Manny, you and I had talked earlier off camera about who bears the responsibility for our youths' mental health?

Is it a teacher?

Is it a parent?

Is it the youth him or herself?

Who bears the responsibility for our youths' mental health?

Hard question!

- Yeah, it is.

The simple answer is we all do.

It is a community effort, and it is the responsibility of teachers, all educators, school psychologists, SROs, law enforcement, clergy, I mean, you name it, it's everybody.

We have to be able to provide those services to help our youth, to help anyone with mental illness.

It is a growing problem in our nation, and when you look at our nation as a whole, when it comes to mental health, we lack the funding to provide the services that people need.

And so we have to be able to work with our leaders at the national level, state level, and together find a way to provide those services, because no one should have to be turned away from services.

If somebody is coming to you saying, hey, I need help, they're wanting that help.

And I've seen it firsthand how parents have come in saying, hey, we have tried to get help for my son and my daughter, we can't afford it, our insurance won't cover it, what do we do?

That shouldn't have to be that way.

So together we have to be aware, know our people, know our students.

You know, somebody said to me one time, "Hey, how many kids do you have?"

Not knowing where I worked, and I said, "I have a little over a thousand."

And they looked at me like I was crazy.

And I really do, I love my students.

I have in all the schools that I work with, and I care about all of them, and I think we all do.

And so if we can be a resource and work together, parents, teachers, everybody.

And for the kid themselves, the child themselves, if they come to us with a problem, that they're recognized, and that's huge, that's a first step.

Then we can help them and be able to be that resource that they're looking for.

- And don't be afraid to engage.

- Absolutely not!

- Scilla, what have we missed tonight that you'd like to cover?

- I think, not every kid or person is gonna get addicted to social media, not everyone is gonna have a horrible experience or give up their life.

I think it's something that it can affect many, just like a lot of people can go have a drink and they're not all gonna become alcoholics.

So I think we wanna balance the conversation around all of this as well, without taking away in any way, the utter importance and urgency of addressing specific issues, whether it's sexting, balance, understanding what's safe.

I think that internet, social media came around, and we just were all in, right?

Like, think about when cars learned to have speed limits, and seat belts and bumpers and airbags, I think we're in that process, you know, policies and laws, system-wide structure in school, so that whether it's addressing bullying or inappropriate behavior, and there's so much we're learning and if we're learning it at warp speed I think at the end of the day think of it like food, right?

Like it's gonna be part of our lives, we have to start to really understand what's healthy for us as an individual, and really focus on finding balance.

I feel like a broken record, but it is so key, just like balance with anything.

Good sleep, good hygiene is important, and technology can disrupt that.

So, as I said earlier, I'm a fan of disrupting bad behavior, but I like to do it in a fun way, I don't like to be all serious, I don't like to be confronted, I don't like things taken away from me, I'm like a kid, right?

So find ways where you can do things like going gray scale.

Fun fact, if your phone is, this is my phone in it's color, if I hit my home screen three times, it's gray scale.

Gray scale doesn't light up the brain, so don't sleep with your phone in your room and use it as your alarm clock, because if the first thing you see is your phone, your brain will light up, that which is in your phone is way more interesting than what's in the room or what's outside, or the person next to you, or your thoughts, or what's happening that day.

What's exciting is what's in here, and what happened while you were sleeping.

So don't use your phone, get an alarm clock.

That's a really fun pack.

Turn your phone to gray scale, you get really bored with your phone, you just kind of naturally lose interest.

You have to fight to be on it, and so there's fun things you can do, the 20-minute stuff, 20-minute stretch, just be on it for 20 minutes three times a day.

Try these things, have fun with it.

You start to discover there's so many other things you can do, and it makes you stronger, it's a practice.

And communication, you've got to talk to your kids.

I'm on my phone so much that my kids see me, because they're on their phone.

So I feel like, well, I'm not gonna try and talk to them 'cause they're on their phone.

So we have to just disrupt it all and lean in more to each other.

- Scilla, thank you there.

I had a list of topics that I wanted to make sure we covered tonight, and I appreciate that there is good with social media, and thank you for pointing that out, but we're gonna maybe end on a negative topic.

And that's, well, I wanna talk more about cyber bullying because I think it's a big deal, and I think that I want us to give advice to folks if they're experiencing cyber bullying but they're afraid they're gonna get kicked out of their social group, what should they do?

How should they handle it?

Do we have advice for people that are watching tonight, that, you know, I've been impacted by this, I know it, but I can't say anything because this is gonna happen.

Dan, let's go down the line with this.

Let me start with you.

- Well, I deal with cyber bullying on a fairly regular basis.

Now- - Define it quickly for us, would you?

- Oh sure!

So that's you're trying to make someone experience pain with intent on purpose, and there's a very specific power imbalance between them, so the person who's doing the bullying, and the person who's receiving it.

The person receiving it might feel isolated, shamed, or whatever.

And so the big issue is looking at the power imbalance, whether it be a group going against one, or even status, you see?

And so when that's involved, that goes beyond just a conflict between two people, you know, two high school kids.

And so what I tell the kids and what I tell the parents, is I teach them to become very, very familiar with our school's anti-bullying policy because it's good, and it's there to protect people.

And I would tell people to become very familiar with that.

It's there for a reason when we follow it, the experience that I've had in more than 90% of the time when that policy, when that procedure is followed, that bullying stops, it stops.

And it's important that it does, yeah.

- Millie, not to get too personal, have you been bullied?

And how did it impact you, how did you address it?

- Yeah, it's interesting.

If you'd asked me two years ago, I'd say, no, I've never been bullied.

I recently did a large extended treatment, I absolutely was bullied in middle school.

I just was taught that it's just okay to accept those things.

Those boys were flirting girls are just girls.

But once I started talking about things people had said to me, done to me, I recognize that I was like, whoa, like, yeah, I was.

And I think that can happen to anyone.

I think in this day and age, like I think people behind the keys have a message board, they lose that piece of humanity, and they'll say and do things that are really quite cruel.

And I think we're just taught to accept that.

You know, I have friends that call each other names that I don't wanna repeat, you know, and we're just taught to be like, well, that's okay, that's this whatever.

And so, yeah, I think it's hard to recognize when it's happening.

And it is that idea of, I don't wanna make this too big of a deal, you know, I don't wanna be that person.

I don't wanna be the one that makes this a problem.

Like everyone else seems to be okay with it, but I think that comes from a place of fear.

I can almost guarantee you, everyone else is uncomfortable and they'll actually be grateful if you speak up about it.

- Interesting!

Very interesting.

Scilla, your thoughts on cyber bullying.

- Well, I completely agree with Millie.

I mean, I think that everyone is really affected when there's a bullying event.

And I think we've all learned from like "Dear Evan Hansen," and a lot of conversation around bullying, that people who bully they may be in pain and it may be something they're afraid as well.

And I also have learned, I made a film about it called "The Upstanders," which is a new one, but it really is, you know, kids aren't bullies, they display or act out and act like bullies.

I think it's important that we really differentiate that, because if you say you are acting like a bully, then there's a little power in there to make that change.

If you are a bully, that puts some different kind of programming and label on you.

I think bystanders can oftentimes have kind of a PTSD effect because they didn't step up, 'cause they didn't do something.

I think bullying is not just in schools, it's at work too.

It just doesn't like go away when you turn 18 or go to college.

- Sure.

- Schools need to have a system-wide plan.

Parents need to talk to their kids about it, and you need to check in with your kids.

It's hard to know when a kid is being bullied, it's not like the old days where you could see it, it was physical, a torn shirt, a bloody nose, something torn, it's online.

And only one in five kids will actually say something, because they don't want their phone taken away and they think that the parent will make it worse.

So, and it's just words, they feel like they should be able to handle it.

But when it's constant, it chips away at you, at your self esteem, you can start to isolate, it can spread to the point where there's fake people coming at you, they can take screenshots.

Like it just doesn't go away.

You can't outrun it, you can't take away the phone, and that isolation can lead to anxiety and depression.

So it's really important that we talk about it, and that if you see something say something, and go find help.

And I think at the end of the day, we need to let people know that they matter.

Smiling at someone, saying hi, you don't have to go be best friends with them, but we need to acknowledge each other, I think we're all too invisible.

- Walking around with your head up.

- Yeah.

- Simple.

- Manny, you get the last word tonight.

- Yeah, well, I mean the panel has covered it really well, I don't know what to add other than, you know, I think if you were to ask me 20 years ago, when I started this career, that we would be dealing with social media bullying, cyber bullying, now in 2021, I would've said you're crazy.

But the reality is we are, this is the 2021, this is what we deal with, and we have to be able to be there and to help our kids.

Yeah, the piece of getting depressed, or feeling down when they're bullied, you know, we have to be able to help our kids to get through that.

And a lot of times my experiences when situations happen like that, the first place people go to often is the school.

They want the school to handle it.

And the schools, every school will do the very best that they can, they have their policies in place, and they will make sure that that problem is mitigated.

But we wanna make sure that we're working with the student, the parents, the schools together, to make sure that we are stopping the bullying.

And so that we aren't getting to the point where those students lose that self-worth, and that they do feel loved and important.

- We're gonna have our final roll-in right now.

For more than 30 years, Ken Burns and his collaborators have produced and directed some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.

His next project is his documentary, "Hiding in Plain Sight," airing next spring.

In this film, Ken Burns will look at experiences of young people living with mental health conditions, with a focus on the importance of awareness and compassion.

He helps to shine a clear light on what life is like for these young people, as well as their parents, teachers, friends, and the providers who struggle in plain sight, even right here in Wyoming.

(lighthearted piano music) (wind whistling) - I think there's so many things you can say about mental illness.

It comes out of nowhere, and then it just creeps into your body and you don't know how to deal with it.

- It's a strange thing to look back on and think to myself, I really didn't care about anything at that point, not caring if I wake up.

- It became a very frustrating thing whenever I'd look in the mirror and there's nothing wrong with me on the outside, there's absolutely nothing wrong to make sense of that pain.

- That moment that nothing else mattered to me, that I just threw myself in front of a moving car.

- I told my parents what would happen if I wasn't here.

- I still had a whole future that I had planned.

You know, it's like I was planning the suicide, but at the same time I was making plans to like go out to the movies with my friends the next week.

- It's hard to endure, but it's just taking it one day at a time.

And that's kind of how I've been living my life.

- It affects my daily life all day every day.

- When I finally did like, start to think like, oh, I'm probably an addict, I was like, no, like you're just lying to yourself.

- I really want to live, and I'm trying to make the effort, and I want to have a good life, maybe one or two kids, not the white picket fence, but something that's livable, not this, but I want it.

And I just want normal and mundane and average, maybe a trip to Myrtle Beach every summer.

You know, I don't care, I just I'm sick of crazy, chaotic up and down mess.

(chuckles) - There really is light, there really is.

I know you're like, you don't know me, you have no idea of my journey, you have no idea.

You're right, I don't.

You right I don't, but I do know about lots of other kids' journeys.

They are very different than yours, I'm sure of that, but what I know is that you're worth it, you have value.

You are fighting this fight that you truly have no idea whether you're going to win or not, you're beyond courageous, you're beyond courageous, and you're stronger than you know.

So keep the fight, stay strong in your resolve, because you're worth it.

(piano music fades) - On behalf of Wyoming PBS, and the Well Beings Tour created by WETA, I'd like to thank our panelists for what I found to be a very fascinating discussion this evening, thank you so much for participating.

I really do appreciate it.

And a special thank you to the national sponsors and partners who make the Well Beings Tour possible.

Please remember to visit the Well Beings website at www.wellbeings.org/Wyoming PBS-resources to download the free Well Beings' Wyoming mental health toolkit that provides local and national support resources.

It's well worth the effort to look at that.

Also, please visit us on the website, wellbeings.org/Wyoming PBS, to give us your feedback on the program this evening, by filling out a short survey.

Also, we want to thank Ashley Bright and his staff here at the Central Wyoming Boys and Girls Club in Casper, for being such gracious hosts to us this evening.

Thank you also to those who have attended in person, we hope you have a wonderful evening and are willing to continue this important discussion on how cyber bullying and social media in both positive and negative ways impact the lives of Wyoming's youth.

My takeaway tonight, the future is not all screens, I hope that that becomes true.

Thank you for being with us this evening, and thanks to our national sponsors and partners who have made Well Beings possible.

(cars hooting) (birds chirping) (street ambience) (train clinking) ("Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M.

playing) ♪ When your day is long ♪ ♪ And the night, the night is yours alone ♪ ♪ When you're sure you've had enough ♪ ♪ Of this life, well hang on ♪ ♪ Don't let yourself go ♪ ♪ 'Cause everybody cries ♪ ♪ Everybody hurts sometimes ♪ ♪ Sometimes everything is wrong ♪ ♪ Now it's time to sing along ♪ ♪ When your day is night alone ♪ ♪ Hold on, hold on ♪ ♪ If you feel like letting go ♪ ♪ Hold on, hold on ♪ ♪ If you feel like letting go ♪ ♪ Hold on, hold on ♪ ♪ If you feel like letting go ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ 'Cause everybody hurts ♪ ♪ Don't throw your hand, oh no ♪ ♪ Don't throw your hand, oh no ♪ ♪ Don't throw your hand, oh no ♪ ♪ Don't throw your hand ♪ ♪ If you feel like you're alone ♪ ♪ No, no, no, you are not alone ♪ ♪ So hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Everybody hurts ♪ ♪ No, no, no, no, no ♪ ♪ You are not alone ♪ (bright instrumental music)