March 14, 2024

By Courtney Wise

Greetings, MindSite News readers! In today’s Daily, researchers find that too many “enrichment” activities are causing students mental distress, mental health problems are increasingly the reason why teens visit the doctor for care, and to the joy of parents everywhere, teens said they actually feel better without smartphones. (But try to part a teen from their phone and report back, ok?)

Plus, House representatives are trying to ban the youth platform TikTok, drawing a huge protest from Gen Z and free speech advocates alike. An expert makes the case to end multitasking.  And NYC schools want to expand peer mentoring programs to improve youth mental health.

There’s a fine line between youth enrichment and overscheduling

It seems there’s always advice about what more parents ought to be doing to help their children prepare for the future. When they’re young, sign them up for reading and math enrichment. A few years after that, add in dance and sports. By high school, there are advanced placement courses – plus  the honor society, debate team, student government and internships taken on to boost college applications. However you slice it, many youth schedules are jam-packed, with homework devouring extra night or evening hours. Researchers from the University of Georgia say that’s not a good thing. In fact, the tighter the schedule, the more harm it can cause, reports HealthDay.

Dedicating more and more time to study and after-school “enrichment” doesn’t always lead to better academic outcomes, because many students are already beyond what they can handle, said Carolina Caetano, primary author of the University of Georgia study. “We found that the effect of those additional activities on cognitive skills, that last hour is basically zero,” she said in a press release. “And what’s more surprising is that the last hour doing these activities is contributing negatively to the child’s non-cognitive skills.” Parents unwittingly sacrifice the social and emotional wellbeing of their children as they help fill in every open slot in their kids’ schedules with “enrichment.” Moreover, overloaded schedules contribute to stress, a lack of sleep, anxiety and depression, Caetano said, negating any gains enrichment activities may have produced in the past. 

Good social emotional skills, which Caetano calls “non-cognitive,” are crucial to healthy development, “but people don’t always think of them because they’re hard to measure,” she said. “They are important not only for future happiness, but professional success as well.” While there’s no definitive number of hours the study points to as ideal for enrichment, Caetano said, if your kids are booked every time someone calls them to hang out, it’s a good indication they’re overscheduled.

Rising numbers of teens visit doctor for problems with mental health

Problems like broken bones, viral infections and injuries from drunk-driving are now less common in teen medical visits, replaced by an uptick in challenges with mental health. That’s the gist of a new study reported by the New York Times. Published last week in JAMA Network Open, the study, conducted by a team at Harvard University, found an increase in adolescent doctor visits associated with poor mental health, including anxiety, depression, suicidal thinking, self-harm and other problems. Jumping from 9 percent in 2006, the figure is 17 percent today.  More youth than ever are also prescribed psychiatric medications.

“These findings suggest the increase in mental health conditions seen among youth during the pandemic occurred in the setting of already increasing rates of psychiatric illness,” the study’s authors wrote, adding that treatment and prevention strategies will have to account for factors that go beyond the pandemic.

Researchers didn’t identify the causes for the increase in mental health problems, but they suggest that although safety precautions have made physical injuries less common, our culture hasn’t taken the same steps  to protect mental wellbeing. It made physicians wonder about the reason for growing numbers of youth taking psychiatric medications, too. “We can’t differentiate whether this speaks to the severity of conditions or changes in prescribing attitudes and trends,” said study co-author Florence T. Bourgeois. But, she adds, “we are treating these conditions aggressively.”

NYC Council seeks to expand peer mentoring in schools 

As school officials report a rise in mental health problems among students post-pandemic, the New York City Council is looking for ways to expand peer mentoring programs and in-school student support groups. “Our kids went through a lot during the pandemic,” schools Chancellor David Banks said at a recent town hall. “As they have re-entered school and tried to find a sense of normalcy… it has been a harder transition for some kids than others, and we are constantly faced with those challenges.” Growing numbers of students also report suicidal feelings or attempted suicide, making mental health supports an even more urgent priority, Chalkbeat reports. 

Peer-supported programs are growing in popularity and helping dispel stigma about issues with mental health, said City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. They’re also the latest effort of NYC city officials to address mental health. Last year, NYC launched a free virtual therapy program for youth ages 13-17. Earlier this year, the city also joined the ranks of others that filed lawsuits against social media companies, charging they are partly responsible for the youth mental health crisis.

In other news…

The Republican-controlled House is now pushing a bill to ban Tiktok with support from a number of Democrats, and President Biden promises to sign the bill if it comes his way. This has Gen Z youth throughout the country in an uproar, with many “making their first phone call” to representatives in protest, as one comedian quipped. Though many parents feel irked by the hours their kids ostensibly waste on the medium, it also serves as a source of free speech, international news and human rights organizing among youth, prompting Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D, of New York’s 16th Congressional District and other free speech advocates to vigorously protest any move to ban it. “TikTok is a platform where young voters have found community with each other and where they can learn about current events. We can’t disenfranchise them even further by taking this critical tool away,” Bowman told MSNBC. (See him talking with a young constituent about the issue here.) 

Teens happier without smartphones?! This survey says yes. I thought I’d misread the headline. But according to a survey from Pew Research Center, nearly 75 percent of teen respondents said they feel happy and peaceful without their smartphones. The trouble is getting them to actually put the phone down. Despite feeling better when going phone- free, most teens haven’t reduced smartphone use, researchers told the Associated Press in a story picked up by the Seattle Times and many other papers. Read more about it in The Atlantic’s “”End The Phone-Based Childhood Now” by Jonathan Haidt. (One of our editors traces kids’ disaffection to the wave of schools getting rid of recess, art, and music, along with the rise in smartphones and social media focused on “perfect” bodies and other nonsense. What do you think?) 

Multitasking is futile: It’s also basically make-believe, said Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. “Usually, when people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually switching their attention back and forth between two separate tasks,” Mark explained to the New York Times. It doesn’t make things go much faster. It does, however, hamper productivity and contribute to symptoms of physical distress and a decidedly worse mood.

One year after launching the Mental Health Workforce (MHW) Accelerator program to increase the numbers of diverse mental health clinicians in Georgia, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente is giving the state $490,000 to expand Georgia’s mental health workforce. The dollars will go to Resilient Georgia, a coalition of 900 public-private partners in the state responsible for building a better mental health network committed to youth and families.

Photo credit for tired student at top: Phovoir/Shutterstock

If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.