by Shea Smith / photo courtesy of Canva
Clay Counts Coalition has expanded their community outreach from suicide prevention and substance abuse to include the impact of social media on child mental health.
Matt Weller, Clay Counts Coalition Community Coordinator, said they’d noticed a trend in their data that made them expand their focus.
“What we’re seeing is that our data for mental health was going up as our data on drugs and alcohol was going down. Mental health is really an umbrella that covers all kinds of things. And so we felt like the data showed it was a need.”
According to Weller, children are exposed to a greater amount of scrutiny with social media.
“When we were kids, you had to worry about the 20 people in the room that saw you fall or do something stupid. And now it’s the whole world can see it if somebody filmed it. And just the idea that people can keep in contact with you even when you come home. You can’t get away from people,” he said.
“It’s things like that that are just more stressful for kids today. And I think that leads to that mental health that we talked about,” he continued.
One thing that can affect a child’s mental health, Weller said, is the fear that they’re not good enough, especially when they see the curated version of life other kids post online.
He says Clay Counts wants people to make their own decisions, so the Coalition offers educational tools for parents who want to build positive summer routines for their children. These can be found on their website under In the News.
Additional information about the drug awareness and leadership programs can also be found at https://claycountscoalitio.wixsite.com/website.
