From Moms Across America
This week, The Atlantic posted an article about the four forces propelling the rising rates of depression in teens. As a mother of a teen boy who recently shared that he was feeling depressed and whose grades dropped in his favorite AP and Honors classes from A’s to a D and an F for no apparent reason during peak college consideration time, I was compelled to read the article…
In the article, author Derek Thompson asserted the following are the four reasons for the rise in sadness and hopelessness:
- Social Media – This addictive pastime typically makes teens, especially girls, feel worse.
- Lack of Sociality – less time in person, more time alone, a drop in extracurricular activities.
- Stress in the world: A deluge of negative representations of reality ie: climate change, conflict, political divide, etc.
- Modern parenting: pushing kids to perform too hard to achieve has been replaced with accommodating children too much, not allowing them to be challenged and learn things on their own, setting them for anxiety.
While these factors are important, I failed to see them as the only reason for my son’s sudden depression and drop in grades…So what could it be?
I realized that this article leaves out a significant contributing factor: exposure to wireless radiation from cell phones, laptops, routers, and personal “Smart” devices.
