American youth are facing a mental health crisis, but a local group is working to change that.
At a cluster of desks near the windows of a brightly-lit classroom, eight middle schoolers listened attentively to their instructor talk about cyberbullying. They discussed ways to stand up to bullies online, and agreed that people can be meaner behind the veil of social media.
“My grandma once told me that online they act like wolves and in real life they act like ducks,” said Joshua, one of the students in the group. His friends nodded in agreement.
Joshua, 13, and his friends are part of a group of students at The Highbridge Green School who now attend Just Ask Me (JAM), a peer-led sexual education and reproductive health program for middle schoolers. The program, run by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco) was started in 2009 and serves students at the South Bronx Early College Academy Charter School in Melrose and PS/IS 218 Rafael Hernández Dual Language Magnet School in Highbridge.
“We want to create that safe space where these kids can feel heard,” said Katie Shillman, WHEDco’s Health Education Coordinator. “They want to talk about these topics.”
Social media use among middle and high schoolers is known to worsen mental health problems. The Surgeon General released a report in 2023 warning parents that excessive social media use can lead to sleep difficulty, disordered eating, low self-esteem and increased depression. WHEDco’s own survey found that over 60% of adolescents enrolled at the agency’s partner schools spend four or more hours on social media every day.
“Young people everywhere are struggling, and we know that social media is largely to blame,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a Nov. 2024 press release supporting the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, a proposed bill that would protect children from the most dangerous features of social media, guarding them from algorithms that feed them exploitative and disorienting content. The act, if passed, would compel social media companies to take action against those algorithms as well as harmful content that may appear on their platforms. It would also ban companies from knowingly collecting data from users under 13 years of age.
“Taking on addictive social media is not a partisan issue,” said James. “It’s about protecting kids and ensuring that government is able to act effectively at all levels.”
At JAM, kids identified real and fake photos and links, learned how to check bias in their online sources, and to defend themselves and others from cyberbullying. They also spoke about how social media made them feel insecure and inadequate.
Olivia, 12, said she sees videos of people feeling happy online and wishes she was experiencing the same things as them.
“I like JAM because we can talk about these things,” Olivia said.
Xiadani, 12, said she was learning more about social media and how it works at JAM, and Rodrigo, also 12, said the program was making him “a better person.”
Shillman says the peer-led model is integral to the program.
“We’re talking about such nuanced, personal topics,” Shillman said. “Peer educators who are only a handful of years older than them can relate to their lived experiences.”
Joshua and his friends huddled around an image of a photo of a puppy in a pink bucket. “These 12 Impossible Pet Rescue Stories Will Melt Your Heart!” read the link beneath the picture.
“It’s fake,” Joshua told his friends. “I was searching on the internet once and got a virus from stuff like this.” The other boys nodded along, as did Shillman.
“Not everything on the internet is good,” Shillman said.
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