Firstly I apologise for the unsolicited nature of my message, yet I am hoping we may be able to work together to support the mental and physical health of today’s youth.
I am the Step Mother to four children ages, 21 (twins), 16 and 12, a mother to a 2 year old and am pregnant with my 2nd child. Sadly for the past 3 years my 16 year old step daughter has suffered with anorexia. I have never been close to the disease before and it has utterly turned hers and all of her family’s lives upside down. It is fair to say we will never know the root cause of this and maybe neither will my step daughter but it is apparent that she is not alone in the anxiety, depression, physical and mental health challenges she has faced in her adolescent years. She has sadly spent three separate periods of time in a live in unit for her disease and I have always been shocked and saddened by how full these units are, with adolescent girls and boys alike. I have also heard countless stories of children of her generation and younger that are wracked with feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety, poor body image and loneliness. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the statistics sadly don’t lie but from my personal perspective I have just heard this too often to not try and do something about it.
I have recently begun a petition on change.org to amend the social media laws to state when an image has been filtered or amended perhaps with a hashtag such as #edited or #filtered, similarly to when a celebrity is being paid to endorse an item they have to put #AD. Do I believe social media is the problem for the challenges in youth mental health? No. Does it exacerbate the problem? Absolutely. What I am hoping this solution could do is help our young people and next generation understand that these posts aren’t real and are unachievable goals to aspire to, hopefully helping them realise that their true self is more important as well as their mental and physical health.
The challenge I have is I don’t have the largest of networks and I have no idea how to raise this to even get a conversation started. One that I think is so important to society. I’m wondering if you agree, whether you could sign and help promote the petition. I’d be happy to discuss further if you’d prefer and any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
The link to the petition is www.change.org/ChangeSocialMediaLaws
Many thanks
Suzanne