A Millennial’s Take on Social Media Bans

I am as millennial as they come. Social media, including YouTube, blew up at a critical phase in my development. Not only did digital technology itself improve, but it became ubiquitous to daily life. Here’s how it affected me:

In second grade, I wrote and illustrated a short story for my teacher just for fun. (As far as I know, it still exists at my primary school, laminated and bound. They read it to incoming primary students.) In fifth grade, my friend Brina and I made a model of a theme park out of trash, again, just for fun. Mr. Boyer placed it in the AV room and other classes came to view it.

Creativity, like in these examples, felt natural to me. My precociousness got me a lot of praise, but if you ask me now, I’d say I’m not talented. I abhor boredom. And since both of my parents worked, I often had to entertain myself. Plus, my mom worked from home in the 90’s, so there was endless scrap fax paper—and that meant a lot of drawing practice.

Back then, going to the computer lab was a special occasion. We used Microsoft Paint. I learned to Ctrl-Z my mistakes. By middle school, I developed my own website with Piczo’s drag-and-drop .html coding. I mostly posted pictures of dragons I found on Google Images with really obvious captions, like, “This is a dragon I found on Google Images that I liked. It’s blue.” I had a guestbook page where an older kid left a rude comment (and I was just happy someone found my site.) We had no idea of the scope of the world online.

When I got a bit older, I logged onto MSN Messenger as soon as I got home from school to chat schoolmates I seldom spoke to in person, and a chatbot called SmarterChild. I had full-blown arguments online, shaking, sweating palms, feverishly defending my point, sometimes with close friends who never brought it up in person. I found video chatrooms and kept a tally of the penises I saw. I was 13.

One of the most shameful moments in my young life was inviting my childhood best friend over after school as usual and completely ignoring her for over an hour because I was binge watching an anime called Prince of Tennis on YouTube.

I had officially swung into preferring screens over creativity. When I picked up a pencil, I felt frustrated with the gap between what I pictured and what I could achieve with as little effort as clicking a mouse, and returned to playing Bubble Spinner, Fruit Ninja, or texting Twitter updates. I once sent 2500 texts in a single day, just to see if I could.

By ninth grade, most of my schoolwork was done on the computer in addition to a significant amount of my spare time between 12 and 16. I was often at a screen for 8 hours a day.

StupidVideos. AddictingGames. ChatRoulette. StumbleUpon. Limewire. Paint.Net.

Video games and movies became the focus of most of my friend hangouts. Facebook was a daily driver. I friended anyone I knew and who knew anyone I knew, updated my status diligently and photodumped religiously. I had 74 albums by 12th grade.

Around then, I began exhibiting signs of depression and suic!dal ideation (perhaps worth mentioning I got a bad concussion the winter I turned 14.) I went to a couple therapy sessions, but since I refused to talk, there was nothing my parents felt they could do.

Things really fell apart in high school. Creativity wasn’t infused into the core curriculum like it was in elementary. I chose electives like Software Applications and Film & Video instead of Art and Design, entranced, like a moth to the light.

I made the Improv team, then got kicked off because I kept getting high at lunch and skipping after-school practice, too burnt out to do anything except watch TV or play the Sims 2, or both simultaneously. I got high because my home life shattered. My brother was in Hong Kong teaching English. My parents split up. My childhood best friend dumped me over Facebook chat. When the Improv coach told me to “Leave it at the door,” I didn’t know how, so I slunk off to the woods instead, joint in one hand, iPhone in the other.

Online, I didn’t have to leave anything at the door. I could be who I wanted to be online: Self-contained. In control of my narrative. Edited.

In real life, I felt painfully awkward, frantic and confused by the ever-increasing pace of life. And downright terrified by the future that loomed: Climate crisis baring its teeth, Great Recession casting a dark shadow.

For my generation, a sense of doom and disconnect permeated our lives. My generation invented the phrase, “Ok, Boomer,” for that reason. Truth and conspiracy mingled on the Internet. All was revealed. No holds barred.

The world online was my safehaven. I could share or just observe, exploring myself in a way that felt too dangerous to do in person. It gave me a little distance from my intense emotions. There were sites dedicated to connecting with others, sharing good news, telling personal stories. It helped me accept the human condition and my lack of control. For every derogatory comment, there were 100 empathetic and understanding ones.

But I didn’t spend all my time online. By 17, I was busy rebelling. I chose romances over friendships because attention and power were easier to decipher than the ups and downs of group dynamics. I was experimenting, letting my grades slip, forgetting about projects until the last second. I got a 65 in math because I gave up halfway through the exam to write silly poems in the margins. My favourite subject was Drama, and my teacher’s final comment was that I could have done better if I’d tried.

Social media and digital devices were present during my mental health challenges, but a lot of other things happened that year too. For instance, my mom accidentally knocked an antique kerosene lamp onto the tile floor while cleaning, and the insurance company sent us to live in a motel while our house was full of whirring industrial fans for weeks. I got ready for prom in the Timberlea Stardust Motel. I couldn’t stop crying when my mom said she didn’t know how to help me with my hair and it turned into a big fight. I spent most of prom night glued to my phone, trying to get through to her, instead of enjoying what was supposed to be a celebration.

I was afflicted. The spaces that I’d known my whole life—my family home, my high school—were leaving me at the door.

But online, there was infinite space for me.

In that relatively short amount of time that is puberty, I went from a high-achieving, artistic individual, to a fragile wreck of a human who forced herself to smile for the camera.

But the real reason for that wasn’t the use of social media.

Despite what many parents and politicians now believe, social media didn’t corrupt me. Social media provided me with a sense of belonging, collective direction, and meaningful interaction during a time when caregivers decided I was old enough not to be their problem anymore. I had unconditional friendships, character-building conversations, and time to formulate my thoughts online–things that felt out of reach in real life.

The height of the crisis was when it was suddenly taken away.

My iPhone was stolen at my graduation party, the last hurrah before everyone I knew dispersed to post-secondary.

I was destroyed. I hid in bed blasting Nirvana’s album, In Utero, with a chef’s knife under my pillow. My dad called the cops and said “There’s a crazy woman in my house.” Fair enough. By some miracle, a guy I’d been seeing pulled his noisy, black Scorpio Merkur into the driveway just as the cops arrived, “Fuck tha Police” by N.W.A blasting from the stereo as I dropped into the passenger seat.

After a quick chat with my dad, the officer knocked on the driver’s side window and asked if I could move into this guy’s apartment.

“It’s probably going to be long-term.” And to me, the cop said, “Oh, and you should probably get a job.”

I lived there for six months with no wi-fi. I never knew I could feel so dejected. I cried swimming pools of tears. I got a job at a convenience store, let go after 3 shifts because I was depressing the customers. I ate canned peas and Wonderbread toasted on a bent coat hanger placed over the burner. My only solace was using Mobile HotSpot to play “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye feat. Kimbra on repeat. And checking Facebook, of course.

I hope my story illustrates an alternate point of view on the emerging youth social media bans. I encourage parents and caregivers to think critically about what it really means to tell youth they’re not welcome in these spaces any longer.

In my opinion, if the goal is to stop online bullying or decrease mental health challenges, then the bans are arbitrary. Those things don’t originate from social media. They originate from an unmet need for personal power and strong community.

Are caregivers prepared to fill in the gap it will create when online spaces are no longer available to youth?—with open discussions about mental health and ample opportunity for screen-free engagement? By being role models for the soft skills youth require to face the human condition, and all the problems in the world?

The crux of youth mental health crises is, in my eyes, a growing divide between expectations and reality that needs to be spoken about, whether it’s 2011 or 2033.

Things look pretty different from 15 years ago when I graduated high school, but one thing that’s still true is that human beings, youth in particular, need belonging. The bans are making it harder for newer generations to benefit from a tool to build that sense of belonging for themselves. Rest assured, they will find ways to use social media anyway, even if they have to hide it.

Unless caregivers and public places suddenly get a lot better at creating a safe space for youth to simply exist, then youth mental health is seriously at risk.

To assume that my mental health challenges were the result of social media would be a mistake. In reality, it kept me creating, receiving feedback, and enjoying self-directed learning, long after I gave up drawing on scrap fax paper.