Kids are not depressed by excessive cell phone use. They are depressed because of the destructive garbage they are taught in public school classrooms.
Recently an educator went over a typical day in a public school.
First period is English, where the class is reading a young adult novel about a teenage girl who self-harms, spirals into depression, and eventually attempts suicide. The teacher praises the book for its honesty.
Second period is social studies. Students fill out a worksheet asking them to reflect on how racism is “baked into the structure of American life.”
Third period is science, and the study of, of course, climate change. The teacher plays a documentary that includes images of wildfires, melting glaciers, and disappearing coastal towns. The student learns that humanity will face catastrophic collapse if global carbon emissions do not reach “net zero.”
In fourth period civics the students are told to write letters to congressmen demanding gun control. The students are told to identify systemic injustice.
The teacher has just come from a professional-development workshops on “trauma-informed pedagogy,” where they’ll learn to spot signs of anxiety, disengagement, and despair in students — and to treat these as evidence of trauma.
Almost no one will consider the possibility that the teachers are the ones causing the trauma.