What We Talk About When We Talk About Middle School
Our research has identified the need for a new narrative around early adolescence, one that recognizes it for the remarkable period of discovery it is.
As Gen Xers entered and passed through adolescence in the ‘90s, they got a glimpse of what coming of age was like in the late ‘60’s through the eyes of Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper, the main characters on The Wonder Years. What they - and the countless viewers who’ve watched the Emmy award-winning series - since found was that the world around them had changed, but puberty and the middle school years hadn’t. As the particular upheaval of the 1960s and ‘70s unfolded around them, the show’s characters also experienced familiar turbulence and triumphs of early adolescence: exploring new interests, forming new relationships, and, discovering who you want to be in the world, all while your body is rapidly changing and maturing. By depicting middle school years as a time of discovery and yes, wonder, the show challenged our expectations about early adolescence.
What made The Wonder Years so compelling, both for nostalgic Boomers and Gen Xers who were the same age as the show’s stars, was how accurately it captured the experience of becoming an adolescent. The first few seasons were full of early adolescent milestones. Kevin had his first (and second and third) crushes, dealt with awkward physical changes, and experienced evolving relationships with friends and family. The show also tackled some of the higher-stakes events in adolescence like bullying, drinking, and difficult break-ups. Kevin and his friends sometimes made mistakes, faced disappointment, tested their own limitations, and failed. In The Wonder Years, early adolescence was often difficult and confusing, but it was also a time of transformation and discovery and joy. Both the difficulties and the joyful discoveries are critical to healthy adolescent development. They also make for very good television.
In 2021, ABC rebooted The Wonder Years, this time focusing on a Black middle-class family living in Alabama in the same period as the original series. Like the original series, it promises to share the ubiquitous moments that add up to the experiences of early adolescence—the “little things,” says the trailer: first crushes, first kisses, new experiences, newfound freedoms. The change in location and race of the family suggests that the show will also depict challenges that the white, middle-class Kevin and friends never faced (this will be explored further in a future blog).
Our research has identified the need for a new narrative around early adolescence, one that recognizes it for the remarkable period of discovery it is. People already think that adolescence is a difficult, risky time when we either need to be protected from ourselves, or we just need to “get through it” to the better parts of our lives. We need more shows like The Wonder Years, shows that portray early adolescence in realistic, sensitive (but still funny) ways. Of course, these depictions should also evolve to explore LGBTQ+ identity, racism, and other topics that were still backgrounded or even unspoken on network television in the late 1980s.
Here are some ways to tell better stories about early adolescence that show audiences what a remarkable time of opportunity - and wonder - it really is:
Accentuate the positive. Too often, narratives about early adolescence focus on negative stereotypes, emphasizing risk and vulnerability rather than opportunity. Instead, look for balance: when portraying the typical trial and error of early adolescence, avoid the temptation to overplay the ridicule angle and balance it with stories of resilience.
Avoid depicting stereotypical bullying and peer-pressure scenarios and instead show positive, supportive peer relationships. Early adolescent relationships are about much more than peer pressure—friends help us explore our identities and are crucial sources of support. And when depicting the joys and heartache of crushes, first kisses and break-ups, don’t belittle these experiences—they also help make us who we are.
Make early adolescents relatable. This is a time of life every adult has been through, and everyone has experienced both the difficulties and the joyful discoveries. Emphasize universal challenges and truths associated with the coming-of-age experience, but depict it in all its complexity—including diverse voices and storylines.
Have adults play a supportive role. Healthy relationships with adults are just as important for early adolescents as peers. Parents, teachers and other adults shouldn’t just be adversaries in your story—they can also be guides and resources (and sometimes comic relief).
So many of the milestones, feelings, and experiences that color our “wonder years” have not changed over time. Neither has one of the winning formulas to frame those years in a way that wins hearts and minds—by portraying them not as a period to just “get through,” but rather as an opportunity to experience life-defining development and growth. The reboot of The Wonder Years does just that, but makes the show relevant for an audience that is more diverse and, importantly, in need of storylines that represent their experiences of this period of discovery.
Freelancer
How a masculine culture that favors sexual conquests gave us today’s ‘incels’
This article originally appeared on The Conversation on June 6, 2018.
After the recent shooting at the Santa Fe, Texas, high school, the mother of one of the victims claimed that the perpetrator had specifically killed her daughter because she refused his repeated advances, embarrassing him in front of his classmates. A month prior, a young man, accused of driving a van into a crowded sidewalk that killed ten people in Toronto, posted a message on Facebook minutes before the attack, that celebrated another misogynist killer and said: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!”
These and other mass killings suggest an ongoing pattern of heterosexual, mostly white men perpetrating extreme violence, in part, as retaliation against women.
To some people it might appear that these are only a collection of disturbed, fringe individuals. However, as a scholar who studies masculinity and deviant subcultures, I see incels as part of a larger misogynist culture.
Masculinity and sexual conquest
Incels, short for “involuntary celibates,” are a small, predominately online community of heterosexual men who have not had sexual or romantic relationships with women for a long time. Incels join larger existing groups of men with anti-feminist or misogynist tendencies such as Men Going Their Own Way, who reject women and some conservative men’s rights activists, as well as male supremacists.
Such groups gather in the “manosphere,” the network of blogs, subreddits and other online forums, in which such men bluntly express their anger against feminists while claiming they are the real victims.
Incels blame women for their sexual troubles, vilifying them as shallow and ruthless, while simultaneously expressing jealousy and contempt for high-status, sexually successful men. They share their frustrations in Reddit forums, revealing extremely misogynist views and in some cases advocating violence against women. Their grievances reflect the shame of their sexual “failures,” as, for them, sexual success remains central to real manhood.
The popular 2005 film “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” nicely illustrates the importance of sexual success, or even conquest, to achieving manhood, as a group of friends attempts to rectify the protagonist’s failure while simultaneously mocking him and bragging about their own exploits. “Getting laid” is a rite of passage and failure indicates a failed masculinity.
Cloaked in the anonymity of online forums, incels’ frustrations become misplaced anger at women. Ironically, while they chafe under what they perceive as women’s judgment and rejection, they actually compare themselves to other men, anticipating men’s judgment. In other words, incels seek to prove themselves to other men, or to the unrealistic standards created by men, then blame women for a problem of men’s own making. Women become threats, cast as callous temptresses for withholding sex from, in their perception, deserving men.
Entitlement
If heterosexual sex is a cultural standard signifying real manhood for a subset of men, then women must be sexually available. When unable to achieve societal expectations, some lash out in misogynist or violent ways. Sociologists Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel call this “aggrieved entitlement,” a “dramatic loss” of what some men believe to be their privilege, that results in a backlash.
Noting that a disproportionate number of mass shooters are white, heterosexual and middle class, sociologist Eric Madfis demonstrates how entitlement fused with downward mobility and disappointing life events provoke a “hypermasculine,” response of increased aggression and in some case violent retribution.
According to scholar of masculinity Michael Schwalbe, masculinity and maleness are, fundamentally, about domination and maintaining power.
Given this, incels represent a broader misogynist backlash to women’s, people of color’s and LGBTQI people’s increasing visibility and representation in formerly all-male spheres such as business, politics, sports and the military.
Despite the incremental, if limited, gains won by women’s and LGBTQI movements, misogyny and violence against women remain entrenched across social life. Of course not all men accept this; some actively fight against sexism and violence against women. Yet killings such as those in Toronto and Santa Fe, and the misogynist cultural background behind them, remind many women that their value ultimately lies not in their intelligence and ideas, but in their bodies and sexual availability.
Fringe men or mainstream misogyny?
Dismissing incels and other misogynist groups as disturbed, fringe individuals obscures the larger hateful cultural context that continues in the wake of women’s, immigrants’, LGBTQI’s and people of color’s demands for full personhood.
While most incels will not perpetrate a mass shooting, the toxic collision of aggrieved entitlement and the easy availability of guns suggests that without significant changes in masculinity, the tragedies will continue.
The incel “rebellion” is hardly rebellious. It signals a retreat to classic forms of male domination.
Associate Professor, Grinnell College
This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
How Narratives in Video Games Affect Children and Adolescents
As the video game industry grows, so does the need to understand its consumers and investigate its content on those consumers. Research suggests that over 90% of children and adolescents in America play video games and that the frequency of video gaming increases around age 18, peaking in an individual’s twenties.
Video games offer insight into individual characteristics and judgment alongside offering advantages in learning environments and social education as they expose players to modeling techniques through rehearsal and reinforcement of social behaviors found through the games’ narratives. These themes can vary greatly from game to game and their content has been shown to impact our cognition and behavior.
Adventuring has a powerful effect on individuals’ perspectives and psyche. Games teach us morals and allow us to explore aspects of ourselves that would otherwise be unexplored.
“A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.”
Allowing players the ability to project certain aspects of their psychological attributes to their avatars allows them to become the hero and experience themselves in a world where they can achieve feats beyond what is possible in their real lives. This allows a sort of power of resilience within a player without them being aware of the positive cognitive effects that are occurring as they triumph through lands and save the world from utter disaster.
Many video games are essentially moving narratives where the player gets to make decisions about what a character does next in the game. This essentially creates a virtual reality where players can learn from mistakes made in the game or learn more about themselves through the character they bring to life. Some games have fixed narratives, but increasingly, games are allowing for a more autonomous and whole version of the characters in their games. Games like “Skyrim” and “World of Warcraft” allow players to decide throughout the game whether to take a virtuous path of heroism, or a darker path of thievery, or assassination, along with other characteristics.
Basically, these games allow you to play someone you never could be in real life and this element of choice is what makes video games such an intriguing form of media. I believe Grizzard et al. 2014 said it best: “In narrative media, viewers simply watch moral decisions being made by others, but in video games, players often make the decision to be moral (or immoral).” It is also what makes researching them so complicated and intertwined. Researchers have found that individuals who engage in prosocial gameplay tend to have more prosocial thoughts and behaviors and that individuals who play more violent narratives tend to have an increase of aggressive and hostile behavior and thoughts. Ambiguous games present a unique problem and discussion for researchers.
Morality and Character Content
Narrative content is important to gameplay and to the outside implications of thoughts and actions caused by video games. Not all games are complicated narratives per se and in researching the direct effects of video games on individuals it is hard to have them play a game with a fully immersive and detailed world. So, equally important to narrative content is the character being played in the game. Research has found that the context in which you play a specific character can have direct effects on empathy and general affect.
Morality presents a different viewpoint on aggression and violence within video games. Questions of morality can be intense, and our actions can divide us. Morality asks us if it is okay to kill one to save the many. It asks if violence is acceptable to save an innocent. It also makes video games with protagonists that engage in aggressive behaviors to save the world a question of morality that we should allow individuals to consume. Could it be that a moral high ground and virtuous narrative could mitigate the effects of hostile and antisocial intent?
In fact, research has shown that prosocial concepts can mitigate the effects of violence in video games. Studies have shown that video games could be an important outlet for reflection based upon moral decisions rehearsed in the game and that oftentimes the feeling of guilt can mediate between violent video gameplay and the overall salience of a player.
Essentially, this means that while moral violations occurred through violence, there was no increase in hostile behavior or aggressive thinking shown after the violent video game was played. This could be due to the idea that we justify the violence in the name of moral high ground or simply that the context provided more access to prosocial thought (saving the world) and thus negated access to antisocial and aggressive thoughts.
All of this information can be used by both parents and content creators alike to make smart choices for their kids and reflect on the games we all love and play.
Actionable Insights
Here are Actionable Insights for Parents and Video Game Narratives:
Read the synopsis of a game before gifting a game to a child/teen (check the ratings as well).
Have discussions with your child about the actions their characters take in each game and investigate the moral dilemmas that might appear. Question the motives of each character including NPCs.
Encourage playing games with diverse characters and prosocial narratives.
Here are Actionable Insights for Content Creators of Video Games:
Develop a variety of characters with diverse positions within games and question the motives of each of your characters.
Develop stories with narratives that help users question the world.
Ask yourself:
What is the purpose of this character?
What is my audience/age range for this character?
Do my characters represent the diverse population of my audience?
Michelle Leccese, MA Psychology
Q&A with a Mental Health Professional: Vicki Harrison, MSW
Vicki Harrison, MSW
We asked teens from around the United States to anonymously send us questions that they would like to be answered by a mental health professional. Below, Vicki Harrison, MSW, Program Director for Stanford Psychiatry’s Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing, thoughtfully answers some of these questions.
1. How do you approach someone you think needs help?
Start by listening. Reach out with simple phrases like “I’m worried about you. Is there anything I can do to help?” or “I’m here for you if you ever want to talk.” This can start over text or chat if that feels easier. If they open up, be an active listener, really letting them share and not jumping in right away with suggestions and solutions.
2. What is the best advice to give to our friends who might be experiencing depression other than telling them to go see the psychiatrist?
Start with offering validation and empathy before giving advice. Let them know you believe their feelings are real and that they deserve to feel better. Offering to connect them with a trusted teacher, a counselor or with an anonymous peer support line like Teenline could help. If you have been through something similar, sharing your experience and what helped you or didn’t help you can be a support to someone who is struggling.
3. How do I know if I need help?
If you are unsure whether you could benefit from outside help, don’t hesitate to ask. Some young people tell us they don’t feel like their problems are “serious enough” to be worthy of professional help, thinking it is reserved for others. Everyone deserves the opportunity to express their feelings, seek help and to feel supported, no matter how large or small the challenge. There is no magic threshold of symptoms that you first need to cross. In fact, addressing problems early is precisely how you prevent them from getting worse and will give you better chances for improving more quickly. Sometimes simply having one or two conversations with a trusted adult, peer or a mental health professional can be all you need to work through difficult feelings.
4. How do I tell my parents if I feel like I have depression or a mental health disorder?
Asking for help can be incredibly scary. There is still a lot of stigma around mental health and this can lead us to feel ashamed to speak up or somehow like asking for help is a sign of weakness or failure. The stigma comes from misguided messages from our cultures and histories that we’ve internalized and thus impose upon ourselves and our families. The truth is, asking for help is incredibly brave. And although it’s scary, telling someone what you are feeling can feel like a weight off of your shoulders. Saying the words out loud helps to externalize the feelings, getting them out in the open where you can more easily work through them with the support of someone who cares about you. If you don’t feel like you are getting the support you want from your parents, try talking to a trusted teacher or counselor at school or someone in your faith community who you think might be willing to listen without judgment.
5. How can you explain the true effects of mental illness to someone who doesn't experience it themselves?
It can be hard to explain this and for others to truly relate. Mental health professionals can help explain symptoms and impacts to family members because they have a lot of experience doing so. Trusted resources like NAMI offer a lot of resources including videos and written descriptions of mental health symptoms. Another option is to point to articles or online communities where people with lived experience of mental illness have written about their stories in beautiful and descriptive ways. Examples of these include The Mighty and TeenzTalk.
6. How can I feel like I’m doing something important?
This is such a great question for all of us to ask ourselves. Finding meaning and purpose in your life goes hand in hand with mental wellness. And research shows that giving to others through self-less acts boosts both mental and physical health. More and more, the prevailing cultural narrative seems to reinforce a very narrow view of what happiness and fulfillment look like. Yet what we feel connected to and driven by is unique to each and every one of us and those who simply seek out status, power or wealth often end up feeling unfulfilled. So don’t be afraid to try out new things, especially those that serve others. Grounding yourself in a higher purpose and/or finding and pursuing what motivates you can serve as an anchor and motivating force, especially during periods of struggle.
Vicki Harrison, MSW has over twenty years of experience working within the public health, education and mental health sectors developing innovative, community-based programs at the local, state and national levels. As Program Director for Stanford Psychiatry’s Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing, she implements a broad portfolio of community-based projects promoting wellbeing, early intervention and increased access to mental health services for young people ages 12-25. This includes allcove - a first of its kind integrated youth mental health model in the U.S. and a national Media and Mental Health Initiative, partnering with the media, mental health and technology sectors to enhance the positive impact of media on youth mental health and wellbeing. She also serves as a founding member of the TikTok Content Advisory Council.
African American teens face mental health crisis but are less likely than whites to get treatment
This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
Black youth in the U.S. experience more illness, poverty, and discrimination than their white counterparts. These issues put them at higher risk for depression and other mental health problems. Yet Black youth are less likely to seek treatment. About 9% of them reported an episode of major depression in the past year, but less than half of those – about 40% – received treatment. By comparison, about 46% of white youth who reported an episode were treated for depressive symptoms.
Instead, some turn to suicide, now the second leading cause of death among Black children ages 10 to 19. That rate is rising faster for them than any other racial or ethnic group. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the rate of suicide attempts for Black adolescents rose 73% from 1991 to 2017.
With schools nationwide grappling with how to offer instruction to students, principals and teachers need to be reminded that Black children have endured a distinctive kind of trauma since the pandemic began. They have had a different experience. The shootings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery – and what happened afterwards – are just two examples.
As an expert in child and adolescent psychology, I know that a multitude of barriers keep Black children, and their families, from receiving that treatment. They need help to deal with the pervasive poverty and racism that surrounds them.
The ‘crazy’ label
Studies suggest Black youth and their families may be less likely to identify their own mental health symptoms. If they do receive referrals for care, they may follow up less often than whites. Delays in seeking care can lead to negative consequences, including emergency psychiatric hospitalizations and non-compliance with treatment recommendations. These youngsters may then become adults with mental health issues that remain unaddressed.
Parents and caregivers should encourage treatment. But interviews with them done as part of one study revealed they sometimes obstruct the process. Many feared their child would be labeled “crazy.” Those caregivers, sensitive to social stigma, also relied on others in the community when deciding to pursue treatment for their sons. Sometimes they would receive support from those they spoke with; other times, they would not.
Because of discrimination and abuse, Blacks have good reason to distrust the mental health system. Health care disparities exist there just as they do in other health care domains. Black adolescents are less likely than white teens to be treated with beneficial psychiatric medications, and more likely than white teens to be hospitalized involuntarily. Other reports suggest Black youth with psychiatric disorders are more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system, while white youth are more often referred for mental health treatment.
That same study found that schools were also pivotal, in both positive and negative ways. Some parents and caregivers said school staff validated their concerns and provided support. Others felt forced to seek services only because they believed their son would be expelled.
Stigmatizing mental illness
Researchers have found that Black adults, exposed to a police killing of an unarmed black citizen through media or word of mouth, had worse mental health. This includes an increased fear of victimization, diminished social trust and a revisiting of prior trauma.
Much the same seems true for Black adolescents. When a group of them aged 11 to 19 viewed traumatic events online – including viral videos of police shootings – they had higher rates of depressive and post-traumatic stress symptoms, including re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, and hyperarousal. Experts have suggested that police violence be viewed as a public health issue, because each killing impacts individuals and communities both physiologically and emotionally. Each incident reminds Black youth that, in this country, their lives have been devalued.
One might consider the impact from the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man shot to death in Glynn County, Georgia, last February. Three white men are charged in the killing. An attorney for one of them attempted to cast doubt on the character of Arbery, who reportedly had a previously diagnosed mental illness. The lead investigator in the case testified that Arbery suffered from hallucinations, though he was not undergoing treatment on the day of his death.
Hallucinations are actually relatively common in children and adolescents. Up to 13% of youth experience them. If Arbery had hallucinations, it appears they had little bearing on his killing, but those with mental health issues were further stigmatized.
With protests sweeping the nation calling for racial justice and defunding the police, I believe more funding to address disparities in mental health care for Black youth is critical. But merely investing in treatment is not enough. To support them and their families, we as a society must deal with stigma, cultural mistrust, systemic inequities and social supports.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
How Parents Can Support Their Transgender Teens
A new study shows that teens exploring their gender identity value simple acts of caring from their parents the most.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
When teenagers confide that they are transgender or uncertain about their gender identity, their parents may be unsure how to offer support.
To understand what types of family support transgender adolescents consider helpful, a Stanford research team asked 25 of them for their thoughts. The team also interviewed the teens’ parents.
The actions teens said they valued most were among the simplest, the researchers discovered. Their findings were published in March in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Teens said they most appreciated having parents use their preferred name and pronoun, as well as knowing that their parents were emotionally available and listening to their concerns.
The teenagers usually rated their parents as more supportive than the parents rated themselves, said Tandy Aye, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine and a pediatric endocrinologist at the Stanford Children’s Health Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Clinic. Aye is the senior author of the study.
“Even when parents are thinking that there is tension over gender identity, that parent-child relationship is still super important,” said Aye. She spoke with Stanford Medicine News about her research.
Erin Digitale: Set the stage for this study. What was previously known about the value of family support for transgender children?
Tandy Aye: Kristina Olson, a researcher in Seattle, has studied how important family support is for young kids going through gender transition or who are gender-expansive, meaning their gender identity doesn’t fit neatly into traditional “boy” or “girl” categories. If they have a supportive family from the beginning, children who are transgender and gender-expansive don’t experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, or suicide compared with cisgender peers. Without family support, all those mental health risks increase substantially. And having family use a child’s preferred name and pronoun has been shown to be protective.
ED: What was new about your approach?
TA: In our study, we were trying to classify the commonalities in families that were supportive. No one had really looked at both perspectives—of transgender teens and of their parents—to see what support looks like.
We used a combination of closed-ended survey questions and open-ended interviews to get information about what parents and teens were thinking, saying, and doing at pivotal times during the teenager’s gender journey. We interviewed parents and adolescents separately; it was very important that we got their views independently.
Among those who seek care at our gender clinic, we meet all sorts of families, and as we were doing this study, we realized that there’s support and there’s acceptance, but they don’t always go hand in hand. Hopefully, support leads to acceptance. We hope we can use what we discovered to help families who are not initially supportive learn how to support their teens.
ED: What did teens tell you about the support they got from their families?
TA: The adolescents always rated their parents to be more supportive than the parents rated themselves. I think that’s surprising, since there can be times of tension between parents and children during adolescence; it is a hard time for anyone. Our finding just shows how much teens really value their parents.
When we asked each group what actions they saw as showing support, parents talked about taking their teen to the gender clinic, getting them connected to resources. But what the majority of adolescents wanted most was for parents just to use their preferred name and pronoun. That validated what another study had found.
Parents come to us worried about what a gender clinic would do, with lots of medical questions and concerns about taking those first steps toward the medical aspects of a gender transition. But we found that what adolescents want is just for their families to acknowledge that they’re exploring their gender. If you can use their preferred name and pronoun, it affirms that you support that exploration.
ED: You also talked with parents about their internal reactions. What did they say?
TA: We asked the parents: While you’re being supportive, what’s the struggle you’re having? I don’t think researchers have asked that of the families of transgender or gender-questioning adolescents before. We found that even parents who are being very supportive are still internally having an adjustment.
The things that were the hardest adjustments for them, interestingly, included using the child’s preferred name and pronoun. The child’s original name was the name that parents really thought about choosing before their child was born, and for the child to say that’s not their name anymore was often challenging for the parents. As to the pronoun, parents would say, “We’ve used it for so long.”
But most parents we spoke to were hiding their adjustment because they wanted to be perceived by their children as being as supportive as possible. I think this is a key takeaway from the study, especially for mental health providers. When the parents come in with their child and say, “Yes, we’re supportive,” it’s important to acknowledge what parents are experiencing and talk to parents about providing services for them, to help them process their own emotions.
ED: What takeaways from this study will be helpful for other families that you see in the Stanford Children’s gender clinic?
TA: When families come to us, they’re often thinking about hormones, surgery, and how difficult all those treatments at end of their child’s transition are going to be. Typically we bring parents back to the moment they’re in and ask, “Where is your child now? Where are you?”
Sometimes parents say, “We’re just having difficulty using the child’s preferred name and pronoun.” We talk about acceptance and ask them to just practice using the name and pronoun at home, and acknowledge to the family how important that support is to their teen. We also let them know that their teen may argue against them or shut down, but that the love they have for them is not forgotten, and it’s still very important to foster that relationship.
Our new research adds to the evidence that transgender adolescents’ perception of their parents’ support may be the key protective factor in the teens’ mental health. It’s that perception of support that parents want to nurture. What can you do? It’s things like offering a hug, being there to listen. These are things anyone can do. They are free and fully reversible, whatever path the teen takes in their gender journey. There are no medical side effects to listening and giving hugs, or trying your child’s preferred name and pronoun. It’s all about helping the teen fully explore who they are.
Pediatrics science writer in the Office of Communications, Stanford University
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
Kids want to learn more about mental illness and how to cope with parents who live with it
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
One in five teens has a parent with a mental illness such as anxiety or depression. These teens are at greater risk of developing a mental illness themselves.
And while they may be familiar with the day-to-day behavioral changes of their family member, they often don’t have access to accurate mental health information that can empower them and increase their ability to respond to mental illness stigma.
For nearly 30 years, I’ve researched the mental health information needs of children and teens who have a family member with mental illness. Study after study reveals that these young people don’t receive sufficient information — at home, school or online – about mental health and illness.
Many parents don’t talk with their children about their mental health disorders. Programs that increase teens’ ability to manage their emotions and interact well socially are on the rise in schools. However, schools severely lack funding, resources and staffing to provide structured lessons that cover the full range of mental health literacy. This includes common mental illnesses and treatments, mental illness stigma, coping with stress and seeking help for oneself or others.
Furthermore, young people with family mental health challenges are often overlooked by mental health providers who are responsible for treating their family member.
Children want help. For example, this study of kids ages 5-17 found that among children who know their parents take psychotropic medication, “there was an interest in knowing more about the medication purpose, regime and side effects.”
Our team recently completed a review of youth-targeted mental health websites that will be published in 2021. We found countries such as Australia and Canada have produced websites with information for individuals and families living with mental illness.
However, most of the content was written for those above the sixth-grade reading level needed for many teens, making it inaccessible. Furthermore, most countries – including the U.S. – do not have online resources addressing the needs of children of parents with mental illness.
After identifying this gap, we worked with colleagues to build new resources. Those include a mental health literacy program to teach children about mental illness as well as tools to measure their knowledge of mental health issues. We are now exploring ways to deliver the program online.
Most recently our team built the Mental Health Info for Teens website to provide accurate mental health information for teens. It was designed for those at an early sixth-grade reading level. American teens who have a family member with mental illness helped guide and review content development. This helped ensure the website matched their needs.
The website provides information for teens on the following four foundations of mental health literacy, which can help them cope when they face family mental health challenges.
1. Understanding mental illness
Identifying mental health disorders, symptoms and treatment is a key component of mental health literacy. This knowledge helps young people understand that symptoms, mood changes and other family dynamics are a result of the mental illness, not something they have done. For example, a teen whose father is diagnosed with bipolar disorder can understand that her father’s extreme mood swings and sudden changes in behavior are caused by his illness and can be treated and managed through a combination of medication and therapy.
2. Myths and stigma busting
Youths often believe that mental illnesses are rare, contagious and untreatable. These myths isolate children living with a family member with mental illness. They may fear what would happen to them if someone were to find out their family secret. Busting myths about mental illness reduces stigma and helps teens realize that many families – even celebrities – struggle with similar challenges.
3. Coping skills
Teenage years are often stressful. Teens are juggling academics, extracurriculars and social relationships. Family mental illness, though no one’s fault, can make these difficult years more stressful. Teens can build a personal plan to manage stress. For example, positive thinking, mindfulness and exercise can help them manage their thoughts, feelings and actions.
4. Seeking help
Teens with a family member with mental illness often find themselves taking care of others. It’s important for them to know where they can find help. Our website has a comprehensive list of resources, including links to crisis hotlines and tools to locate local mental health service providers.
We hope the website can provide a new resource toward increasing mental health information for teens, especially those with family mental illness.
Director of Doctoral Program and Associate Professor of Social Work, Michigan State University
Ph.D. Student, Michigan State University
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
How to Support Teens’ Mental Health During COVID and Beyond
Teens are struggling during the pandemic. Here's what they need from us right now.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
It’s been more than a year since the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we knew it. Many families across the country have been living in “survival mode.” Tweens and teens continue to experience a range of emotions, including sadness, anger, and fear. If left unresolved, these feelings can take a toll on health and well-being.
Parents of teens share similar struggles. According to Lauren, a mother of two teens in Woodland Hills, California, “My daughter has a hard time spending so much of her day on screens. She says having to do so makes her feel more anxiety than she already was feeling.” Nancy, a mother of two teen boys in Chevy Chase, Maryland, says, “Junior year is supposed to be a key year in high school before college. But my son has shut down.” And Rafaela, whose daughter attends high school in New York City, says, “My daughter is completely stressed about having to go back to school in person because she worries she’s going to get coronavirus.”
Sound familiar? In a survey of more than 4,600 people in Canada last spring, more than a third of families said they felt “very or extremely” anxious about family stress resulting from the pandemic.
When it comes to teens’ emotional and mental health, they are experiencing a crisis, says Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, a primary care pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Even before the pandemic, more than 16% of youth in the United States dealt with a mental health disorder, according to a 2019 study in JAMA Pediatrics.
Bracho-Sanchez, who often treats families in Latino and Black communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, says the pandemic created the perfect storm of emotional turbulence. “Families are experiencing a lot of stress. Many have lost jobs. They’ve fallen behind on rent. The rates of food insecurity have skyrocketed. All of these things are really hard for everyone in the family—teens included.” Add to these issues virtual schooling, fear of family members getting sick or dying from COVID, feeling isolated and disconnected—it’s no wonder doctors are seeing higher levels of anxiety and depression in teens.
As parents, we can’t control the course of the pandemic. But we can help teens by modeling good coping skills, encouraging healthy habits, and working to understand and relate to what they are going through.
Understand what teens are going through
The first step toward supporting young people through this challenging time is for caring adults to have empathy for the teen experience. And to work to understand how their developmental stage impacts their emotional well-being.
Adolescence is a time when tweens and teens are supposed to be stretching their boundaries and testing limits. That means getting out of the house and trying new things. Figuring out their place among peers and within their communities. Making mistakes and learning how to bounce back. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a matter of safety, tweens and teens are limited from many growth opportunities. And that flies in the face of typical teen development.
For teens, peer relationships are a big deal. Their brains are designed to feel rewarded when they socialize, in some ways more so than adults. Spending time with friends helps them discover their identities and gives them the courage to move away from the family and into the larger world. Being restricted from exploring this aspect of themselves may leave them feeling lonely and bored, and it goes against the messages their brain’s reward centers are sending.
And let’s not forget the missed milestones. From birthdays to graduations to religious or cultural celebrations of growth, adolescence is also a time of important rites of passage. But these celebrations didn’t happen or looked dramatically different in the past year. Teens feel a true sense of loss for missing out on important affirmations that remind them they’re growing up.
On top of all that, the pandemic has diminished teens’ support systems or eliminated some altogether. Besides parents, teens often get support from other caring adults, including extended family and kin networks—grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and others. Caring connections may also stem from teachers, coaches, after-school staff, or religious leaders. In normal times, schools also play an important part in providing mental health services for adolescents; research finds that just over a third of teens who get mental health services get them only at school. With these support channels disrupted, parents have an even bigger role to play in supporting teens’ mental health
Strategies to support teen coping
Start with yourself. One of the most important strategies for parents looking to help their teens is too often ignored: self-care. Parents must take care of themselves. You know, the whole “put your oxygen mask on first” concept. When parents show teens the hard but productive work it takes to cope with stress, they’re teaching them how to face challenges.
Children haven’t fully developed the ability to regulate emotions, so they need to co-regulate with the important adults in their lives. They look to see how their parents and other trusted adults are coping to figure out how they should react. They “borrow” our calm and gain a sense of safety by watching us. But they can just as easily “borrow” our frenzy or catastrophic thinking.
Dr. Ken Ginsburg, director of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, cautions it’s not as simple as just acting calm around your kids. “Looking like a duck calmly gliding on water is not actually the answer. While it may lend stability, it doesn’t teach strategy. As parents, we want to look like the duck moving through the water but also let our children see that our feet are paddling quickly underneath to help us stay afloat.”
Bracho-Sanchez says when she’s working with teens, she often first considers where the parents are in their own mental health and self-care journey. “I think we sometimes forget that until the parent has enough food, a safe place to live, a stable income . . . it’s really hard for them to help in a way that is sustainable. And until we have provided the parents with resources to care for their own mental health, it will be difficult to create the healing environment that we so badly want for all of our kids.”
Ways for parents to model good self-care for their teens include spending time with others (in a safe way), healthy eating, exercising, getting enough sleep, and making time to relax. Consider relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, reading a book, listening to calming music, or enjoying a hobby. Encourage your tweens and teens to de-stress and take part in self-care routines, as well. Let your teen know these are important tools to take back control of their bodies and minds.
Check in with teens. Amid all the changes and chaos stemming from the pandemic, how do parents learn how their teens are really doing? Ginsburg stresses the importance of listening and taking cues from what teens are saying. And if they’re not saying much, ask open-ended questions that show you care about their well-being. For parents struggling to find the words, try saying, “This is a tough time. I want to know how you’re experiencing this. What are you finding that’s helping you get through it? How can I support you?” Parents don’t have to offer immediate solutions—sometimes kids just need a sympathetic ear.
Re-establish routines. My daughter is in high school, but during the pandemic it has felt like she (and many of her friends) have adopted more of a college-age lifestyle. Staying up late, talking to friends at all hours, sleeping in, snacking throughout the day instead of eating at regular mealtimes. There’s been a loss of structure. Social media and blog posts confirmed my suspicion that parents across the country are witnessing similar things happen with teens in their homes.
It’s essential for our teen’s mental health to get back some structure. Routines offer a sense of order that is calming in the midst of uncertainty. Help your teen re-establish bed- and wake-up times. Encourage them to get dressed in the morning, eat regular meals, and spend time away from screens.
Set the tone. Parents and caring adults can adopt an attitude that is honest, future-oriented, and hopeful. This doesn’t mean denying problems exist. These may be challenging times, but it is also an opportunity to demonstrate how to manage uncertainty. A time to find creative ways to re-connect. And a chance to build resilience.
While it may be difficult to keep a positive mindset, focus on what you can control and remind your children things will get better in the future. Part of this viewpoint includes looking at the reality of the situation and teaching them to believe that their actions (or inaction) make a difference. For example, if watching television news about the pandemic all the time is adding to your teen’s stress, remind them that while they can’t control what appears on the news, they can determine how much they watch. Choosing to turn it off, watch less, or vary the source of programs can impact their ability to maintain a more positive outlook.
Don’t forget joy. As the number of vaccinations continues to rise, Bracho-Sanchez has been encouraging families to (safely) find joy in their lives once again. “Families have been in survival mode for a while now. And when you’re just surviving there’s so much that you don’t allow yourself to do and feel. Families have so much culture and tradition that they can bring to their young people.” She focuses on joy because it’s a powerful emotion for getting through hard times.
For example, my daughter and I have been enjoying putting our own spin on old family recipes. Quincineras, bar and bat mitzvahs—often large, extended family celebrations—are alternatively being enjoyed with immediate family at home as friends and other family members take part “virtually.” Some families are creating new rituals. A friend now works with his kids to come up with “reflection and gratitude” prompts that they write down on slips of folded paper. They open one at dinner to start conversations about things they have to be grateful for and happy about.
Seek help. Sometimes it’s beyond our ability to help teens improve their emotional and mental health. Seeking help from others is an act of great strength. If parents feel unstable or if their own mental health is challenged, there is power in seeking help for yourself and modeling that “I don’t deserve to feel this way. I want to take the steps needed to feel better,” says Ginsburg.
There are many places to reach out for professional help. Find a psychologist near you from the American Psychological Association or ask your personal doctor for local counseling service providers. There are also professionals trained to help children and teens get through tough times. The family pediatrician or a school counselor is a good starting point. You can also reach out to someone you trust in the community for local resources.
Moving toward a new normal
As the pandemic wanes, Ginsburg, who is also author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings, says there’s a real opportunity for families and communities to better support teens’ emotional well-being.
Many parents wonder what’s going to happen to this group of teenagers after living through these unprecedented times. What they want to hear is that kids are resilient and will bounce back to normal in no time.
But Ginsburg has a slightly different answer. He says adults first must intentionally work to ensure teens have the support systems in place to help manage the enormous amount of stress they are still under. He adds, “I hope things don’t go back to the way they were before the pandemic. Every generation is shaped by what it’s exposed to during adolescence, and this generation has been exposed to an understanding that human beings need each other. This could be the greatest generation ever if they are shaped by this essential truth.”
Award-winning journalist, writer, and blogger
Executive producer and director of digital content at the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
How Activist Audiences Are Changing the TV Industry
This article originally appeared on Shondaland.com
Television, like all other art forms, has gone through various eras over the years. Often the era corresponds with what is happening within the culture, particularly the generations coming of age during that time. We are now in the streaming era of television, the a la carte programming boom that allows users to watch whatever they please, whenever they please. Gen Z, the politically active and outspoken adolescents of today, have different TV habits than previous generations. Even when binge-watching Friends, this group is unafraid to poke holes in the television industry’s framework and call for content that respects their values.
I work with UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS), where we harness the power of storytelling to help the next generation thrive and grow. In the lab, we study adolescents to understand their media habits and the effects that media have on young minds. Social media is a fixture of daily life, particularly during the pandemic, and it has become a place for activism and political engagement that allows young people to become informed on causes happening around them.
Gen Z is more racially diverse, educated, and queer than any of our previous generations. This group uses social media to develop their identities and engage with heterogeneous peers that might not be living in their hometowns. As a result, this progressive group has become interested in representation in media and social impact entertainment, seeking diverse and authentic casting and storytelling on- and off-screen. They are vocal about wanting to see themselves and their peers reflected back to them on-screen, carrying the torch from Millennials and Gen X’ers — notably Black women — who spearheaded movements like #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite.
“Storytelling thrives when audiences sense the truth and lived experience driving what occurs on-screen.”
In recent years, content has been shifting to be more diverse and inclusive, particularly when looking at adolescent-focused shows. Diverse programming in this space is not new — I grew up with That’s So Raven and True Jackson VP — but these series did not capture the attention of adults. Now, spaces that have been vehicles for complex adult programming such as Netflix and HBO are producing shows that feature adolescent characters that appeal to wider-ranging audiences — and might even prompt parent-child conversations.
Some recent examples are Sex Education, Never Have I Ever, Euphoria, and We Are Who We Are. All of these shows feature people of color prominently in the principal cast and deal with mental health and racial, sexual, and gender identity. HBO Max’s most recent debut Genera+ion, is an intriguing addition, as it was created with significant contributions from a 19-year-old. As a new socially conscious generation comes of age, more change must be on the horizon for the industry, even outside of adolescent-focused programming.
In order for this to happen, entertainment companies have to take a hard look at their hiring practices and slates of content. One company that has been doing this is STARZ. While the global media company serves an adult demographic (with a majority coming from the 18-54 range), their programming captures the attention of some Gen Z viewers in the stage of late adolescence. Through my work with STARZ, I have come to see that their leadership team understands the necessity to make changes within their organization to be more inclusive of underrepresented groups, both in front of and behind the camera. STARZ recently launched the #TakeTheLead initiative, which kicked off in February with a research report that I co-authored, and will continue with a series of monthly “Transparency Talks” throughout the year leading up to an industry-wide summit in the fall focused on representation that STARZ will host.
In late 2020, STARZ asked CSS to assess the diversity within their shows — both in front of and behind the camera — and their leadership team, relative to the rest of the television industry. Our team began by reviewing all of the recently released industry reports analyzing representation in front of and behind the camera to get a sense of the landscape. We chose three reports to illustrate the comparative numbers for the industry: UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report 2020, Part 2: Television, the Writer’s Guild of America West (WGAW) Inclusion Report 2020, and Boxed In 2019-20: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television from San Diego State University (SDSU). We then dove into the numbers for STARZ, focusing on race and gender for their senior leadership, showrunners, executive producers, directors, writers, series leads, and series regulars. In order to provide more accurate comparisons to the industry, we used the criteria from the industry reports to better define the data analyzed for each category. We were encouraged by our findings.
The numbers showed that STARZ exceeded industry hiring practices for people of color by more than 123 percent at the showrunner level and more than 85 percent at the executive producer level. People of color also make up over 53 percent of the writers’ rooms on STARZ’s series and nearly half of all episodic directors. As a result, many of the stories that STARZ is telling — the Power Universe franchise and the upcoming series Run the World and Blindspotting — are refreshingly diverse and representative of communities often ignored by Hollywood.
A standout is the STARZ original P-Valley, which showrunner Katori Hall adapted from her play with an uncensored name, about the inner workings of a strip club in Mississippi, The Pynk. The show received critical and audience acclaim when it launched last summer for its nuanced depictions of the dancers and the southern strip club scene. The secret to the success of P-Valley is how the series puts the spotlight on women of color on-screen and behind the scenes, including in the director’s chair and writers’ room. The show demonstrates that when the people who are telling stories behind the camera truly represent the actors who bring those stories to life, what we gain is a richness often only seen in stories about white men.
Recent research reports from SDSU and UCLA have demonstrated that more diverse representation in leadership roles translates to more diverse representation at every level of production.
In our work at CSS, we analyze Authentically Inclusive Representation (AIR), taking a deeper look into the substance of the storytelling and noting intersectionality, tropes, and stereotypes. We used Mediaversity’s extensive grading system to create a sliding scale to rate where a work ranks relative to the norm of having some — often stereotypical — representation across gender, race, and LGBTQ+ or disability. Films and TV shows score above the norm for AIR much more often when members of underrepresented groups are heavily involved in the storytelling process, as with P-Valley.
What is most important is that executives and content creators work together to make AIR a priority within their shows or risk negatively affecting perceptions of self within audiences of color.
Viewer habits and appetites are changing. Content creators looking to capture the short attention span — about 8 seconds — of Gen Z need to focus on making their stories authentic reflections of the world as this young audience experiences it — diverse, inclusive, and honest.
Demand for this kind of content is also increasing rapidly amongst Millennial and Gen X audiences.
An important first step toward change is to invite underrepresented groups into the rooms where decisions are being made and to give these individuals real decision-making power.
Storytelling thrives when audiences sense the truth and lived experience driving what occurs on-screen. Actors, writers, directors, producers, showrunners, and executives all have a part to play here, and when their voices come together in a positive way, it can shift audience attitudes and promote tolerance. Organizations like CSS can offer guidance on how to make changes to promote more responsible storytelling, but ultimately it is up to the leaders in the entertainment industry to make the decision to start the process.
Program Director, Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers.
Food Issues: Telling a Truer Story About Our Relationships with Food
Take a moment to think of the last time you saw “food issues” portrayed on television or film. No, I’m not talking about the most recent season of the Great British Baking Show. (Although I’m certainly open to talking about it.) When I say “food issues,” picture a character with an emotionally laden relationship to food. Someone for whom a slice of cake is not just a slice of cake.
Think back. If you can remember a time at all, I’m guessing food issues looked one of two ways: Perhaps it was someone who refused to eat. Alternatively, perhaps it was someone who ate with abandon. Either way, I bet she was young, I bet she was straight, I bet she was white – and I bet she was a she. I bet she was either very thin or very large, and nowhere in between.
If you yourself have food issues, or if you have friends and family members who do, you already know that this picture isn’t quite right. In reality, the presentation of food issues varies as much as the people they afflict. The question for storytellers is this: How can food issues on-screen look like those in real life? How can we get it right?
What are food issues?
Food issues are not eating disorders. (Eating disorders have quite strict diagnostic criteria.) That being said, food issues are similar to eating disorders in that they may include cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. Food issues frequently develop during adolescence, when greater cognizance of social, cultural, and familial pressures collides with the reality of changing bodies. In the scientific literature (this article, for example), food issues are sometimes defined by behaviors - things like fasting or eating very little, skipping meals, vomiting, abusing laxatives, or over-exercising. But there are also cognitive and emotional components: guilt, preoccupation, dissatisfaction. There’s the process of second (and third, and fourth) guessing before putting something in your mouth. (Am I really hungry? Maybe I’m just bored! Or thirsty!) Often, there’s hunger – hunger that’s more emotional than physical, hunger that results from not just days but years of distrusting one’s own appetite. Those are food issues, and each component – behavioral, cognitive, and emotional – belongs on-screen.
Actionable Insights
Here are three ways storytellers can more accurately depict food issues.
Show diversity and intersectionality. While the portrayal of food issues on television might suggest otherwise, food issues do not predominantly affect white, straight, young, cisgender women. Although food issues often develop in adolescence, they are also common in postmenopausal women. Further, research suggests that food issues disproportionately affect historically marginalized groups, such as sexual, gender, and racial minorities. Although cisgender men are affected at lower rates, their odds increase as they age. Building intersectional portrayals of food issues will not only improve the accuracy and relatability of your characters but may further empower diverse audiences to examine their own food-related thoughts, feelings, behaviors.
Show what food issues actually look like. Evidence suggests that food issues will be supremely relatable to your audience. Seventy-five percent of women endorse the idea that their weight or shape directly impacts their happiness. About half of US adults dieted in the last year (including over 25% of those who are at a “normal” or below-normal weight), and at least 30% of people resort to unhealthy methods of weight loss, such as fasting and purging through an array of compensatory behaviors.
However, food issues don’t often get a fair cameo. They don’t have to involve sneak-eating in the middle of the night or disappearing to the bathroom after a meal. Rather, perhaps your characters simply feel shame around their appetite (no surprise, when the diet industrial complex uses words like “guilty” or “sinful” to describe food). Perhaps your characters are “good” throughout the week, in order to “afford” a “cheat meal” or “cheat day” on the weekend. Perhaps they have internalized the toxic idea that a good meal is something one must “earn” or “budget for” through tracking steps or counting calories. Perhaps they turn down social invitations simply because the proposed restaurant doesn’t have low-carb options or hasn’t posted their nutrition information online. These are examples of realistic and nuanced ways to portray food issues.
Show that “not bad enough” is bad enough. Food issues need not progress into a full-blown eating disorder in order to suck the joy, spontaneity, and inspiration from life. Take it from me: About two years ago, I tried my hand at “intermittent fasting,” or the practice of eating all of one’s daily calories in a relatively short window of time. A podcast or two had claimed that intermittent fasting would “heal my gut” by giving my organs a “rest” – but of course, I was unconsciously hoping for weight loss, too. Nearly every day for nine months, I spent the workday hungry. I got winded on the stairs to my office. In afternoon meetings, I worried whether I’d be too hungry to think. When anyone (a friend, a partner) offered me food outside my allotted eating window, I made up a lackluster excuse to avoid it.
In short: while I didn’t qualify for any specific eating disorder, food issues rendered my life in grayscale. To appease my food issues, I was quite literally sacrificing my performance in the two areas that mattered most to me: work and relationships. Portraying a more subtly problematic relationship with food can convey an important message to your audience: “not bad enough” is plenty bad enough. “Not bad enough” still takes our freedom away.
Why get it right?
As a storyteller, you might be asking yourself this: If food issues aren’t real eating disorders, and if food issues really are as common as this article states, do they really deserve their own storyline? Why bother with these painstaking and nuanced portrayals? Aren’t there more important things to do?
Only you can answer that question. Perhaps there are better uses of your time. For me, there aren’t. As a storyteller myself, I have found immense relief and gratification in telling real stories (often my own story) about food issues. I have heard from readers, friends, and fellows in diet recovery that the stereotypical eating disorder narrative just doesn’t cut it; more often than not, it leaves them feeling ignored, unseen, or needlessly triggered.
I have also experienced it from the other side. That is, I have experienced the transformative power in hearing my own food issues told by someone else. For example, when I learned that my two favorite authors - the late Caroline Knapp, and the bestselling author Glennon Doyle – have themselves struggled with food and body, I was forced to face a key question: How much freer would these women be if they’d made peace with food? And more importantly: How much more free will I be when I do the same?
Give your audience the gift of this question.
Anna Joliff, she/her/hers, MS Counseling Psychology
Research Specialist for the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team (SMAHRT)
What’s in a Story? How Sociomoral Narratives Can Inform Our Approach to Superhero Media
As someone who has been fascinated with superheroes since elementary school, I am amazed at the explosion of superhero media (cartoons, live-action shows, and films) since the mid-90s. As a scholar, I find myself considering how this boom may be partially related to the core features of superhero narratives—features that have little or nothing to do with superpowers and larger-than-life missions. In particular, I am intrigued by the intersection of children’s development of sociomoral concepts (how youth understand actions that have moral consequences) and the superhero content they consume. Can these stories influence how children develop their sense of morality, particularly when co-viewing sparks family discussions? I will dig deeper into this question. But first, I want to begin with some research into how children process sociomoral concepts through the stories they tell.
Note: Although my scholarly interests lie in superhero narratives, these features are often present in other forms of children’s media. I am also aware that for various reasons, parents and guardians may have different views on the appropriateness of superhero media given the amount of violence.
What are some core features of narratives?
Since 2000, scholars investigating sociomoral development in children and adolescents have turned to narratives – asking children to recall or discuss morally consequential social interactions – to better understand how youth make sense of these experiences. Their findings can be broken down into three key features. These are youth’s ability to use storytelling to: (1) distinguish between different interpersonal acts, (2) attend to varied perspectives, and (3) appreciate the complex nature of certain moral acts.
Comparison of different interpersonal acts. In a study examining children’s stories about times where they have harmed a friend and have helped a friend, researchers found that the participants tended to reference emotions when they had done harm more often than when they had been helpful. In an earlier study involving mother and child relationships, emotional consequences tended to be applied differently. In these instances, the child’s feelings, such as pride, were considered more frequently in the help narratives. In the harm narratives, the discussion focused more on how the others involved might have felt, such as sadness.
Comparison of perspectives within interpersonal acts. In addition to distinguishing between harm and help narratives, research in this area has also compared viewpoints in narratives where someone was harmed or treated unfairly. In these cases, children described situations where they harmed someone (perpetrator) and situations where they were harmed (victim). Researchers found that in stories where the child was the perpetrator, they were more likely to: (1) consider both their own perspective and that of the other person and (2) justify the harm by arguing it was necessary. When narrating experiences related to social exclusion, youth referenced a victim’s hurt feelings and anger when they were the victim more often than when they were the perpetrator.
Comparison of age differences. Although important, evidence pointing to the roles of the nature of the act (harm vs. help) and the person’s vantage point within the situation (perpetrator vs. victim) make up only part of the story. Indeed, evidence suggests that in many ways age also matters. With respect to harm narratives, trust violation as a feature of the social experiences was more common in the narratives of adolescents than those of children. Moreover, in the same study it was found that compared to preschoolers, older children and adolescents were more likely to reference their own attempts to make sense of or construe the harm incidents. In the social exclusion study, older children and adolescents tended to describe themselves as active perpetrators as opposed to passive perpetrators. In both of these studies, older participants more often provided mixed evaluations of the harmful/exclusionary acts (e.g., thinking it was wrong in some ways but not others).
In essence, these studies show that youth can understand and articulate their experiences as perpetrator and victim, and as those who help and those who harm; especially as they get older. However, they sometimes have difficulty considering: (1) emotions associated with and (2) multiple perspectives within those experiences. Such findings present an opportunity for superhero content creators to rethink how they use characterizations and plot points to broach moral concepts for their audience, particularly children and adolescents. Parents may also use these superhero narratives as a potential aid with their youth’s development of these sociomoral concepts.
How might these findings inform content creation and co-viewing?
Given that: (1) social life inevitably includes instances of harming and being harmed by others and (2) superhero media prevalently features harm-related (i.e., violent) events, below are three practical suggestions related to family viewing of superhero media based on the above findings (concerns with the violent content of superhero media notwithstanding). These recommendations apply to both content creators and parents/guardians.
Actionable Insights
Differing motivations of superheroes and supervillains. Since superhero narratives contain conflicts between superheroes and supervillains, one recommendation for content creators is to make the motivations behind characters’ actions salient (e.g., through flashback episodes and origin stories). This would allow parents/guardians to discuss the characters’ differing motivations with their youth, focusing on the potential link between characters’ emotional experiences and their subsequent decisions to harm and/or help others.
Shifts in perspective to explore diverse consequences of harmful actions. Another recommendation for creators is to explore parallel worlds, or the idea that in a different world, the same character lived a very different life. These kinds of events can provide opportunities to engage youth in “what if” discussions focused on the potential relationship between a person’s vantage point or perspective within an event involving harm, and their understanding of that event.
Morally complex or morally gray characters and actions. Lastly, through the use of narratives that include morally complex acts or characters, content creators can provide opportunities for families to consider issues or events that contain both moral (e.g., harm and fairness) and nonmoral (e.g., psychological) elements. How youth attempt to make sense of these events may offer some insight into the extent to which they believe certain social experiences were morally complex, and thus not as “black and white” as the parent/guardian may have initially assumed.
Justin Martin, Ph.D.
Professor at Whitworth University
The Power of Forgiveness
Regardless of age, we have all experienced being hurt by our siblings, co-workers, strangers and even our closest friends. When this happens, we often do one of two things – hold a grudge and attempt to get revenge or move on and forgive them, no matter how hard it may be.
Expert Everett Worthington from Virginia Commonwealth University has spent his career studying forgiveness. He explains that this difficult decision requires us to ignore our initial instinct to “get even” and instead try to understand the other person’s reasoning behind their hurtful behavior. Once we make the decision to abandon the negative emotions we feel toward that person and replace them with positive ones, forgiveness will happen over time.
Health Benefits of Forgiveness
Researchers have identified that forgiveness is associated with several benefits including better physical and mental health (e.g., low blood pressure, psychological well-being), reduced anger, and maintenance of close relationships. On the other hand, holding grudges and seeking revenge is associated with several health concerns including depression, anxiety, poor physical health and lower self-esteem.
The benefits of forgiveness have not only been found in adults, but also in children and adolescents as well. The ability to forgive someone is an essential component to maintaining relationships with others and is especially important during development. Peer relationships are crucial for children’s social, emotional, physical and psychological wellbeing –BUT as we all know from experience, relationships are not always easy to manage, especially in the face of conflict.
Teaching this Virtue to Young People
So how can we teach children about the virtue of forgiveness?
One very important way is through parenting. As research has consistently shown, children often imitate their parents’ behaviors, making parents a direct model of behavior for their children. One study in particular demonstrated how parents’ forgiving tendencies were associated with their child’s forgiving tendencies and the results were maintained up to one year later. Outside of modelling forgiving behavior, parents can also explicitly teach their children about forgiveness and how they should respond when faced with conflict or when someone has hurt them.
However, despite parents’ best efforts to instill appropriate values in their children, they are often in competition with the media. In today’s society, media is a very powerful tool that can manipulate the beliefs, norms, perceptions, values and behaviors of the society at large; if something is accepted by the media, it is often accepted by society as well. But if used appropriately, media can be an important educational tool. Therefore, what children see in the media they consume (i.e., YouTube, television, apps) will have an enormous impact on their development, and sometimes even more so than parents!
In this sense, how characters and stories are represented in the media matters, a lot. Often times, representation of characters is talked about in terms of gender or race. However, what we must not forget is that representation can also be about a character’s internal qualities, morals, and beliefs; embodying forgiveness is no exception. Because of the many benefits that accompany the act of forgiving (and being forgiven), it is crucial that we create characters in the media who display the virtue of forgiveness and can therefore teach children and adolescents how to exercise this in their own lives.
How to best show forgiveness through Media:
Show characters who not only forgive others who hurt them, but also show characters who make mistakes (because they are ‘human’), and take responsibility for their actions, including asking for forgiveness.
Portray characters who forgive others (or ask for forgiveness) as brave and courageous because forgiveness is often misconstrued to be a sign of weakness.
Display characters going through the emotions people experience when they are hurt by a close friend and show how they deal with these emotions.
This strategy has been shown to be effective in previous research that found children are capable of learning how to manage their emotions by using an app in which a familiar media character taught children how to recognize and understand emotions (see CSS blog by Eric Rasmussen—a CSS collaborator)
Portray the importance of friendships and the obstacles that come with them. How are conflicts between friends resolved? What happens if they are not resolved? What happens if they are resolved?
Demonstrate a character forgiving themselves after they’ve done something to hurt a loved one.
Adrianna Ruggiero is a first-year Ph.D student in the Psychological Science stream at Ryerson University and the Senior Research Coordinator for the Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Her current research mainly focuses on children’s selective social learning and selective trust. She is hoping to expand this area and explore how children learn from technology and media!
Early Childhood Cognition Lab (https://psychlabs.ryerson.ca/ecclab/), Ryerson University
This blog was originally created to support Baylor University in hosting its Technology Innovation Request for Proposal: Improving Character Strengths of Adolescents through Technology Innovation.
Developing Wisdom
You may have heard the old saying, “Wisdom is something that comes with age”, and while there is truth to this, children and adolescents can develop wisdom as well. According to Dr. Thomas Plante,, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, wisdom involves the active process of reflection and discernment – two actions that anyone can take. We use reflection when we think about our lives thus far and consider if we are living in accordance with our values, and we use discernment when we make decisions and judgments that guide us towards more meaning and purpose in our lives.
Research shows that our brains are hard-wired to help us acquire wisdom, by ensuring that we learn from our mistakes. In fact, there is a specific region of the brain (anterior cingulate cortex) whose function is to alert us when we have made a mistake or when a mistake is likely to occur. This region also ensures that we pay attention to and learn from our mistakes, so that we are less likely to repeat those mistakes in the future!
Therefore, learning from our mistakes is an important part of our development, especially for children and adolescents. In fact, Dr. Plante believes that children and adolescents are at a critical period in their lives for thoughtful reflection, discernment, and character formation because they are in the constant process of learning. Dr. Mark McMinn, a professor of psychology at George Fox University, agrees, pointing to research that suggests that wisdom increases most between the ages of 13 and 25.
Though it’s unclear why wisdom increases during these specific years, Dr. McMinn suspects that adolescents and young adults may learn wisdom by confronting age-appropriate dilemmas, such as learning from mistakes. Thus, understanding the different ways children learn about behavior is key to understanding how they also develop wisdom.
In addition to learning from their own actions, children and adolescents also look to the outside world to understand norms about how to act and what behavior is appropriate. In one famous psychology study (the Bobo Doll Experiment ), Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura discovered that children were much more likely to behave aggressively towards a large doll if they saw adults hitting and punching the doll first. Bandura’s research suggests that children and adolescents learn by watching those around them, and that children learn from authority figures such as their parents and teachers.
Children also learn from comparing themselves to their friends, a process known as social comparison. In social comparison, people compare themselves to others and try to determine if they are doing better or worse in areas that are important to them, such as performance in school. If children and adolescents see their friends being rewarded or otherwise doing well for making good decisions, this will lead them towards the path of self-improvement and character development as well.
In addition to parents, teachers and friends, Dr. Plante points out that our current culture is also an important source of influence on children and adolescents. Children learn from popular media such as movies and television as well as from social media, apps and games.
Therefore, telling stories that showcase people learning from the consequences of their actions serves as a great example of wisdom development for an audience.
Apps and games which are interactive are also essential for the development of wisdom, because they allow people to receive real-time feedback about their actions and choices. Apps and games that incorporate decision-making can help children and adolescents learn from their mistakes, especially if feedback is provided on how to improve.
This is not to say that an app, in and of itself can lead to wisdom development, but might instead be a useful supplement to aid in the development of wisdom. Dr. McMinn points out that we primarily use our phones to do things quickly, and wisdom is developed slowly, because the learning process is gradual and as we’ve established, wisdom relies heavily on one’s ability to learn.
Dr. McMinn has been most successful in helping others develop wisdom in the context of in-person small groups involving conversation, silence, spiritual components, and practice confronting various dilemmas with the support of “wisdom mentors”.
It’s important to note that Dr. McMinn’s research suggests that children and adolescents would benefit greatly from having mentors that do not rush to provide them with answers in the midst of the dilemmas, but instead take on a supportive role and allow children to arrive at their own solutions. This research suggests that media that helps facilitate in-person conversations may be a way for content developers to assist with wisdom development. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for problem solving, develops during adolescence and is not fully formed until the early twenties. Therefore, children and adolescents greatly benefit from adult guidance to support their learning process in developing wisdom.
Finally, wisdom is not just something to be applied towards the self; it can and should also be part of our interactions and relationships with others. When we turn wisdom outwards, it becomes compassion towards others. Compassion is simply having concern for others and expressing care towards them. It can be developed through learning about diversity and the value of people from different backgrounds, as well as from experiencing religious services and serving the community.
While wisdom is certainly something that improves with age, we know that it begins developing long before adulthood. Children and adolescents are full of unsuspecting insight, but targeting specific components of the mechanisms utilized in learning about behavior can help facilitate and support the development of wisdom and compassion.
Actionable Insights:
Develop media which encourages children and adolescents to practice making choices
Use media and apps to facilitate small-group, in-person conversations
Help people reflect on the consequences of their actions
Check that people are learning from their mistakes
Provide feedback about how to improve on mistakes
Use parents, teachers and peers as role models for making good decisions
Teach children and adolescents to care for others
Portray cultural diversity in media to facilitate development of compassion
H. Wenwen Ni, PhD Candidate, UCLA
Wenwen Ni is a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at UCLA. She is passionate about using psychological research to improve well-being.
This blog was originally created to support Baylor University in hosting its Technology Innovation Request for Proposal: Improving Character Strengths of Adolescents through Technology Innovation.