Geoff: Now to our special
coverage of teens in crisis.
A national survey by the CDC is
raising alarm.
It shows that nearly 30% of
teenage girls said they had
considered dying by suicide.
And three out of five girls said
they felt persistently sad or
hopeless.
All this comes at a moment when
there's growing concern about
the impact of social media.
During a senate hearing today,
lawmakers called out social
media companies for not doing
enough to protect teens.
And school districts and
hundreds of families are now
pursuing lawsuits against the
tech giants, seeking to hold
them accountable for rising
rates of teenage depression,
suicides, cyber bullying, and
eating disorders.
Special correspondent
Christopher booker reports from
New York as part of our ongoing
series, "Early warnings:
America's youth mental health
crisis."
Christopher: For nuala mullen,
it started when she was ten
years old, posting videos like
this one to social media.
Two years later, she joined
Instagram.
The next year, tiktok.
>> It's just an addiction.
Once you know what it feels like
to get likes and validation, you
just crave it all of the time.
Christopher: And over the next
five years, she gained thousands
of followers documenting her
teenage life.
>> Like I knew that I was
hurting myself and what I was
doing wasn't beneficial to me,
but I just needed that
validation so badly that I was
willing to do anything to get
it.
Christopher: Mullen, who is now
18, says that became especially
true at the start of the
pandemic.
Then a star field hockey player
at her high-school in
westchester county, New York,
mullen says she started doing
popular workout challenges on
tik-tok and Instagram while
stuck at home.
>> I think that's really how I
fell down the rabbit hole,
because I was noticing after
these two weeks, the changes.
And I was getting comments on
tik Tok being like, oh, you look
so good, whatever.
And I thought to myself, oh,
something must be working, you
know.
Christopher: Almost immediately,
mullen says her Instagram and
tik-tok feeds were flooded with
body image content, from workout
challenges to diet tips to
testimonials on how to lose and
keep off weight.
Before long she had developed a
new routine, one that continued
even after she went back to
school.
>> I'd go to field hockey
practice, come home.
I would run for an hour.
I would do weight training, I
would do ab routines, I would do
hit workout videos, you know,
basically until I was too weak
to do anything else.
I was training for hours and
hours and throughout the day I
wasn't eating then.
>> I had no idea who she was.
It was like another person took
over her body.
Christopher: Nuala's mom,
Elizabeth mullen, says she and
her daughter have always been
close, but as nuala became
obsessed with working out, she
struggled to understand what was
fueling this new behavior.
>> She would talk about a
feeling of not being good
enough, being lonely at times,
not being seen.
I was like, what's happening
here?
Then I started to really take a
look into what she was seeing on
the phone.
Christopher: What was it like
for you as a parent to first try
to understand what was happening
and then by extension, try to
get control over what was
happening?
>> At its worst, it's like
dropping your boat's anchor in
the middle of a hurricane at sea
.
It is just impossible.
I'd be like, well, what's this
about?
Why do you have to photograph
yourself like that?
So what ended up happening is,
you know, she's a smart girl.
She would just create different
accounts.
Christopher: By the fall of
2021, nuala's life began to
spiral.
Diagnosed with anorexia, she
began having chest pains and was
hospitalized after her heart
rate became dangerously low.
>> For me I couldn't get skinny
enough, I couldn't receive
enough likes.
I was still in that mindset that
I needed to be skinny in order
for these people online to like
me.
Christopher: What about peers
and friends?
Did you have conversations with
them later about what had
happened?
>> Not until after my second
hospitalization.
I found that even like during
the eating disorder, I didn't
want to tell anyone, not even in
the sense that I was
embarrassed, but it was
competitive for me.
I thought, oh, if I shared that
I had anorexia with one of my
friends, they might get a notion
and they might become skinnier
than me and they might get more
likes, so I wouldn't tell anyone
what was going on.
Christopher: In December, the
Mullens filed a lawsuit against
both tiktok and meta, the parent
company that owns Instagram and
Facebook, alleging that the
addictive qualities of these
platforms are causing and
contributing to the burgeoning
mental health crisis for
teenagers.
It's one of hundreds of lawsuits
against social media companies
that come as the industry faces
increasing calls for reform,
including from president Joe
Biden earlier this month.
Pres. Biden: We must finally
hold social media companies
accountable for the experiment
they are running on our children
for profit.
Christopher: Social media
companies have long been
shielded from lawsuits because
of what's known as section 230
of the communications decency
act, a 1996 law that protects
companies from what users post
on their platforms.
But the supreme court will
consider challenges to the law
later this month.
>> Right now, platforms have no
responsibility for how their
businesses cause harm.
Christopher: Imran Ahmed is the
CEO of the nonprofit center for
countering digital hate
in their recent report, titled
deadly by design, the
organization calculated that
videos related to eating
disorders on tiktok had been
viewed more than 13 billion
times.
The organization also set up
eight tik-tok accounts, all
posing as 13-year-olds, the
minimum age allowed by law to be
on social media.
After these accounts briefly
viewed or liked body image and
mental health content, more was
quickly fed to them.
>> Within two and a half minutes
of opening an account as a 13
13-year-old girl, it's sending
self-harm content.
Within eight minutes, eating
disorder content.
Every 39 seconds in the first
half hour, they were receiving
some sort of harmful content.
Christopher: Both tiktok and
meta declined the newshour's
request for an interview - but a
tik-tok spokesperson told us
that last year the company
proactively removed more than 80
% of all eating disorder content
within 24 hours and more than 70
percent of those videos received
no views.
While Metta told the newshour,
"We want teens to be safe online
and we don't allow content that
promotes suicide, self harm or
eating disorders the statement
goes on to say, "Of the content
we remove, we identified 99% of
it before it's reported to us."
>> Everyone is competing for the
teenagers.
Christopher: Jonathan haidt is a
social psychologist at New York
university.
He traces what he calls an
epidemic of teenage sadness back
more than a decade.
>> It's anxiety and depression,
also self-harm and suicide.
All of those things skyrocket
after 2012.
To clarify, this isn't --
Christopher: To clarify, this
isn't just social media?
There are other factors at play.
>> Yes, there are always other
factors at play.
This is a complicated
sociological phenomenon.
But the instant they go on
social media, by instant, I
mean, like within a year, the
depression lines begin to go up.
Plus, there is direct
correlational evidence that the
more you use it, the more
depressed you are.
It's especially heavy users,
more than four hours a day.
Those girls are three times more
likely to be depressed than
medium users.
Christopher: Despite these
concerns, teens are more likely
to view their own time on social
media as positive rather than
negative, saying it makes them
feel more connected with friends
and offers them a support
network.
But more than a third of all
teenagers say they're on at
least one social media platform
almost constantly.
>> Age 13 is when kids are
technically allowed to use
social media.
Christopher: That has led to
calls from health experts to
increase user age requirements
to join social media, including
the U.S.
Surgeon general, Dr. Vivek
Murthy.
>> I personally based on the
data I've seen, believe that 13
is too early.
Christopher: In the fall,
Instagram rolled out new
parental supervision tools,
which give parents the ability
to monitor how long their
children are on the platform,
what accounts they follow and
who follows them.
They also include reminders for
teens to take a break.
Tiktok also highlights that by
default, the accounts of users
between age 13 to 15 are set to
private and they restrict their
direct messaging.
>> I don't know where that
content is going, I don't know
who is looking at it.
Christopher: But Elizabeth
mullen believes not enough is
being done to protect users like
her daughter, who remains on
both tiktok and Instagram, and
is still seeing much of the same
content as before.
>> The app is working against us
for sure.
The only difference between now
and then is if she is
confronting it and we do see her
sliding, there's more people to
jump on when before we didn't
know what was happening.
Christopher: Nuala was forced to
quit her field hockey team last
year because of health concerns
, but today she says she is in a
better place.
>> On social media, everyone
posts the highlights of their
life.
No one acknowledges what's
happening behind the
screen.[00:24:25] People
probably thought I was the
happiest.
But it was one of the worst
times in my life.
Christopher: For you as a young
person, what would your life be
like if you're not on social
media?
Because I think that's one of
the questions.
Just get off.
>> I think without social media
I would be completely left off.
I mean, I could get off the app,
sure, but then I wouldn't be
able to talk to my friends.
I wouldn't be able to make
plans, I wouldn't be able to see
what people are doing.
And in this day and age, it's so
hard to stay off of it because
everyone's life revolves around
it.
Christopher: Neula is now trying
to build a new life.
She recently accepted an
academic scholarship to
Fairfield university in
Connecticut, where she will
begin in the fall.
For the pbs newshour, I'm