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“Why are so many American youth in a mental health crisis?”
That was the title and focus of a recent U.S. Senate committee hearing.
One of the major concerns is social media, and what can be done to curb its impact on the wellbeing of young people.
Jill Fratis from our flagship station KNBA has more.
U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy testified at the hearing for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
“Last month my office released two new Surgeon Generals’ advisories. One on our epidemic of loneliness and isolation and the other on social media and youth mental health. Together they explore two important drivers of the youth mental health crisis.”
Murthy discussed not only the mental health consequences, but also the physical impacts as they get older.
“About 1 in 2 adults are reporting measurable levels of loneliness and social disconnection is associated with an increase to risk of not only depression, anxiety, and suicide, but also heart disease, dementia, stroke, and premature death.”
Murthy explains how social media impacts the mental growth of youth around the country, and how it can disrupt activities essential for healthy development, such as activity, sleep, and in-person interactions, and also the dangers that social media brings.
“A third of adolescence are telling us that they stay up until midnight and later on weeknights in front of their screens and much of that is in fact social media use. In addition to often kids on social media are exposed to extreme inappropriate and harmful content.”
Murthy was questioned about what the difference was between interactions in person and through social media.
He says there’s no substitute for in-person interaction, and the quality of connection is lost online.
He was asked if he’d support putting out a Surgeon General’s warning out about the dangers of social media similar to what’s found on cigarettes. Murthy said he would support that. Parent and educator involvement as well as holding social media companies accountable to protect young people were also discussed.
An accounting for the U.S. government’s Indian boarding school system is the focus of legislation, which recently passed the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
KLCC’s Brian Bull reports.
For over a century, thousands of Native American children were taken from their families and put into schools as part of a broader effort to assimilate them.
Cultural practices – from long hair to wearing traditional dress – were prohibited.
Over 50 mass graves have been discovered near many boarding schools in the U.S., reflecting the hardship, illness, and neglect many Native children suffered.
Melvin Sheldon is a Tulalip Indian and a Pacific Northwest representative for the National Congress of American Indians.
He says many children were also abused.
”If you didn’t learn the language, they would punish you. If you spoke your own language, you were punished. Who knows what other areas that they would punish our young boys and girls as they endured the boarding school experience?”
The bill would form a commission to investigate, document, and acknowledge past injustices by the federal government in its boarding school system.
Courtesy Rebecca Webster
A new book explores the history and future of Oneida’s relationship with white corn.
Lina Tran of station WUWM reports.
In the Oneida language, the word for “corn” really shows how important it is.
“Yukwanénste really has two meanings. One is our precious corn. But it also means our precious.”
In her book Our Precious Corn, Rebecca Webster explores the relationship between her people and corn.
She traces its history and interviews community members, collecting childhood memories and favorite recipes.
Throughout time, corn has been a staple in the Oneida diet, and an important part of daily and ceremonial life.
“Corn is the eldest of the three sisters, and she’s the leader of those garden plants. In so many ways, she has led us throughout all of our history.”
Webster and her husband run a farm on the reservation in northeast Wisconsin, where they grow corn and other Indigenous crops.
They weren’t raised as farmers, and the work didn’t come easy.
“Sometimes there was shame and embarrassment because we didn’t have the answers. Because we didn’t know about these foods, we didn’t know what seeds we had, how to best grow them. Because that knowledge had been taken from us through colonization, assimilation, and removal.”
So they use the farm to teach others.
Webster’s book represents the latest in her efforts to share what they’ve learned.
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