Cindy Lopez:   Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen. Today we’re sharing a special episode of Voices of Compassion, featuring CHC’s Teen Collaborative. It was recorded live in front of an audience, and this conversation brings together Bay Area teens to discuss what it’s really like growing up in today’s world, from academic pressure and social media to friendships and mental health and asking for help.

You’ll hear from youth leaders representing organizations across the community, along with CHC’s CEO, Dr. Ryan Eisenberg, and Community Engagement Manager, Natalie Tamburello. We hope this conversation helps parents, educators, and professionals better understand the experiences young people are navigating today.

Ryan Eisenberg, EdD: I’m Ryan Eisberg. I’m the CEO here at the Children’s Health Council. We’re really excited. This is the third year we’ve done a teen panel, so first, my appreciation to all of you for making time and presenting and also for all the work that you’ve done through this year in the Teen Leadership Collaborative. 

CHC has been in the community for seventy-three years, and we were founded on the belief that all kids and young people should have access to the services they need to thrive within their communities. Our expertise is really mental health and learning, and we deliver that in a variety of ways, from free community resources, to specialized direct care to young people, to comprehensive services like whole schools or IOP programs. We also lead community partners. We have a Leadership Collaborative, which is a collection of providers in the area that meets quarterly and talks about the needs in the community and coordinates around community care. And we have a Teen Leadership Collaborative that also meets regularly and does projects like hosting panels like this, doing a blog, a podcast that we have and a variety of other things as well. It’s really a great opportunity to hear directly from youth and all the things that you’re experiencing and your experiences in the system. It helps inform our care. Every year, we walk away with ideas that we apply to our own programs. And for any of you that are out there doing work with young people, hopefully the same thing’s true. And so without further ado, I’ll pass it to Natalie.

Natalie Tamburello: Thank you very much Thanks, Ryan. The teen collaborative is run by our Community Engagement team. He already mentioned the podcast. We have parent support groups. We also have an online resource library, lots of free, great resources, so please check them out and share them. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the organizations that are here represented today. So we have students from AIM, Allcove, Safe Space, and Taarika Foundation. But in addition to that, Bring Change to Mind, and Challenge Success, and My Digital TAT2 are a part of the teen collaborative also. So, if there’s other organizations that you would recommend being a part of this teen group, please let us know. We’re looking to grow next year.

So, I’m going to just have everybody introduce themselves. Maybe say your name, first name, your grade, and what organization you’re affiliated with. And then also, as a fun kind of intro, what you do when you’re stressed or anxious or depressed to make yourself feel better. So what’s your, like, comfort activity? And I guess I’ll share because otherwise it’s not very fair. I’m a Gilmore Girls person, so I will, like, binge watch Gilmore Girls as my comfort activity.

Orly: Hi, everyone. I’m Orly. I’m from SafeSpace, and I’m a senior in high school. And whenever I’m stressed, just anything music related really helps me regulate. So whether that’s playing music, going to a concert, just listening. I love all things music.

Saisha: Hi, everyone. My name is Saisha, and I’m from AIM. I’m a current junior in high school, and my comfort activity would be anything outdoors. So, I love hiking or walking with my dog, or just kayaking. Literally, like any outdoor adventure is what I love to do.

Seerat: Hi everyone. My name is Seerat and I’m from the Taarika Foundation. I’m in 10th grade, so I’m a sophomore, and my comfort activity is to go outside, go to the park, and play a sport. I play volleyball, so that’s what I enjoy the most.

Ben: Hi, everyone. I’m Ben. I’m also a senior. I’m in Mid-Peninsula High School, and I’m with Allcove. I would say my comfort activity is going shopping or listening to music or playing tennis.

Natalie Tamburello: So, what does stress actually feel like for teens here right now? In a place with lots of achievement pressure, what weighs most heavily? And I guess it can be more than one thing, academics, college pressure, family expectations, social comparison, politics, AI, or maybe it’s something else.

Orly: Yeah, living in the Bay Area is definitely a very unique experience for anyone, but especially as someone who’s actively growing up and going through the education system here. There are a lot of opportunities here that a lot of other places around the US do not have and also what comes with that is a higher level of pressure in terms of achievement. So there are a lot of high expectations in terms of going to a four-year college, becoming successful financially; and it can feel very overwhelming when you’re like coming out of middle school and being told you need to start focusing just on the future all the time, that’s all that there is. And so I think with that culture in the Bay Area, it can cause a lot of mental health issues, especially in youth, because, you’re supposed to be exploring a lot of different things and trying to find yourself. And a lot of the time you feel like you don’t have the luxury to do so because you have to focus on solely academic validation and getting into a top twenty. And especially with AI revolutionizing now, trying to find niches within that so that you will be successful in the future. So I think there are a lot of unknowns with that, that also lead to a lot of anxiety. But overall, a lot of opportunities here, and with that comes pressure.

Saisha: Yeah, I definitely agree with everything Orly said, and I think I bring a different perspective to this just because I am originally not from the Bay Area. I grew up in Virginia on the East Coast, and I moved right before I started high school. So that pressure change was definitely something that I felt very clearly and was very unique to the Bay Area. Like Orly said, there are so many opportunities here. In my high school, I can say there’s so many opportunities to pursue your interests outside of school through clubs or through internships or through opportunities, but there’s just a lot of pressure from your family, from your peers. Because this is such a high-achieving area, it’s very easy to get wrapped up with what everyone else is doing and feel that pressure on to yourself. And for me, that’s one of the biggest things that I felt has contributed to these mental health issues is like social comparison and just constantly feeling like whatever you’re doing, it’s not enough, because you’re seeing everyone else doing more than you. And even though that might not be the case. We can’t see into everyone’s lives, but just that feeling of not doing enough is what takes over our minds and constantly puts us in this cycle of seeking validation through our test scores or our grades and trying to bring that to ourselves to make us feel better, when in reality, we’re just chasing this invisible standard that is really just a toxic cycle.

Seerat: And building off of what Orly and Saisha were talking about, I like to think that the pressure comes from different layers in our life. So firstly, since we all live in Silicon Valley, it’s the biggest and greatest tech hub in the nation, and it’s home to so many of these big tech companies. And since most of our parents are working in these big tech companies, we have that, implicit or subtle pressure that, oh, we must also go and work and make great amounts of money, have a successful life, go to a top university. And then that kind of leads into the second layer with academics that we must be, like, the best, score the highest, you know, answer the question the fastest and, like, have the deepest analysis. There’s the third layer, having to balance between being the best in academics but also having a great social life and attending all these different events and the school dances, and it’s kind of like this struggle that’s never going to end. And then, I see the last layer that’s added on from social media, which is adding this constant comparison that we’re always seeing someone else who’s always doing something else better than what we are.

Ben: Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that was said so far, but I would just say it’s just very hard to have all these different factors and just still to be able to optimize yourself. I mean, it’s really not just your grades anymore. It’s also your resume. It’s your social life. It’s your online image. It’s your extracurriculars. It’s everything. It’s also just, like, it makes it so much harder being in such a competitive area.

Natalie Tamburello: So, a lot of teens can look fine from the outside. What are some ways mental health struggles get hidden? And can you also talk about why? So, what are some signs that maybe peers notice before adults do?

Ben: I think a lot of the mental health struggles get hidden behind achievement. I feel like a lot of the students who seem the most put together are actually struggling to find the most internally because they’ve learned how to keep performing no matter how stressed they are. They’re putting on like a fake image almost. I feel like throughout volunteering at Allcove, I’ve realized that a lot of teens are like scared that asking for help will change how people see them and think they’re not as great or not as, like, talented or smart, especially in these high-pressure environments that we live in. There’s this fear that struggling means you’re falling behind. I also think that friends notice changes before adults a lot of the times. Friends notice when someone suddenly isolates themselves, like stops responding or just seems emotionally off. And I feel like a lot of the teens, they just communicate stress indirectly before they ever openly ask for help.

Seerat: I agree completely with what Ben said, that mental health struggles–they usually stem from a fear that we’d be judged and a way of seeing mental health struggles as a personal weakness. And seeing it as a weakness seems like if I try to ask for help, I’ll go out and be vulnerable, and people will see that I’m not that perfect image that I have portrayed outside. And that’s probably one of the reasons that I’ve seen why people don’t ask for help, and then that’s why we end up putting like a mask on top to cover it.

Saisha: One of the main ways I’ve seen mental health struggles get hidden is just teenagers drowning themselves in more work because they’re told that the feeling is normal. So for context, I’m a junior in high school, and everyone had told me when I was going in, “Oh, it’ll be the worst year of high school,” “It’ll be a lot of work, you’re going to be constantly stressed.” So, what I’ve noticed is that a lot of teenagers feel like the stress and the mental health burdens that they’re feeling is just normal, so they don’t ask for help because people tell them, like, “You will be stressed.  It’ll be normal, and you’ll get through it.” When in reality, those are times when you should seek help to relieve the pressure a little bit, spend time with people at the wellness center, or take breaks. I feel like there’s just too much normalization around feeling stressed, whatever year in high school it might be.

I think like Ben said, I’ve seen this with my friends too, but just teenagers, we kind of just interact in a way that only we understand sometimes. Like, when my friend stops texting me back sometimes, and I don’t really know what happened. Those are kind of small signs that I feel like we notice in our peers that adults don’t, and those are some of the first signs that we can kind of support them in getting help.

Orly: Yeah, I think just in general, mental health in this area it’s very nuanced almost because it’s so normalized because nearly every person struggles with it, yet there’s so much stigma still that it’s kind of just like an unsaid truth that has become kind of the norm nowadays. You know, I honestly can’t really think of a friend that I have who hasn’t confided in me some sort of challenge with their mental health along the last couple years. So, I just think that’s what all of our organizations aim to do, is help destigmatize that. And I think, by having youth say it to the youth, that’s one of the most effective ways to destigmatize mental health.

Natalie Tamburello: I think what’s really interesting what you guys are talking about is that it almost sounds like mental health is trendy. Like it’s almost, I think we talked about when we were planning the panel that kids will brag about the fact that they haven’t slept in forty-eight hours, and it’s just kind of a physical thing. I’m just wondering if anyone can talk about that a little bit more, and maybe some suggestions for the professionals in the room on like how to maybe combat that if it’s at all possible.

Orly: Yeah, there’s a lot of what has been termed “grind culture” in the Bay Area, so it’s almost like the less sleep you get, the more dedicated and hardworking and farther you’ll go in your life. So, it’s almost kind of like a competition of who is struggling the most in a way, which I think creates a very, very unhealthy culture and—

Natalie Tamburello: Struggling but performing. 

Orly: —Right. It’s like you are grinding, and you’re up tirelessly, and you’re telling all your friends how you have twelve extracurriculars, and you’re not going to get home till 10 PM, and, oh, you have this midterm. And it’s almost like it becomes subtly competitive without even like directly people trying to compete. It just forces you to have to like, compete in this almost like zoo. It kind of feels like a circus, in a way, of performing, of, you know, how can I show that I’m working the hardest, and I will go the farthest? So, I think that culture is definitely like very unique to the Bay Area as well.

Natalie Tamburello: What makes it easier for a teen to ask for help? What makes it harder?

Saisha: I would say that some things that make it easier for teenagers in general to ask for help is feeling like when we ask, we’re not going to be lectured. So I know that this is a big thing with maybe parents or grandparents, but definitely, I can speak for me, when my parents grew up, it was a different time, and I think that the experiences are not the same. So obviously, the advices that they would give their younger self are probably not going to work for me. So, when I feel like I’m being lectured or when I’m hearing about how, what everyone else is doing, doing all these extracurriculars and, you know, I’m not able to manage it, those type of things definitely don’t help in general for teenagers. I feel like having someone that can just sit and listen honestly and just reassure you that you’re not crazy for wanting to sleep for eight hours, and you’re not crazy for being surrounded by people who are constantly telling you that you should be doing more. Just getting that reassurance is really helpful and being able to confide in that person about what you’re going through. 

For me, it’s honestly my school counselor. Whenever I’ve had an issue, she sat down with me. And when I go on my rants, she just listens, and that’s honestly so helpful for me. We don’t always want someone to give us advice. Sometimes it’s just helpful to just rant and just talk. And then it’s really helpful when they ask if we want suggestions or if we don’t without just giving suggestions when we didn’t ask for it. So, I would say just being open and patient makes us feel really supported and feels like we can trust who we’re talking to.

Seerat: Yeah, and when Saisha was talking about having someone who can actually listen, I think the key there is that talking to someone who’s trustworthy because people won’t ask for help if they feel like the person they’re asking is going to judge them. And usually the reason we don’t ask for help is because we’re scared of what others will think or, like, the judgment that’ll come from sharing something. And so someone who can just listen and be there is someone who’s trustworthy and someone we know has our back, and no matter, what happened, they aren’t going to, like she mentioned lecture, but instead they’re going to be there to reassure that it’s going to be okay and help us through.

Ben: Also, just having someone at school that you can talk to is really helpful for me. My art teacher, I can always go to if I have any problem or if I have any issue or anything, she’s just someone I can rant to, you know, and just talk to whenever I’m anxious or I’m stressed out about anything. 

I think just making these schools give more options for students for them to go to places where they feel comfortable talking to an adult or give them, like, a mix of opinions almost because it’s good to get someone who’s older than you an opinion. It’s also good to talk to your friends, but I think also talking to adults is also a good thing.

Orly: Specifically relating to what kind of language and energy makes kids more prone to shutting down and just holding it within and not confiding in a trusted adult or friend is when their problems are met with sort of, like, a toxic positivity or comparison to a parent’s own past because it kind of just makes us feel like there’s a standard of resilience that someone has to have. And, you’re struggling, it’s kind of like you’re on the opposing end and kind of underneath where your parents have gotten to or where, if a friend is like, “Yeah, like, I went through the exact same thing,” but instead of just listening, they’re just telling their own thing. It’s like, okay, so, I need to just push through. Like, I just need to push through. And, I think that can often do more harm than good, even though it feels kind of like it would be a relatable thing. It just creates kind of an unhealthy comparison because everyone copes differently and has their own way to get through struggles, and I think that’s something people discover during their formative years, how they respond to hindrances in life. And I think by just setting a lot of kind of standards instead of just listening and being there, it can create almost like a failure sort of sense in the person who is trying to share their struggles.

Natalie Tamburello: I think that’s a good point. I think it’s really hard as a parent to not knee-jerk, “Oh, but when I was young,” and tell the story in hopefully a way to try to relate and try to share wisdom. But I think no matter what, that kind of ends up coming off as you’re not hearing what I’m saying, and you’re trying to compare experiences. But times have changed significantly, and also your experience is your own experience, and going through that is also a process that they didn’t necessarily go through. So, I think that’s a good reminder for the parents in the room. 

Can you talk about navigating friendships in high school? So different types of friendships at school, outside of school, and how they can impact mental health?

Seerat: So, I think first, it’s good to remember that friendships come in like all different shapes and sizes, and so every friendship is going to be different. And to navigate, I think we have to first choose a friend. And to choose friendships, I think it’s important to choose friends who are uplifting and encouraging rather than, like, putting you down. And then, like all relationships, friendships have their up and downs, and sometimes there’s going to be disagreements. But in those times, I like to remind myself that everyone at the end of the day has their own perspective. So, instead of thinking, their perspective is wrong, it’s probably right from theirs, and that’s probably what they think about me. So, making sure that we’re handling it maturely and knowing that there is a difference of opinion, but that doesn’t mean that one person’s right or wrong. And I feel like also when we label it as a conflict, then we’re saying that it’s me versus them, and we’re two opponents versus thinking we’re friends and we can actually solve the problem.

And another thing, long-term wise, I think in friendships, it’s important to remain consistent and not just going to a friend and asking and talking with them when you have a big test or you need something, but always consistently being there, talking with them every day. I think that’s what really builds and takes friendships to the next level. And for me, that means hanging out with my friends during lunch and break time and spending time with each other that’s really what builds the connection.

And then on the other part on the different types of friendships, at school and even outside this applies, I think there’s healthy and unhealthy. So healthy friendships, as I mentioned, are the ones that empower and uplift us, and thus increase the feelings of belonging and inclusion. And then there’s also, on the other hand unhealthy relationships, and that’s kind of where someone’s using you to, like excel or be better in a certain activity or get a certain outcome rather than an equal 50/50 relationship.

Ben: Yeah, I would say it’s definitely very difficult navigating friendships in high school. You definitely have to balance everything that’s going on in your life and make sure you’re not talking about your classes too much. Because I think if you just talk about the academics, then it just turns into you’re just competing against your friends, and that’s just not a healthy relationship. I think you need to establish things that are not just all about homework or APs or tests or test scores or whatever it is. I think everyone just needs to just surround yourself with people that can be supportive and understand and listen to you.

Saisha: Yeah, I would say for me, it was honestly pretty difficult to find a friend group full of people that in some form didn’t feel like I was their competitor. It was like even the small things like, “How many APs are you taking this year?” Those are things that I really don’t want to talk about in a friendship when that’s all I hear from, like, every other person in all my classes. But apart from that, I would say that for any student, it’s really important to remember that friendships will change as you go through middle school and high school. For me, because I moved, like I already had to start new, but even for people I know that have grown up in the Bay Area, your friendships will change, and that doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong or that the other person did anything wrong. It just happens sometimes. But like Seerat said, the connection and the constant reaching out and putting that effort in can always help strengthen the bonds. But I wouldn’t drive yourself crazy if suddenly you grow apart from someone because that’s just honestly you’re beating yourself up over something that could have happened to them, and you just don’t know about it. Like, that happened in my personal life recently. There was a situation where someone drifted apart, and I wasn’t really sure what happened. But at the same time, it’s not healthy for me to beat myself over, “What did I do wrong?” Or “What could I have done different?” Because it’s just not a healthy use of my time and my energy. So just remember that friendships will change, and just put effort into people who you believe will support you and stay by you. But don’t attach yourself to a certain friendship just be confident in your self-worth and don’t put that into someone else.

Orly: Yeah, I think, everyone pretty much summed it up that there is definitely a mix of the kind of people you will meet in this area. And many of those people are very great people who are your anchor friends and truly know who you are as a person and are interested in that. And then there’s definitely a big population of people who just, see you as, like, kind of something to cling to for a social status just to be like, “Yes, I have friends,” and, they see you as kind of just competition and they’re not very interested to get to know you almost because this area has instilled in them that they need to just keep climbing and climbing, and they feel like they don’t maybe want to make friends because they feel that will get in the way or it’s just been drilled into them that there’s not time for that.

So I think, growing up in this area, being able to discern the difference is very important because if you view someone as, like a true friend, but they’re kind of caught up in this really toxic system, it’s hard, and it can be very tolling to try to stay friends with them because it just feels like watering a dead plant because you’re not getting what you need. So I think just being in this area, a lot of people here have been able to really grow a sense of who’s real and who just doesn’t want and  or have the time to invest in a friendship. But yeah, I think that’s very unique to this area. It’s challenging, too, especially, growing up.

Natalie Tamburello:  You all talked about how finding authentic relationships and friendships is challenging because of all the academic pressure, and those conversations kind of supersede real connection with people. I’m wondering, how do you check yourself in those moments with friendships to not talk about APs or to not talk about academic stuff? Like, how do you manage that?

Orly:  It’s important to ask yourself a question, just like in any social setting of like, is what I’m about to say right now, how will it affect other people? And just having a level of awareness of like where everyone is kind of at. Like, is this friend dealing with like something very difficult at home? Is this friend struggling a lot in school and has a big midterm tomorrow? Do I want to bring it up right now while we’re having some quality time at like a hangout or something? So, I think just being able to develop an awareness of a time and place, because I think there always is a time and place. Like, if you just came out of a horrible test and you’re like, “Man, that was rough,” you don’t need to keep talking about it a week later when you’re trying to just decompress and just be. So I think, just knowing when and where it’s acceptable to bring up academics.

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Natalie Tamburello: How do you remind yourself also to take kid moments. Like to not be in a very pressured state. So, how do you force yourself to take breaks and to take time for yourself when you say like everyone around you isn’t doing that?

Saisha: So first of all, I feel at least for me, it starts with just getting out of school. I don’t think that my friend group in particular, can stay in our school because we always see people we know, and it somehow goes back to “How was the math test?” Or, “How was the chem test?” Or “What did you get on this test?” So we try to get out of school as much as possible, and we try to go outside. And like what me and my friends do a lot, which has helped, is like we leave our phones either at someone’s house and we just go out, and someone just has a like watch or something to keep in contact with parents. And we literally just tell ourselves that we’re not going to talk about the test and we’re not going to talk about like grades or anything like that, and we’re literally just going to go out and go for a bike ride or like go for a walk or do something like completely in nature. I really like doing that and my friend group does too, so that really helps us. Literally we cannot use our devices, we’re not checking our grades or anything. So, yeah, I feel like I’m also really lucky to have found friends that kind of have that mindset too because I know that a lot of teenagers are very clingy to their like phones and social media. But I think it’s just like setting boundaries and talking with your friends about what will help you in particular and like what you guys want to follow to just have some quality time and just forget about school and just relieve some stress.

Seerat: Yeah, I think for me, it starts with choosing friends who aren’t so obsessed with the test scores. I have a bunch of friends and we have interests in a bunch of activities that wouldn’t quite relate to academics. Some of my friends are really into F1, others into like sports we play together, so, I think for me, when I found friends that are interested in other things besides tests, then all of our conversations wouldn’t automatically just go into our test scores. And I think like they’ve mentioned before me, that after a test, I noticed a lot last year, the conversation, you walk out of the room, and everyone’s like: “What’d you do? How’d you do? How was the test? Was it easy? Was it hard? What’d you get on this question?” What me and some of my friends have done is we’ve just left and walked out and left and gone to a different room, and we don’t talk about the test after that. And I think that’s something that helped me especially. 

Ben: Yeah, I would say just making sure that you’re talking about things other than school, you know? I think, like, getting yourself involved in clubs, extracurriculars, is really important and making sure you’re not just signing yourself up for like 10 APs or whatever. Make sure you’re doing other things besides that. Just making sure that you can talk to people about things that you relate to or things that, like, make you happy.

Natalie Tamburello: How is social media affecting teen mental health right now? What parts make stress, anxiety, or loneliness worse, and what parts actually help teens feel connected and supported?

Ben: I did a lot of research on social media use, and anxiety is that social media itself isn’t automatically like good or bad. It depends a lot on how it’s being used and how much of your identity like becomes tied to it. I think the hardest part for teens right now is the constant comparison on social media and the feeling of always being on or like seen and like almost like watched and judged. Even when you’re alone, you still feel connected to everyone else’s lives, opinions, achievements, and social plans, and that’s like through social media. There’s not much mental downtime anymore for people really, but at the same time, social media I feel like can genuinely help people who feel isolated. For example, in my school there’s a lot of LGBTQ teens, which are prone to struggle with mental health, and I feel like going online is a good place to find that community or people who feel misunderstood in their local environment. I feel like it can create a community and support that they might not otherwise have at their school. I think adults sometimes misunderstand that social media isn’t just like separate from our real lives. And I feel like for a lot of teens, it is our social environment and just telling them to just log off, and I feel like it’s just a lot more like harder than it seems, a lot more complicated because it’s very deeply involved in our everyday lives.

Seerat: I think social media, yes, it does sometimes help people feel connected and supported, especially during COVID. I know that social media was something that kept people still together. But I think that now, since we’re out of COVID, there’s a lot more of the negative aspects to it than positive. For example, like, social media’s definitely increased the pressure to fit in, and that’s in the way we look, the way we act, and preferences too. And sometimes through social media, we end up trying to change ourselves just to fit in with others so that we feel like we belong. And also with social media, that’s kind of fueling our need of validation and all these accounts where we make accounts, and we post our stories, and I feel like all the number of likes we have, the number of followers, it kind of shows us where we stand on a hierarchy. Like, are we that popular, or do people really like us? And I feel like our account status is kind of our social status, which should not be.

Another thing is that now with social media, there’s all these apps where you share your location, and sometimes you can see where your friends are versus where you are, and that can lead to FOMO. Like, oh, everyone is at this one party, and I’m not. Everyone was invited to this one event, and I wasn’t. And so these apps where we’re, like, sharing our location can really, really make the FOMO worse. And another thing is constant comparisons. People on social media, they always post their one best day, whereas we end up comparing our worst bad days to everyone else’s good days, thinking that that one good day is their every day when it’s not. So, I think we just need to remember that.

Saisha: Yeah, I just want to anchor onto the last thing that Seerat said, which is just like there will be one perfect day. In my opinion, the biggest problem that social media has created is like putting up this perfect image of everyone when that’s really not the case. Like, everyone goes through good and bad days, and social media really only projects the good parts, which then makes like an unrealistic standard for everyone else seeing those things because then you feel like, oh, well, this person’s living such a good life. They’re so accomplished, they’re so happy, they have so many friends. I have to do that too. When that person definitely goes through their days too, but they’re just not projecting that on like Instagram or like on Snapchat. So it just makes teens feel like this, they have to live this unrealistic life, which, like you’re a teenager, like you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to be moody, you’re going to have bad days. It’s just how you’re going to be. So, just seeing that unrealistic expectation all the time on social media just creates like a really toxic cycle.

Orly: Yeah. I think just like the inability to ever truly log off in this day and age is like so tolling because, oh my gosh, social media is exhausting. And also just like, I guess from kind of a different lens than what has been talked about yet, looking at news, everything is posted online, and most of it is extremely polarized, extremism, the worst, worst, most charged possible thing you could see. There’s a lot of misinformation nowadays and by virtually most people being online now, but especially the youth growing up in a time where, you don’t really know what you’re seeing. Like is it real? Is it fake? Is this credible? And I think,if you are someone who wants to actually know what’s happening and you take the time to research once you see something, that is great. But I also know that most people in my age group do not do that, so that creates a lot of misleading information and hate nowadays. I’ve faced just a lot in different areas, and I think that social media is kind of a new front of wars, and that can cause extreme, extreme discomfort, especially in school settings.

Natalie Tamburello: So now that California schools have adopted policies on limiting or prohibiting smartphone use in schools next year, do you think phone restrictions during school will help teen mental health, hurt, or both?

Saisha: So removing phones will definitely improve the in-person connections made. Something that I’ve noticed is in high school, we have classes that are shuffled, so our friend group is not going to be in every class with us. So, there’s going to be instances where it’s really helpful to make new friends and have that group of friends in each class throughout the year, and you can talk with them. If you ever miss a day of class, you can text them, and just having that community is really helpful. And something that phones have removed is, like, whenever someone doesn’t know someone in the class, they just turn to their phone and start playing a game or start scrolling on social media when you could easily just talk to the person next to you and make that connection. So, if we remove phones, I think that will definitely help build those connections and just help people, instead of scrolling in your free time, just have a conversation with the person next to you and build that connection. I think that’s something that’ll be one of the biggest benefits.

And then I would say that phones could feel a little bit restrictive taking the access away because for me, like, just from an academic standpoint, I know that I use Google Calendar on my phone a lot to keep track of tasks and stuff. And, they removed our personal account access on our school laptops. So, like, that’s something I can’t access anymore on my school laptop. So, every time I get an assignment, I write it down on my calendar, and if I can’t use my phone then I might start forgetting assignments and things like that. That could potentially be stressful for a lot of students, so I can see how it could be used for an academic sense, and I understand that need to have the ability to do certain things on your phones. So for me, my school has this right now, and I’m hoping they’ll continue, which is we put our phones away during class, but during breaks and during lunch, we’re allowed to have them. And then when we start class again, it just goes into, like, a phone cubby. And I found that that’s pretty helpful. We’ve only had it for one year, so for the short term I’ve seen good benefits. So I’m excited to see what all California districts do.

Seerat: I really agree with what Saisha was talking about. I think that phones, when we don’t have access to them, then there’s definitely going to be a lot more connection that happens between people. Because usually when we’re on our phones, we’re probably doom scrolling, and we aren’t really, like, aware and looking and seeing who’s next to us and actually having a conversation. But it’s those conversations that would, like, bring a friendship forward and increase connection, and that also would reduce mental health struggles and especially feeling a lack of connection, that would really help.

And, like, academic-wise, I do think that not having phones during class would help. Our school has been implementing a policy where we can’t use phones during the school day. After that we can and so they’ve been trying to implement this by taking phones away during the school day, which sometimes it’s working, but students have been finding their way to get around it. So, I’m waiting to see how this California state law would change something in our school.

Ben: Yeah, I would say it definitely could help in some ways and also hurt in a lot of other ways. I feel like phones definitely obviously make it harder to focus, and it can be easier to disconnect from like reality and people physically, but I also feel like phones can be like a real support system for a lot of people. Like, I know a lot of people in my school use their phones to play music, to regulate their anxiety, or some people need contact with their parents or therapists, and act like their phone is, like, sometimes how they have really stay connected socially throughout the day. And I think honestly, a more balanced policy makes the most sense, and it’s again, restrict the phones during class time to help the focus, but also, like, allow students to access them during breaks and lunch.

Orly: I think there’s obviously a lot of positives, but also in a way by restricting the phones, it’s creating kind of a slope for the students to go out into the real world and not know how to control themselves. Because I think an important lesson that I’ve had to deal with in high school because the phone restrictions have really only been implemented this year is how to restrain myself and not be urged to pick up my phone every time I see a notification when I need to be working on an essay or a project. And I think, by the schools very, very, closely restricting that, it sets up a lot of people to once they are given full access when they go off to college or go to a job, they won’t be able to control themselves because they’ve never had to on their own. So, I think it poses an interesting effect there.

And I also think like definitely that will be reflected in grades because most teachers, no matter what, even before the phone restrictions were implemented have been like collecting the phones for exams. So I think if you’re distracted and on your phone and are not controlling yourself, and then you take an exam and you don’t have your phone and you get a bad grade, you learn pretty quickly, okay, I need to start setting some boundaries within myself and learn how to control myself. And I think that’s very important, especially in an age where just devices are so widely used. So, how to use them efficiently.

Natalie Tamburello: Thanks, everybody. So switching gears a little bit back to how we see unseen people who are having mental health challenges. Can we talk a little bit about which teens in this area are more likely to be struggling without people noticing? Who gets overlooked when school and communities talk about mental health?

Seerat: From my perspective, I think the students or the teens that are most likely to be struggling are the students who seem like they’re perfect and they’re handling everything at once because it’s most likely that they’re at the verge and they’re not quite able to handle everything at once. And on the outside, it looks like the students who always submit their homework on time, they always score the A’s, and they do all these different extracurriculars. And I’ve also come across this book called Doing School: How We’re Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students by Dr. Denise Pope from Stanford. And in this book, she actually follows the lives of five different top best students in this high school. And these five students were voted upon as the best students in their board and from the teachers. And as she goes through this book, she uncovers that these students, it looks like they’re able to get everything done on time, but they’re actually multitasking during class, juggling so much, pulling so many all-nighters, and they end up sacrificing their, like, physical and social life just to get these academic grades. And so to sum it up, I think that the teens who seem like they have everything sorted out are the ones who are actually struggling the most.

Saisha: Yeah, I definitely agree with everything that was said so far. I also think that in my area specifically, like it’s the high-achieving students that people often overestimate because they’re like: “Oh, they’re fine, you know. They’re doing so much, they’re not complaining.” But the not complaining a lot of the time comes from stigma especially because people think of me as like this like role model and like I do everything. So like, if I like ask for help, then what are people going to think of me now? I’m not going to have that same social image. So, just that fear of breaking this perfect perception that everyone has of you can stand as a big barrier, and people won’t really notice your struggles because you feel pressured to keep up that image. So that’s like similar to what Serrat said, that’s one of the biggest barriers.

Orly: Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I’ve assumed many leadership roles at my school, and like I think it’s a rarity for a teacher to really check in or like ask me how I’m doing, just in general, whereas there’s a student in my English class who consistently comes in late, falls asleep in class, he’s a lot more visually struggling, you know, than if I’m having a very rough day or I’m very tired, I tend to just kind of mask it and try to stay astute, I guess. So I think just something that’s important for educators and even just anyone who works with youth in general to know is that anyone can be having internal battles, and everyone looks differently when they are dealing with that. So I think there’s no real way to know who is really struggling, and that’s part of the challenge. So just being open and posing as a support system and being ready to just receive any information from a student or coworker who wants to confide in you. I think that’s just important.

Natalie Tamburello: This is the last question, and then I’ll open it up for questions from the audience. If you could change one thing in Bay Area schools, families, or the community to improve teen mental health this year, what would it be?

Saisha: Honestly like just normalizing conversations between like counselors and teachers and students. Like Orly said, it is pretty rare in my school too for a teacher to check in on almost anyone actually just because my school recently went through like budget cuts, so a lot of new teachers got hired, and they’re already juggling so much. And the counselors have hundreds of students each, and especially during like scheduling and writing recs. It gets a lot for them, and there’s clearly not enough support, especially in my district after the budget cuts. A lot of like our wellness center resources also got cut, so that definitely doesn’t help with the stigma already and them cutting out these resources when they need to definitely paints like a picture of how much they prioritize mental health and how many students seek these resources. 

That kind of ties into the second thing, which is just creating more accessible spaces. My school, like I said, has a wellness center, but there’s also a time limit for how long we’re allowed to spend there. And for me, one time I came from a building all the way on the other side of campus, and it took me like five minutes to walk, and the time limit is like ten minutes. So like, little things like that, expanding those and having our administrators more understanding of the fact that we need a little bit more than ten minutes to actually relieve some stress and like make a difference. 

And then again, increasing support at schools. Like I can speak for my counselors, they’re already so overwhelmed and I understand like how they feel because it’s like difficult for them to also make that time to check in with each student that they think might be struggling and make that time. So, definitely adding more resources and maybe more specialized support for mental health specifically and for these check-ins would be really, really helpful.

Seerat: My suggestion also goes to schools. I think that it would be beneficial for schools to talk more about mental health openly in classes and advisories. So this would include like social emotional learning, emotional literacy, and also how to ground ourselves when we’re feeling stressed. I think that’s like a big thing that sometimes gets overlooked in advisories. And also, as we’ve touched upon earlier, destigmatizing asking for help. And sometimes, we don’t ask for help because it seems like it’s a weakness if we do. And so we can use programs, like advisory that are already built into our school day to reverse this narrative.

Ben: I agree with everything that’s been said so far. But I think just making these conversations a lot more common and a lot more frequent, I would say and make them a lot less crisis-based instead of just talking to someone, right as like something, you’re in a crisis, you know? Like, talking to people more regularly. Talking to someone, like, every week or just talk to someone, more, more frequent. Because I think you really should be normalized just talking to people before it can turn into a really bad crisis.

Natalie Tamburello: Since most of you mentioned educators not necessarily knowing how to handle mental health challenges or being overwhelmed, CHC just did launch a tool called Ellis. And it’s a tool specifically for educators to help manage mental health challenges and learning issues in the classroom. I’ll now open it up for questions. I’ll repeat it for the recording.

Younger populations, middle school, elementary school, what trends we’re seeing in their mental health challenges and what you would recommend from your own experience to professionals and parents in the room.

Ben: Well, in my experience, I would say I definitely had a harder time because I moved here in fourth grade. So, I was, like, a transfer student. I moved to elementary school, and people weren’t very welcoming here, and they weren’t very accepting. So, I would say just having people just kind of watching the classrooms to see how everyone’s kind of being, if they’re being included or not, and having people monitor that and having someone to talk to because a lot of these kids, you can’t really tell with it. You have to, like, talk to them really. And, like, a lot of people, they get overlooked a lot, and I feel like there could just be more people, someone, a counselor or someone for them to talk to, you know? I wish I had someone to talk to because I really didn’t have anyone when I transferred here. But yeah, I just think just having more support for the kids and just not overlooking them and listening to them really.

Orly: Even just from when I was in elementary school to now, there’s been a big change in terms of device usage, like, the extent of my use of it was, like, playing Roblox, and probably that’s it. And nowadays, you’re seeing children sometimes even younger than elementary school who are on social media platforms consuming whatever’s out there. And I think, when children, especially that young, are witnessing the very weird world of the internet that young, it can create a lot of signs of red flag behaviors just of them trying to replicate what they see online, things like that, what their friend who saw something is talking about. So, I think it’s a scarier time just because a lot of things are unregulated, and it’s kind of just an inevitability of being, especially in this area, that most children are very exposed to technology and figure out how to use it pretty quickly because, you know, you’re being raised with it.

So I think, especially in schools, just kind of making sure to listen in on what’s being said, what’s being talked about in the classroom, just kid to kid because I think, especially, you know, elementary/middle school, people tend to just talk about, like, what they see online, pop culture stuff, and a lot of it can be very, very damaging to see, especially at any age, but especially young. So I think just being aware that there’s a lot of things that are available for them to consume that honestly no one should.

Natalie Tamburello: Any school initiatives or maybe nonprofit initiatives or any programs that have been implemented at your schools or within your friend group that have helped take the pressure off of performance?

Seerat: One thing that our school did is that during our two weeks of AP testing, they actually stopped all classes. So instead, we had what we call intersession at our school. And so we had, like, a whole school bonding, and it was two weeks, and it was a whole program. And that really helped take off the pressure of academics and school with APs. So all we really had were just APs. 

And also, not from school, I’m part of Taarika Foundation, and so along with that, we do really help instill in young children mindfulness practices. And that’s not a program, but I feel like that’s something that can be used on the go any minute when we need something to ground ourselves in times when we’re feeling really anxious or stressed. 

Saisha:Yeah, I would say one of the best people, like, in a classroom that can help mitigate this culture is teachers because they’re always around students having these conversations. And I can speak for AIM, something that AIM has done recently is starting to implement trainings for teachers to be able to recognize when these conversations are happening in a classroom and how to kind of step in and mitigate the impact that it could have on someone’s mental health or, like, steer the subject away from academics and into a fun project or what they are doing over the weekend or things like that. So, I would say those trainings are really helping teachers understand when they should step in and how they can step in and exactly what to say. Because obviously teachers probably don’t speak the language of teenagers, but they can try to adapt and find ways to get involved in those conversations since they’re the ones that are constantly in the room where a lot of those talks happen. So that’s one thing that I’ve seen AIM doing in a lot of different districts.

Orly: Yeah, actually kinda similar with Safe Space, we have a variety of specifically catered workshops, like depending on what audience we’re trying to reach. So we have, how to help your friend in need, how to help your student in need from a teacher perspective, how to help your child in need from a parent perspective. And I think having events and informational sessions to kind of show people, like, this is something that you should maybe listen to because there are better ways to approach things than you may think. Because I feel like, again, like we were talking about in the beginning, the times are very different now, so, advice and support that may have helped maybe even just five, ten years ago is ineffective today.

So by keeping up with relevant research and trends and information that’s being put out there by such wonderful organizations like that is a very great way to kind of stay in the loop and help people just remember how to see people as people instead of just metrics and GPA and all of that. Because it really does consume in this area, both the family, the kid, the teachers. Like, I have a lot of teachers that really want to know, like, where you’re going to college and will ask the whole class. And obviously, some people are very proud and excited about college, but others may have not had a great experience or are taking an alternative pathway, which I feel like is not talked about enough in this area, that there’s so much more you can do than just college. So I just think staying aware of how things can come across because I know that there’s a lot of curiosity around how people are doing academically and whether they’re going to college, but just being aware that not everyone has the same feelings around it.

Natalie Tamburello: We have time for one more question.

So can you define what mental health means to you? Since so many programs are crisis management, what does it look like to have a program potentially or topics that would be covered that are not crisis level around mental health?

Ben: Yeah, I would define mental health just really just how you feel and how you, like, mentally feel about yourself and like what your mood is and how you’re doing really. And then, to speak on the conversations in the classrooms, I would say introducing it at a younger age. I feel like we don’t really talk about mental health until high school really. I feel like making it more normal and, like, treating it more like, as like a sickness. Mental health and physical health, they go hand in hand. They’re, like, very similar and everyone struggles. So, I think just normalizing it and making sure that everyone knows the difference of mental health, and that everyone struggles with it and just really educating people.

Seerat: I think we define physical health as how fit are you physically and, like, how strong are you. And so I think, like, if we apply the same analogy to mental health, it’s like how resilient are you, how flexible are you, and how much, like, emotional literacy do you have? So that’s how I would define mental health. And in classrooms, like Ben mentioned, I think it’s necessary that we start talking and teaching it starting elementary school. 

Our school did start in middle school, but I don’t think it was like implemented great in a way that we were all able to take in the information. So I think starting from a younger age, and there’s so many different card games that speakers and these great professors have made for emotional literacy and these different games they’ve made to, like, identify emotions, and there’s, like, Kimochi. So I think starting off and teaching children in a fun way through games in ways that they will enjoy learning about their emotions so that when they’re growing older, they’re not thinking “Oh, this is like a taboo thing,” but this is like something that’s just as important as my physical health, so that they keep that ingrained as they grow older.

Saisha: Yeah, I think similar to what’s been said, mental health really wasn’t a thing for me until high school, like especially after I moved. Because after I moved, like I was expecting it to be hard, obviously, because I didn’t know anyone here, and I had to start fresh. But I felt very, like, isolated emotionally all the time. So for me, like kind of tying back into how I would define mental health is just like, how do you feel emotionally? Like Seerat said, like physical health was always a thing for me. You go to the doctor, right, for a well checkup, and it’s like: “Oh, are you doing well?” Like blood pressure, whatever, heart rate. But just like emotionally checking in on yourself and seeing, how do I feel when I wake up in the morning? Do I feel like supported, and like, am I excited to like go to school today? And just what is bothering me today in my mind? Just that feeling of like how I’m doing emotionally is what I’ve come to tie to mental health. And then one of the best ways, everyone has been saying, to mitigate the stigma is just to make mental health something normal since like elementary school, honestly. Like, put it in the curriculum bring in more like social-emotional/wellbeing curriculum into what you’re feeding kids since they’re very young, so that it’s not something that hits you in high school. Like it stays with you continuously. And then I think that’ll help, honestly, reduce a lot of the stigma around it because it’s not something that people are getting hit with and like nobody’s talking about. If we can bring it in when kids are young, it’s just, it’s always going to be with them. It’s something that they prioritize.

Natalie Tamburello: I just want to point out that’s beyond SEL curriculum. Because I think that there’s SEL curriculum that’s really like a hot thing to do in schools right now, even in elementary school, but mental health is a full step beyond that.

Orly: Yeah. I think, mental health encapsulates a lot of different areas because there’s physical health, spiritual health, social health, just a lot of different factors that just make up who you are that at any time can derail your mental health. So, I think just kind of taking it into account from a well-rounded perspective, just where are you at in your life, and, like, how do you feel about each area, that kind of determines how you feel mentally. And I think in schools definitely since the pandemic, there’s been, like, an increase in mental health being talked about and more commonly, but also because so many people are struggling now, it’s kind of also left unsaid because it’s a common thing. That’s why there’s weird nuance there of, you know, everyone kind of has had a run-in with bad mental health, yet not everyone talks about it. So I think just as an educator, implementing, like, a lot of teachers do, like, daily check-ins and things with your table group or things like that, which can seem, like, superficial or just to do it for the sake, but, honestly, it really helps set kind of a more, like, a welcoming vibe in the classroom. And I think it’s very just, simple and effective. So just it doesn’t always have to be a super formal presentation on this is mental health. It can just be implemented as small check-ins or games or Kahoots or anything.

Natalie Tamburello: What’s one message you want everyone in the room, parents, teens, experts in this space to walk away with?

Orly: I think the main takeaway for everyone should be that there are many unknowns in this day and age, and because of that health in general, and especially mental health, are very easily affected and there’s a lot of just instability in the world, and so that rubs off on people. So just kind of being careful with when and where you’re talking about what I think is the takeaway because you never know what someone is dealing with outside of the conversation you’re having with them.

Saisha: Yeah, going off of what Orly said about things like constantly changing, I would say that teenagers in general, and I think everyone honestly is living in a very unstable world. Like, things change without notice, and we’re constantly going through changes, and people are always going to be stressed and feel that pressure on them. And that’s why it’s so important for everyone, honestly, to find a way to manage the pressure and maintain their mental health no matter what they’re going through. So finding those resources and helping people find the support they need, especially now, like in today’s world, is going to be one of the most important things to focus on.

So mental health in general just needs to be brought to the forefront, and people need to realize that with the constant amount of stress that’ll come with these changes, we need to just find ways and find people to confide in and be that support system for someone else and just in general, maintain like a healthy form of coping and just with the changes that are happening.

Seerat: Yeah. I think a key point from today’s session was that of the importance of mental health and like the importance of destigmatizing it. Right now it’s such a taboo to even talk about it, and I feel like we need to be able to destigmatize and talk about it and bring it to the forefront and not be afraid to ask for help. And that’s what it would look like for us youth. But as we just talked about in the previous question, I think that also begins with now the younger children and teaching them from a young age through these fun activities that mental health is just as important as your physical.

Ben: Mental health is just so important, and just how young kids just get random colds, you know? And just, like, it’s the same for mental health. We all struggle at different times, and it can be random. It can be at any point of your life, and it can last a week, or it can last a month, or it can last a year. You never know. That’s why you need to really listen to children, and listen to teens and young adults about their problems and make sure that they’re getting the help that they need. And just really making sure that everyone is heard.

Natalie Tamburello: Well, thank you all for coming today. Round of applause. I just want to acknowledge they all helped plan this and all the questions. We met, like, three times. Appreciate you all for being so involved in this process and not just, like, showing up and answering questions, but being involved in how it looked and how it felt. So thanks, everybody.

Cindy Lopez: Thank you for listening to this special Voices of Compassion episode. To learn more about CHC’s free resources, parent support groups, and community education programs, visit us at chconline.org. If you found this conversation helpful, please subscribe and share it with a parent, educator, or a caregiver that you know.

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