Monitoring Social Media and Technology Use to Prevent Youth Suicide and School Violence
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Monitoring Social Media and Technology Use to Prevent Youth Suicide and School Violence Jason Byars 1 & Emily Graybill 2
&
Quynh Wellons 3 & Lonny Harper 4
# California Association of School Psychologists 2020
Abstract With suicide as the second leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 10 and 34 and with mass school shootings averaging once per year, schools are exploring ways to prevent this seemingly increase in youth suicide and other forms of youth violence. School-based prevention initiatives such as social/emotional learning curricula, school-based mental health services, and internal threat assessment protocols are becoming more prevalent. Along with these prevention efforts, increases in youth use of technology and social media have created a market for social media monitoring companies that use algorithms to analyze youth social media posts for threats of harm toward themselves or others. School districts contract with these social media monitoring companies for assistance in identifying youth who may be at risk for violence. The purpose of this article is to describe one school district’s experience using social media monitoring programs as part of their comprehensive school violence prevention and mental health promotion effort. The school district was alerted to many students who made suicidal and homicidal threats on social media and after identifying those students, the students were able to receive referrals for mental health support. Keywords Technology use monitoring . Social media monitoring . Mental health . Suicide prevention
In the Internet age, the use of social media is undeniably pervasive and has become a common part of daily life for American teenagers. The Internet has become one of the primary places for teens to “hang out” with their friends, and having an online presence has become synonymous with establishing one’s social identity (Rafla et al. 2014). Social media refers to any web-based form of communication that provides a forum for social engagement and interaction in which users can consume and create content (Guinta and John 2018; Reid and Weigle 2014). Teenagers today have a more prominent presence online than they ever have in the past. According to studies done by the Pew Research Center
* Emily Graybill [email protected] 1
Georgia Department of Education, Atlanta, GA, USA
2
Center for Leadership in Disability, School of Public Health, Georgia State University, 75 Piedmont Ave NE, Suite 514, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
3
College of Education and Human Development, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
4
Griffin-Spalding County Schools, Griffin, GA, USA
(2018) and Common Sense Media (2018), the number of teens with access to a smartphone has skyrocketed. Specifically, 95% of teens have access to a smartphone as reported by the Pew Research Center (2018). Common Sense Media (2018) found that 89% of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have their own smartphones, a twofold increase of teen smartphone ownership reported in 2012. In addition to smart
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