Two tribal nations are accusing social media companies of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth.
But Native youth are particularly vulnerable to these companies’ addictive “profit-driven design choices,” given historic teen suicide rates and mental health issues across Indian Country, chairperson Lonna Jackson-Street of the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota said in a press release. New York City, its schools and public hospital system accuse the platforms of fueling a childhood mental health crisis that’s disrupting learning and draining resources. School boards in Ontario, Canada, claim teachers are struggling because platforms designed for compulsive use “have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn.”
Snap Inc. said it provides an alternative to a feed of online content. “We will always have more work to do, and will continue to work to make Snapchat a platform that helps close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence,” the company’s statement said.Native Americans experience higher rates of suicide than any other racial demographic in the U.S.
But “they also might experience discrimination online. And social media companies don’t always have great, helpful policies for managing that,” said Andrea Wiglesworth, an enrolled member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation and Shawnee Tribe who researches stress in Native populations at the University of Minnesota.
What researchers do know is that as an adolescent’s brain develops, it builds and strengthens the connections that guide responses for a variety of human interactions while it creates more receptors for oxytocin and dopamine. This is the brain’s reward system, Prinstein said, and it manifests in adolescents a need for both positive feedback and concern about social punishments.