Submitted by Denair Unified School District
Collin Kartchner didn’t set out to be an expert on cyberbullying. He was a full-time video producer who posted satirical sketches on Instagram, where he has a big following.
Collin Kartchner didn’t set out to be an expert on cyberbullying. He was a full-time video producer who posted satirical sketches on Instagram, where he has a big following.
But
in 2016, the Utah man ran into an old friend. Her name was Roxanne. He asked
about her daughter, Whitney, whom he had known when she was a child.
Tragically, Roxanne said Whitney, at age 23, had committed suicide. Sadly,
Kartchner learned, Whitney had become heavily involved in social media, which
her mother blamed for her death.
“When
she was 14 or 15, she was spending all her time social media and she was
scrolling through these beautiful, curated photos of models and perfect people
and she started feeling really bad about herself,” Kartchner told students at Denair High School
on Tuesday. “And it led to depression, which then led to self-harming, which
then led to addiction, which then led to her death.”
Kartchner
felt he needed to do what he could to prevent similar tragedies.
“If
we don’t stop this problem, it’s only going to get worse,” he said in one of
his videos. “Adults can more easily understand that photos are manipulated or
touched up, but kids don’t see that. They look at it and say, ‘Why is my life
not like that?’ I shared that and I was flooded with hundreds of stories
saying, ‘That was my daughter, that was my neighbor, that was my grandson. This
same thing happened.’ ”
Kartchner
decided to use his own social media platform – he has nearly 100,000 Instagram followers
– to warn teens and their parents about the dangers of cyberbullying and social
media addiction.
He
created the hashtag #SaveTheKids to amplify his message. He produced videos
aimed at teens and adults, and began to speak to audiences around the country. It
is that campaign that brought him to Denair on Tuesday.
Everywhere
he speaks, he asks teens to accept what he calls “the Collin Challenge:”
- Take a week off
social media each month to “reset your brain”
- Get/give eight hugs a
day for a minimum of 8 seconds
- Start sharing more
authenticity and positivity. Show others it is OK to be real.
- Don’t participate in
any kind of cyberbullying. Cut it off when you see it.
- Do something awesome
and DON’T share it
- Fail at something and
SHARE it proudly
- Unfollow every
account on Instagram or Snapchat that doesn’t make you happy
“My
challenge is for teens to connect in real life,” Kartchner said. “Put your
phone down. Don’t let social media tell you what you are worth. You will never
be happy if you are chasing numbers and followers. You don’t have to follow accounts
just because others do. Don’t follow accounts that make you judge yourself or
make you feel less or inadequate.”
He
readily admits he’s not a counselor or a psychiatrist, but said experts he has
talked with are convinced there is a link between social media use and an
increase in the teen suicide rate. He equated the addiction to social media to
cocaine and said it “ruins lives.”
“They
say giving a smart phone with social media and untethered access to all these
apps with no training and no guidance is like handing the keys to a car with no
driver’s ed,” Kartchner said. “So how do we sit here in shock wondering why
kids are crashing and burning every single day.”
He
emphasizes to teens that what they read and see on social media often does not
reflect reality.
“We
want to change the narrative with social media and how it’s affecting us to
make us feel like we’re not enough,” Kartchner said. “To be able say that you
are enough, that you are perfect the way you are. That you don’t need to
compare yourself to people who are putting perfect photos that have been staged
with an entire team, with professional makeup artists. That’s not real. Let’s
just be happy with who we are.”
One
of his main messages is that parents and their children must reconnect.
“What
are we doing spending all day scrolling through other people’s photos that we
don’t know?” he asked. “Why are we spending eight hours looking for validation
from strangers we’ve never met? Let’s put our phone down. Let’s spend time with
our kids. Let’s go make memories. Let’s go enjoy life.”
Kartchner
held a separate meeting just for parents Tuesday afternoon at Denair Middle School.
And he spent lunch talking about social media with Denair Superintendent Terry
Metzger, school administrators from Hilmar and Keyes, officials from Sierra
Vista Children and Family Services and Legacy Health Endowment, and about two
dozen other adults.
“My
big takeaways,” said Metzger, “were that he stressed the need to help build
empathy in students, how we can empower students to use social media to share
positive messages and how can we help parents.
“He
talked about the ‘trust dance’ between parents and children, and how taking
phones away or giving them back as a punishment or reward doesn’t work. He
emphasized there is no shaming or blaming of parents, but that we must be real
about the world we live in and that kids need parents to help them navigate
social media.”
