YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – It’s difficult to find a teenager who doesn’t have a social media account, but Mahoning County mental health professionals say moderation, conversation and supervision can help keep youth safe online.
Laura Domitrovich, director of youth programs at the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board, says that during and after the pandemic, people became more aware of the mental health crisis with children and teenagers.
“A lot of people attributed that to the pandemic and while that was definitely a factor, it really just exacerbated an already existing problem,” she says.
Research shows that the rapid increase in social media use among youth and teens is a major factor, Domitrovich says. One reason is that some children gain access to social media at a time that coincides with fundamental shifts in their brain development, she offers.
“Around the ages of between 10 and 12 years old, there’s a shift that’s going on with our children’s brains, where their reward center for attention is really being turned on,” Domitrovich says. They’re seeking that attention and approval, specifically from their peers, and social media feeds into that.
Lucy Golden-Frayte, a counselor at Meridian Healthcare in Boardman, reports an increase too.
“A lot of times when adolescents come in, they’re struggling with anxiety and depression, and oftentimes social media does play a factor…,” she says.
Those adolescents may not link their problems to social media, but they may be experiencing decreased sleep, more agitation or they’re constantly comparing themselves to others, Golden-Frayte adds. That may lead to them portraying a false reality of their lives on social media to try to keep up with those they perceive as competition.
“So, when people have anxiety or depression that’s related to social media, it’s often because they’re trying to deal with how people perceive them,” Golden-Frayte says. “They want people to perceive them in a positive way.”
Young people often struggle to regulate their emotions, so social media may add to that difficulty, she points out.
“In my experience, I see a lot more girls coming in with struggles with social media, and a lot of times too, it affects how they feel about their bodies – how they feel about their self-esteem,” the Meridian counselor adds.
Social media has positive aspects though. “It can help kids with connection,” Domitrovich says.
If a child’s friend moves away, social media provides a way for them to keep in touch, Golden-Frayte adds. It’s also a way for them to express themselves.
WHAT TO DO
Golden-Frayte urges parents to oversee their children’s social media and computer use, monitoring what websites a child visits, how often they’re online and making sure people they’re talking to are safe. Moderation is important, she says.
Domitrovich, mother of three children in their teens and early 20s, goes a step further. Her children weren’t allowed to have smartphones until they were 13 and they had to wait until they turned 15 to get a social media account.
“And there’s a lot of research to back that up, that children younger than 13 really don’t necessarily have the developmental capacity to be able to handle everything that comes along with having a smartphone,” she says, acknowledging there could be safety reasons a child may need a phone earlier.
Not all children are the same though and she says parents need to understand their kids’ developmental levels and emotional wellbeing.
“If I have a daughter who already is really struggling with body image and may be having some tendencies toward an eating disorder or things like that, I really don’t think I want her to be getting on certain social media platforms that just might exacerbate those problems,” Domitrovich explains.
Parents talking to their children about how social media makes them feel is another strategy she suggests.
“We can help our kids maybe come up with a usage plan where they have limits on how many hours of their day, or minutes of their day, are they going to allow themselves to be on certain social media platforms,” Domitrovich adds.
CYBERBULLYING, SEXTORTION
Social media also can provide a vehicle for cyberbullying and sextortion. While bullying is nothing new, what makes cyberbullying different is the scope.
Golden-Frayte says cyberbullying happens on a public platform, distinguishing it from other forms of bullying.
“So, then everybody can see it, or people can screenshot it,” she explains. “People can really manipulate the situation for what they want it to be, and that’s a lot harder to cope with and deal with, versus a verbal fight in person, where it might be isolated.”
Domitrovich agrees.
“Somebody engaging in cyberbullying can take a very embarrassing picture and spread it throughout an entire school or wider than that,” she says. A cyberbully may also use social media to spread rumors and lies about another young person.
She says cyberbullying is repetitive, willful and involves intent to do harm.
Sexting can also be an issue, although separate from social media.
“It’s alarming to me how normalized sexting has become,” Domitrovich says. “I sit on the child assault prosecution team for Trumbull County, and every month, we review child abuse cases, and kids don’t realize but if a child sends a nude photo to another child, that’s a crime.”
Parents need to be aware of sextortion, she stresses. Children and teens with public accounts may be more vulnerable. A predator studies a teen’s social media accounts and a young person who may be socially withdrawn could be prey for human traffickers.
Sextortion involves an adult studying a young person’s social media account and then posing as another young person to befriend them and establish a romantic relationship. Those predators target children who are popular and who seem to come from families of means.
“They try to target those kids that have the most to lose, socially and with their reputation and so forth,” Domitrovich says, adding that teen boys are singled out more often than girls.
The predator persuades the young person to send a compromising photo and then demands money, threatening to send the image to the teen’s friends, classmates and family.
“In extreme cases this can lead to suicide,” Domitrovich says. “And what the research has found with kids that do end up dying by suicide after experiencing sextortion is it happens within 24 to 48 hours.”
While there’s a perception that once something is on the internet, it’s there forever, there are organizations that can get such photos and information removed, she says.
SUICIDE INCREASE
In Mahoning County, the number of suicides has been increasing across all age groups since 2021, reports Duane Piccirilli, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board.
In 2024, 56 people killed themselves including three who were 19 or younger. So far this year, the total number of suicides in the county is 10 with three of them people 19 or younger. Last year, the largest number, 11, was in the 20 to 29 age bracket.
Lee A. DeVita, MCMHRB program coordinator, says the agency has a fatality review committee that includes representatives from the health, coroner’s and sheriff’s departments. Committee members work to determine what was going on in the suicide victim’s life. Coming from different agencies, members offer different perspectives and information gleaned may be helpful with prevention, DeVita says.
Piccirilli says one way MCMHRB helps with children’s mental health is funding a portion of the salary of what’s called a navigator who works with the educational service center.
“She kind of is our boots on the ground for the schools,” he explains. “If there is a suicide or an act of violence, she’s able to coordinate, contact us, have school counselors involved.”
Piccirilli says parents should watch for warning signs: personality changes, giving away prized possessions, talking about death and making it seem normal. Those signs are similar regardless of age.
“It’s okay to sit down and have communication with your child and ask if they’re sad,” he says. “You can directly ask them, ‘have you ever thought about harming yourself?’” That opens up the conversation.
If a parent is concerned, Piccirilli urges them to call 988.
Another thing to be aware of is that a suicide by a friend or family member can be contagious, prompting others to follow, he says.
The Mahoning County LOSS Team helps those whose loved ones have committed suicide, DeVita says. Team members, some of whom have lost loved ones to suicide, provide support and comfort to others who are experiencing that loss.
MCMHRB, in cooperation with the National Alliance on Mental Illness Ohio, also provides crisis response team training to law enforcement officers across the county.
Like many professions though, there is a need for more staff. Fewer people are entering the mental health counseling field at public agencies, the executive director says, despite it being a good profession.
To discourage suicide, the MCMHRB, through a partnership with the veterans’ administration, offers free gun locks.
“The reason for the gun locks is they had found that if they can postpone a suicide even a few minutes, the people may think differently,” Piccirilli says. “It gives them some time to think about what they’re doing.”
Pictured at top: Lee DeVita, program coordinator of the Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board, and Duane Piccirilli, executive director, stand in the agency’s Youngstown office.