DOOM SCROLLING
The New Yorker|October 07, 2024
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
ANDREW SOLOMON
DOOM SCROLLING

Lori and Avery Schott wondered about the right age for their three children to have smartphones. For their youngest, Annalee, they settled on thirteen. They'd held her back in school a year, because she was small for her age and struggled academically.

She'd been adopted from a Russian orphanage when she was two, and they thought that she might possibly have mild fetal alcohol syndrome. "Anna was very literal," Lori told me when I visited the family home. "If you said, 'Go jump in a lake,' she'd go, 'Why would he jump in the lake?"" When Anna was starting high school, the family moved from Minnesota to a ranch in eastern Colorado, and she seemed to thrive. She won prizes on the rodeo circuit, making friends easily. In her journal, she wrote that freshman year was "the best ever."

But in her sophomore year, Lori said, Anna became "distant and snarly and a little isolated from us." She was constantly on her phone, which became a point of conflict. "I would make her put it upstairs at night," Lori said. “She'd get angry at me." Lori eventually peeked at Anna's journal and was shocked by what she read. "It was like, I'm not pretty. Nobody likes me. I don't fit in,'"" she recalled.

Though Lori knew Anna would be furious at her for snooping, she confronted her. "We're going to get you to talk to a counsellor," she said. Lori searched in ever-widening circles to find a therapist with availability until she landed on someone in Boulder, more than two hours away. Anna resisted the idea, but once she started she was eager to keep going.

Denne historien er fra October 07, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra October 07, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA THE NEW YORKERSe alt
SUBJECT AND OBJECT
The New Yorker

SUBJECT AND OBJECT

What happened when Lillian Ross profiled Ernest Hemingway.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
ROYAL FLUSH
The New Yorker

ROYAL FLUSH

The fall of red.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
Roz Chast on George Booth's Cartoons
The New Yorker

Roz Chast on George Booth's Cartoons

There's almost nothing I like more than a laughing fit. It is a non-brain response, like an orgasm or a sneeze.

time-read
2 mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
CHUKA
The New Yorker

CHUKA

I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being. Sometimes we live for years with yearnings that we cannot name.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
Rachel Aviv on Janet Malcolm's "Trouble in the Archives"
The New Yorker

Rachel Aviv on Janet Malcolm's "Trouble in the Archives"

As Janet Malcolm worked on \"Trouble in the Archives,\" a two-part piece about prominent psychoanalysts who disagreed about Freud, she began a correspondence with Kurt Eissler, the head of the Sigmund Freud Archives.

time-read
3 mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
PERSONAL HISTORY - A VISIT TO MADAM BEDI
The New Yorker

PERSONAL HISTORY - A VISIT TO MADAM BEDI

I was estranged from my own mother, so a friend tried to lend me his.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
AMERICAN CHRONICLES - WAR OF WORDS
The New Yorker

AMERICAN CHRONICLES - WAR OF WORDS

Editors, writers, and the making of a magazine.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
LIVE FROM NEW YORK
The New Yorker

LIVE FROM NEW YORK

A new docuseries commemorates fifty years of \"Saturday Night Live.\"

time-read
6 mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
TANGLED WEB
The New Yorker

TANGLED WEB

An arachnophobe pays homage to the spider.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
The New Yorker

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Mike White's mischievous morality plays.

time-read
10+ mins  |
February 17-24, 2025 (Double Issue)