By Michelle Powers
Clutched in the hand of nearly every teen is a smart phone buzzing, beeping and blinking with notifications.
Kaitlyn Chesleigh, a freshman at the Mary Louis Academy, says that social media is one of the main causes of her debilitating anxiety.
Instagram models and snap chat sex symbols flood the feeds of most high school girls: females posing, filtering and even photoshopping themselves to complete a look that’s both unbelievably pleasing and unnatural.
“Adults and my parents, they just don’t get it. They didn’t grow up with this pressure,” Kaitlyn explained.
“You see these photos everyday and you’re just like, this is what a female should look like,” she said. “I wish I was so comfortable that I could have a free feed: I post what I want to post and i don’t care what other people think.”
That’s also not the case for sophomore Ashley Jordan Matthews, who won’t post a picture of herself online unfiltered. In fact, she hardly posts any pictures of herself at all.
“I couldn’t breath, my chest was so tight,” she explained, recalling how her first panic attack in middle school was spurred by not fitting in with that idea of perfection.
She’s not the only one who shares in this experience.
Researchers have stated that those who spend more time on social media are more likely to be sad or depressed, especially teenage girls, who are twice as likely to have anxiety over the technology than boys.
It’s a trend that Mary Louis Academy psychologist Christina Sama Bommarito has noticed herself, saying how smart devices are perpetually attached to students’ hands.
But, the addiction is only part of the problem.
“You’re dwelling on things in the past that you can no longer change, and you’re worried about what your future is going to hold,” Christina said.
In an age of unprecedented girl power, young women are striving for everything and anything to the point of obsessing over the slightest setbacks or mistakes.
These teens have felt the pressure to be it all because they can: ambitious, smart, athletic, pretty, nice and popular, both online and off.
That strive for greatness even impressed their principal, Sister Kathleen McKinney, C.S.J..
“The pressure of society is there and we aren’t going backwards, we just have to learn to deal with it,” Sister McKinney said.
That’s why the Mary Louis Academy students now meditate over the public address system, once a week, school-wide for ten minutes.
Students say the silence and breathing techniques are working, helping to reduce their stress, improve their mental health and put down their phones.
“Now is when they learn to build a tool kit” to face these obstacles, Christina said.
The exercises aim to help the girls appreciate all that they have already accomplished and prepare them to take on their next battle: remembering they are enough, not as social media models, but as children of God.
“The idea is to empower ourselves to deal with them, to then go inside and find that place of empowerment, to find that place that says we are loved,” said Sister McKinney.
With that, no obstacle is too big.