Did you know, our social connectivity (hanging our and talking with friends in person) is as much of an indicator for how long you’ll live as your obesity, smoking and physical inactivity?

🚨 Let’s be real—kids today are navigating a world that’s faster and more challenging than ever before. From the pressure of social media, violent content to sextortion, the digital world is throwing challenges at young people that they don’t always know how to handle—let alone talk about.

💡 The problem? Many teens won’t tell adults what they’re going through because they don’t want to lose their phones. Meanwhile, their mental health is taking hit after hit. Anxiety, isolation, and trauma are at an all-time high, and we can’t just scroll past this conversation anymore.

In this episode of Mental, we sit down with Elizabeth Clark, a mental health therapist who’s spent years working in schools, juvenile jails, and trauma-informed care. She’s seen firsthand how technology is reshaping the way teens handle relationships, emotions, and self-worth.

📍 What we’re diving into:

• The hidden ways social media is keeping teens in fight-or-flight mode.
• How doomscrolling and exposure to violent/explicit content is rewiring young brains.
• Why kids don’t talk to adults about online dangers (and how we can change that).
• The #1 way to increase mental health. Spoler alert - it's not an "attention grabbing" answer.
• How to build emotional discipline in a world that makes it easy to quit, cancel, and move on.

🔥 Here’s the truth: We’ve never been more digitally connected—and yet people feel more alone than ever. But there’s a way forward. And it starts with honest conversations, building and sustaining your mental resilience, and learning to take control of your mind instead of letting algorithms control it for you.

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and let’s talk about how to actually protect and strengthen your mental health in a world that’s constantly testing it.