Part 1 MLA citation:
NBC NEWS. (n.d.). How the pandemic has affected America’s mental … – youtube. April 28, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYE-cNQ576s. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.
Part 2 Summary:
This 7:12 minute video presents Sarah Inman and how she feels about the pandemic affecting teens’ mental health. Some facts from the CDC and personal interviews with teens were also presented throughout the video. Inman’s own daughter took her own life because according to her, her daughter’s mental health worsened during the pandemic. The director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, claims that suicide attempts and drug overdoses increased in high school students during Covid-19. Insurance says that people between the ages of 13-and 18 that purposely harmed themselves, went up 90% in March 2020. This is compared to the previous year and shockingly went up to almost 100% in April 2020. CDC states that even kids from ages 5 to 11 are going through similar situations as teens. From April 2020 to October 2020, children who have been to the hospital for mental health visits went up by 24% compared to 2019. As stated by Dr. Alysha Thompson, a doctor at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, the hospital has been way more packed than it usually is and she’s never seen anything like it before. The psychiatric unit at this hospital has only 41 beds. They take about 1,500 kids per year while the emergency room unit takes 170 patients per week for suicide attempts. Dr. Roseanne Kapana, the founder of the Global Institute of Children’s Mental Health, says that the main problem which affects the mental health of teens is isolation. She also claims that kids have a harder time connecting with others unless they’re physically in the classroom. Because of isolation and online schooling, screen time has also gone up by 50%. This results in kids spending more time on social media, which has a negative impact on teens’ mental health. According to Matthew Taylor, a tech critic, some say getting likes on their posts gives them a “dopamine hit” which makes teens more addicted to posting.
Part 3A Reflection:
I agree with what this video presents because it gives multiple points of view with credible facts. Each person that was being interviewed had personal experience with either battling mental health issues or helping children/teens struggling with anxiety and depression. What this source tells me about my research question is that isolation has had a great impact on the mental health of adolescents. What you do during the pandemic and how you cope with the changes in the environment can also affect your mentality. For example, in the video, I connected to the part where Matthew Taylor mentioned that teens are becoming more addicted to social media. Spending a great amount of time on social media makes teens start comparing themselves to others and that can really mess with the way they view themselves. I selected this source because the interviewees had personal experiences dealing with mental health issues themselves or helped patients rather than just stating their opinions.
Part 3B Rhetorical analysis:
NBC’s intended audience was everybody since it is a news channel. I would say it was mainly geared toward the adults so that they can check up on their kids to see if they’re okay. The genre is effective because NBC is a popular news channel and this will make whoever is watching the news engaged in teens’ mental health. There were credible sources included in the video. The author is credible because NBC is a well-known news channel that covers content for the internet as well as current situations that are going on today.
Part 4 Notable Quotables:
“Everyone said, oh they can handle it, kids are resilient. They essentially had all of these lets downs 2 years in a row.” (Inman, 2021)
“There are so many people that would do anything they possibly could do to help you, you are not alone, it’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay to not be okay.” (Inman, 2021)
