Mental Health & Gen Z: What Educators Need To Know

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Josh Packard. Josh is a social science researcher and the executive director of Springtide Research Institute. He holds a PhD in sociology from Vanderbilt University and previously taught at the college level. And he's the author of Mental Health and Gen Z, What Educators Need to Know.

[00:36] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:39] SPEAKER_00:

Josh, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:41] SPEAKER_01:

Hey, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.

[00:42] SPEAKER_00:

I'm very excited to get right into the report that you and the rest of the Springtide Research Institute have put together on mental health for the young people who are currently in, say, middle school and high school. Let's start with some of the key findings and then maybe back up a little bit. and talk about the work that you do more broadly. What prompted you to conduct this study and put together this substantial report on mental health for young people?

[01:08] SPEAKER_01:

Springtime is going into our third year, and one of the things that we keep hearing as we've been doing research, and I've been giving a lot of presentations about Gen Z to various leaders, is that mental health is really the topic they're hardest to navigate. They're struggling in some cases, and some cases they're not necessarily struggling, but they don't feel like they've got their arms wrapped all the way around it. It wasn't really Springtide's place to come along and say, hey, look, this is an epidemic of mental health issues among young people. I mean, nobody needs one more voice saying that. And so we thought, is there anything for us to offer productive to this conversation that isn't currently getting discussed much? And we are sociologists.

[01:43]

We're a Sociological Research Institute. That means we think in terms of structures by default. And that became the question then that we started grappling with, which is we all know what can and should happen when a young person in your classroom, when a student that you know presents with some sort of mental health crisis. And if you don't know that, those resources are readily accessible and you should certainly get trained on those. I was when I was a college professor, mental health first aid and all that kind of stuff. But what we don't necessarily get much, especially for leaders, is like, how can we build cultures in our schools that are mental health friendly in the first place so that we're not creating the conditions that exacerbate these, you know, sometimes underlying mental health issues and cause these issues to become crises?

[02:23]

Is there anything we can do to sort of either augment things that are already going on in our schools or in some cases, to maybe tweak or do some new things to put young people in a better position to succeed right from the bat. And so that's really what caused us to undertake this whole structure. And I know we're talking about schools today, but we'll be spending the whole next year and a half here. So this one's for educators, religious leaders, a report that will come out in the fall, and parents and employers early next year.

[02:48] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, absolutely universal agreement that this is a topic that deserves attention, that deserves serious action. And as educators, often we see a slice of what's going on in the student's life in the classroom, but there's, of course, a lot that we don't see. And I think many of us as parents and educators are concerned that so much of that that we don't see is taking place on cell phones, on social media. So I know the report is not primarily focused on cell phones and social media, but I have to ask, is that one of the elephants in the room that plays a big role? Absolutely, right?

[03:21] SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it's an inescapable thing. I mean, I've had somebody once after I gave a talk about Gen Z, they stood up and they said, well, but they're always on their phones. And I was like, why? Yes, they're always on their phones. Like there's nothing we're going to do about that. We should be teaching them, obviously, just like we do with any other communication.

[03:38]

We should be teaching them like what is productive use of your time and space here and how to treat others and how do we get new norms in this space that's brand new for a lot of people. It's one thing to just sort of point the finger and say that's the cause of the problem. But that's not what Springtide is about. We're an actionable research institute. We're not just here to diagnose. We want to put tools in the hands of adults who can really make a difference in the life of a young person.

[03:59]

And so while, yes, I think it's important to understand that our young people are just developmentally, your audience knows this, they're no match for the sophisticated algorithms that are trying to to do anything possible to keep them on these platforms. And certainly we should look at the research of that. I have a 12 year old. We do not let him on social media for that exact reason. I'm like, there's an army of PhDs and you are a 12 year old boy. This is not a fair fight.

[04:21]

I think the important thing though, to understand about it and why this generation is so strange when it comes to this is that they're walking around with this consistent sort of like low level cognitive dissonance. So here's what's actually happening. on the one hand, anybody who's interacting with young people face to face, you may find yourself like, it's odd, right? They seem like they can't look you in the eye, they can't have a conversation. Basic social norms seem to have fallen by the wayside, especially because of the pandemic. And yet, if you were to ask the average 16-year-old what's going on in Ukraine, they probably got a much better idea than I would have at 16, and certainly that my parents would have at 16.

[04:59]

So In some ways, you've got them growing up slower in real life than any previous generation, while simultaneously growing up faster online than any previous generation. And so imagine being 14, 15, 16 years old and walking around trying to hold both of these things of like, why don't adults think I'm capable of doing anything? And why do I feel so weird in person? And yet I know more than most of the adults that I'm walking around interacting with about a whole variety of issues. My world is certainly much more diverse than many of the adults that I'm interacting with. But I don't even feel like the prospect of sending back an order because it got to me incorrectly at a table at a restaurant is like terrifying.

[05:36]

Right. So it's not just that we feel that way about young people. They often feel that way about themselves. And then, of course, all of that shows up in our classroom.

[05:43] SPEAKER_00:

So Josh, I understand the report is organized around connections, expectations, and purpose. And I'd love to talk about each of those in turn. First, why do connections matter so much? And what are some things that schools can do to foster connections with students?

[05:57] SPEAKER_01:

Well, we really believe that belonging is the new metric that matters. Like if you could only know one thing about a young person, you want to know if they feel like they belong to any of the groups or organizations that they're a part of. That's actually the first study we did in springtime. They're the loneliest generation that's ever been recorded. At Springtide, by the way, all we study are 13 to 25 year olds. Our data stops at 25 and goes all the way down to 13, as opposed to, you know, like a lot of research you see as 18 and older.

[06:21]

They're the loneliest generation that's ever been recorded. About one in four to one in three of them have one or fewer trusted adult in their life that they can count on. Like sort of eye opening numbers, especially when you realize that like attendance at normal, like sort of places where you would create community and belonging hasn't declined all that much. So like religious attendance, sure, that's fallen. But like athletics, sports, like those are through the roof in the last 10 years. And obviously schools are there like they've always been.

[06:47]

What we've seen though is this really intense decoupling from attendance and belongings. Just because you have one does not mean you can assume that you have the other. And we asked young people explicitly about this and it was true across the board for all the different things that they're involved in. Belonging is more critical than it's ever been. And it's never been more so the case that attendance doesn't necessarily equal belonging. Belonging really is that key part.

[07:13]

We talk about connections a lot because ultimately to get to belonging, it's this three-step process. You have to be noticed, you have to be named, and you have to be known. But you can do a lot of good before you get to belonging. I mean, if you get from noticed and halfway through named, like you're making progress still. So all of that falls into this banner of connections in this framework. When we talk about mentally healthy schools, we're talking about connections, expectations, and purpose.

[07:36]

I'm sure we'll get to the others. But this idea that at a very basic level, feeling like the adults in your school are see you, that they acknowledge your presence, sometimes in very basic ways, just by saying your name. And then obviously going deeper when you can and to actually reach out to them to start conversations about things that you know that they're interested in. When you get all the way to that last level of being known, it's really that your presence impacts the group. Like what you're doing in class or what you're doing in that group or that club or that sport wouldn't be the same if you weren't there. That's not going to be true for like, look, if I'm involved in five things, I don't expect all five of those.

[08:10]

I'm not going to get to that third level, right? being deeply known in that place where my presence impacts the group intrinsically. And that's not what we're going for. Too often, young people have no place like that. And so we need to start figuring out how to get them connected in those ways.

[08:24] SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's talk a little bit about expectations if we could. And obviously, we're used to having academic expectations. We're used to having behavioral expectations, sit up, pull your hood down, take your headphones out, put your phone away. Young people are used to hearing that type of expectation from us. What did your research reveal about the expectations that are helpful to young people in mentally healthy environments?

[08:46] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it doesn't matter what your expectations are. I mean, I suppose I guess it does matter to some level what your expectations are. But the bigger issue is that they're clear and that they're achievable. When we talk about expectations, what young people told us is that this is really about alignment. So do I have the tools? To do what's expected of me in this place.

[09:02]

And this is actually like schools get a pretty good grade here, so to speak. When we asked young people like what's expected of you at school? Yeah, they said like to a high percentage, you know, I'm expected to get good grades. You're expected to achieve academically. Do you have the tools that you need to do that work to get good grades? Most of them say yes.

[09:19]

Now, there's some really important nuances to that story where non-binary students are generally flourishing less along this line and others than their peers. And 68% of students told us that only certain kinds of students can achieve or be successful at my school. We're doing a pretty good job of generally serving the masses. But we're not always hitting all those areas where maybe some students aren't here to make good grades, like maybe they have other aspirations or ideas about what they're going to do in life. Maybe something different is getting reinforced at home. Or maybe they just have different tools and resources at home of what they're even capable of doing.

[09:56]

I'm sure your audience is very familiar with that. But Araceli, one of the people we interviewed for this study, she has this really great quote. She said, it's like you're telling me two completely different things. You're telling me that I need an A, that I need to succeed. I need to be the best. It's so competitive.

[10:09]

And then you're also telling me that my mental health matters. It seems very optic. It's performative is the word. That's the word she uses, performative. There's a lot of lip service paid to this notion of, and that word performative comes up again in other places for the students that we interviewed, where you can't have both. You can't have really high expectations and all this pressure and all these grades and so much at stake to get into college.

[10:33]

And you know, what was the phrase when I was a kid? It was like, this will be on your permanent record, right? It's primarily disciplinary. And now like permanent record has gone away and it's all been replaced with college application. You need this to get into college. You need this to get into college.

[10:44]

You need this to get into college. Without also doing something very structural about mental health, like not just waiting around until something breaks and then connecting somebody to a resource, but really trying to make those clear expectations achievable with real tools. means more than just tutoring. It means more than just making sure you have the right books. It means paying attention to, if you're going to keep those expectations, it means paying attention to their sort of whole self. It's a very astute observation from young people to be that kind of self-reflective.

[11:14]

We were consistently stunned about their sort of like pulling back and looking at the sort of whole picture there.

[11:22] SPEAKER_00:

I love the, uh, kind of the call out and the direct quote from the student there that we're putting students in a little bit of a bind and asking them for a combination of things that's not optimal. How often did this idea of competition show up? Because one of the things I'm increasingly concerned about with a lot of the activities that traditionally were sources of connection for students and ways that students became more invested in their education were things like athletics that I think in recent years have become so ridiculously competitive that they're either not appealing to many students or they simply exclude many students. I remember there were lots of things that I was involved in in high school that you didn't have to be the best to be involved in them. No, they were just fun. Yeah.

[12:10]

Yeah, they're just fun. Like I was in chess club and I probably wasn't that great at chess, but it was a source of connection and it wasn't this kind of cutthroat competitive environment. What's going on in that arena for young people today?

[12:23] SPEAKER_01:

This is what's, I think, really strange about the culture that has emerged. And I think you even see some of that in that quote from Araceli. It's not like there's this concerted effort from all of their educational leaders that they encounter to put young people in this bind. you know, like teachers and administrators and other educational leaders are not getting together every summer to be like, how could we design a system with really intense pressures and no fun, right? Like, but there's this old saying from the business world that's like, you have a culture, whether you know it or not, you have a culture. And the one that has emerged right now, because we're not necessarily setting out to create like a mental health friendly culture is that we've actually got systems that have emerged that are maybe the most mental health damaging that I can think of.

[13:07]

If you sat down from scratch, I worked in universities. K through 12 is a little bit different. But if you sat down from scratch and tried to think, what would be the worst environment to create if you were trying to foster mental health? I think you would come up with a college. Nobody knows the answer. You have to go to seven different sources.

[13:25]

You don't even know who to go to when you have a question necessarily. It's very fragmented. There's a lot at stake. It's an environment where you're peers have undue pressure and on and on and on. Like I don't want to go through it. But of course, nobody's trying to do that.

[13:36]

And even at the K through 12 level, I think once we start factoring in, yeah, all these external non-school related pressures, whether it's around club sports or standardized tests, and those kinds of things. We have this thing that has emerged where there's just not time left a lot of times for fun. I mean, so if you're a young person, especially if you're a young person who's like thinking about going to college and this sort of traditional career pathway, it's entirely likely that you are spending the vast majority of your waking hours competing. And competition is not bad. Competition can be really healthy and fine, but I don't know any of us who can operate for very long in a system, you know, where we are spending 75, 80% of our time either, you know, competing online for likes because of, again, the algorithms that we've already talked about there, where we're competing on the athletic field to try and be the best, maybe for scholarships, but certainly just because we want to win.

[14:30]

We're told that we need to be competing in school, you know, and on and on and on. It's like we put into overdrive. We've decided to focus on this one thing, which isn't a bad thing.

[14:40] SPEAKER_00:

It's like we've said, college and getting into the best possible college is the whole point. Everything is about that. We're starting to now realize, oh, our economy actually needs people to do a variety of things and not just all try to get into Harvard. And young people certainly all need to have their own paths. I think we're starting to recognize that a little bit, but I don't know that we've kind of figured out what to do as an alternative. But we definitely need a better purpose than...

[15:09]

getting all students to compete at the highest levels, you know, as much as possible. Let's talk a little bit about purpose, because that's the third major component of the report. What is purpose? If we're not all trying to get into Harvard here, what is this purpose that we're trying to help students connect with?

[15:24] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that these two sections are really of the three. These are the two that overlap the most. I mean, do you have the tools that you need to meet the expectations in this place? Really calls into question, what are the expectations of this place? That's the purpose question. There's this really famous documentary that came out a few years ago called Free Solo about Alex Honnold climbing the wall in Yosemite or whatever, anyway, without any ropes.

[15:46]

He says in there somewhere, he has this, my son's a climber. And so we were watching this. He's like in my lap in the theater because we're terrified. This guy's going to fall at any moment. He said, I love doing this stuff, Alex. And I love doing this stuff because it calls into question, can you be perfect when it matters?

[16:01]

And that's what I think we're often missing in this discussion about purpose when you It comes to students. It's not, can you be perfect all the time? Right. But can we teach them how to do the right thing at the right time to ask the right questions in the right way? So we'll teach about the value of our field and what chemists can do and why chemistry is important, but we don't spend a whole lot of time helping them to figure out if they're a chemist. It's basically like if you can achieve good grades in chemistry, if you can achieve a certain level of understanding in chemistry.

[16:31]

then you might be a chemist. But that's like a really terrible way of figuring out who should be a chemist, right? Like just because you get good grades in something is not really much of an indication of whether or not you should do it. Now, if you're getting consistently terrible grades, like when my first two grades in physics did not equal one passing grade, that was a good sign to me. I needed to drop that class. And I loved and love physics, but I would have been a terrible physicist, right?

[16:53]

At the extremes, there are, I think, some good indicators. It's in that middle part where most of us occupy, where we're just not getting a whole lot of discernment. And I think that that has largely not been the domain of schools. It hasn't had to be. And in fact, I think a lot of people...

[17:08]

would in the past and maybe would still for good reason, good and understandable reasons, make the claim that school should not have to do that work. And this is the job for families to do. This is a job for maybe religious institutions to do. Our job is to educate them. They can figure out who they want to be somewhere else. But what we know too, is that young people are increasingly asking you to do it because it's not happening in those other places.

[17:31]

So where do they spend most of their time? They spend most of their time at school Where is most of our sense of purpose aligned? Well, it's aligned with the work that we do in school, if nothing else. I mean, I know there's a lot of other stuff going on at schools too, but a big part of it is helping you to figure out where you're going to work. And young people want that work to be meaningful. And so those questions about purpose and preparation for work naturally overlap.

[17:52]

And that's a place where I think we can do some very simple things to use some of the structures even that we already have in place. to push that conversation a little bit further.

[18:00] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, let's definitely make sure we talk about that a little bit because I feel like there's so much more that we could be doing. And, you know, historically, we probably have not done a great job of that as, you know, we've had the, are you college material or not dichotomy for many years. We've had the ASVAB, the armed forces test, where it tells you, you know, you'd be a good forklift operator, but not a data entry technician.

[18:24] SPEAKER_01:

Every one of me and my friends are supposed to go to sanitation services, as they called it.

[18:28] SPEAKER_00:

What are some of the things that schools are doing or could be doing that connect students with purpose, that set expectations for them, that they have the tools to achieve? Obviously, people should look at the research and read the report and hear students' words for themselves. Based on your work with schools, what are some of the things that are proving effective in meeting these challenges?

[18:49] SPEAKER_01:

Well, this really happens and unfolds at two domains. I mean, there's the practice of purpose at a particular school. Does a young person have purpose there? But then there's also the discovery or discernment of purpose for their lives beyond those schools. And in that sort of practice of purpose, it really comes down to this question of like, are you needed there? Does a young person feel like their presence and participation at a school is is in some way necessary?

[19:15]

Or do they feel like they're just a cog in this? Like everything at the school would be exactly the same. We would just truck along doing exactly the same stuff, whether I was here or not. To the extent that you can get young people more integrated into, at least in some component. I mean, obviously it's not like, well, you know, Josh is out sick today. So we're shutting down school.

[19:29]

Everybody go home. Like we're not suggesting that, but that they can find little pockets and places where, you know, they can practice different roles, different identities, different skills. That's really critical. In fact, when we ask young people, I am needed at the school, both in the classroom and out, Those who strongly agree are much more likely to say that they're flourishing in their emotional and mental health by a significant amount. I mean, even the difference between strongly agree and agree is 48% to 27%. I mean, it's just.

[19:55]

And those are still doing, you know, only 11% of the disagrees are saying that they're flourishing. It's almost impossible to feel like you're anonymous and not needed and say that your mental and emotional health is flourishing. So that's the practice of it. On the discernment side, it really comes down to these three things is accountability, autonomy, and authenticity. So can we help them to like set their own goals and expectations where it's appropriate? for what they want to do.

[20:21]

Let's set their own goals and expectations and hold them accountable for it. Can we let them make those decisions on that autonomous side? Can they have some say over what it is that they're going to do? Or are we just feeding them the expectations that they have to have? Are we helping them to do that in a way that is authentic to really to who they are? And what's fascinating is when we ask young people, like, how does this happen for you?

[20:42]

So when you feel like you're finding a sense of purpose, what are the things that you do that are really sort of paying off the most in that regard? They tell us asking questions. It's not like they're connecting to somebody who gives them all the answers, right? Like the thing that matters most is asking questions and seeking information about things that matter to me, this sort of self-guided or self-directed discovery, which of course you've got a million things to do as a classroom teacher. Letting them ask questions takes longer. It feels like you're winning faster.

[21:09]

By the way, most of the time that students ask questions to you, it's not news to you. If you've been teaching for more than a year, like you've probably heard most of what they're going to ask anyway. It's really tempting just to jump right to the end there and just tell them. But we've seen it here. We've seen it in other places where we've talked about what are important and powerful relationships for young people. If you don't give them the space to ask the questions, if you try to jump right to that expert guidance role, you feel better and you feel like, okay, I'm getting more done today, but the impact isn't as great.

[21:40]

It doesn't last as long.

[21:41] SPEAKER_00:

It feels to me like it makes all the difference between treating students like they're known and they matter as individuals, that their choices matter, that their interests matter, versus treating students as just coins that get dropped into the great vending machine of life and get sorted out according to pre-existing characteristics and not really reflecting their interests and their questions and kind of where they are with things. That reminds me of the importance of choice for students and things like project-based learning. You know, that gets students solving real problems, that gets students playing a role in a group and making choices about, you know, what problems do you want to solve? I've heard that question as kind of a guidance question, you know, not what do you want to do? What do you want to be when you're up? But what problems do you want to solve or what drives you to pursue a cause that matters to you?

[22:31] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I love that. This is sort of an entrepreneurial question. And so it like structures young people into thinking about one particular realm of the world. But it's a really important one to help them think through, you know, that they have something to offer or contribute here, that this isn't just busy working, going through the motions, but that they're trying to really solve something that can make the world a better place.

[22:50] SPEAKER_00:

And as you said, if they're absent, like people will notice if they're working on a project together, it'll make a difference to somebody. That's right. So we've been talking about some of your findings from the full report, Mental Health and Gen Z, What Educators Need to Know. If people want to get their hands on that and dive into the research findings, as you said, you are a sociology research institute and do very rigorous and large-scale studies, getting insight from students. How can people get their hands on that report?

[23:17] SPEAKER_01:

Our website is springtideresearch.org and in particular there's a mental health landing page where you can actually follow along with all this. We have regular Instagram live conversations with experts that we post there, videos that we put up, toolkits and resources. We're doing an activation with 92Y for mental health awareness where you can sort of see young people's stories emerge in their own words. We have our own podcast called The Voices of Young People where you can hear that stuff too. So in addition to the report, there's a whole lot of other free resources and other things that are going on with this because this is very much central to our mission and what we care about.

[23:48] SPEAKER_00:

The report, again, is Mental Health and Gen Z, What Educators Need to Know. And people can find out more at springtideresearch.org. Josh, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. That was a pleasure.

[24:00]

Anytime.

[24:01] Announcer:

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