What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

by Kate Fagan

No one among them, parents included, cautioned that the transition to college might be unexpectedly difficult. Part of why no parent did so must have been because they simply could not imagine it would be. College had been different for their generation. For one thing, they grew up without the Internet, without video games, without social media. Madison and her friends were the first generation of “digital natives”—kids who’d never known anything but connectivity. That connection, at its most basic level, meant that instead of calling your parents once a week from the dorm hallway, you could call and text them all day long, even seeking their approval for your most mundane choices, like what to eat at the dining hall. Constant communication may seem reassuring, the closing of physical distance, but it quickly becomes inhibiting. Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations have experienced. Jim and Stacy, Susie and Kobus, and millions of other parents hadn’t yet considered how the Internet might be affecting their kids, how it was fostering an increased dependence on outside validation, and consequently a decreased ability to soothe themselves. In 2013, these were just beginning to register as increasing concerns.