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

by Kate Fagan

Much of young adulthood is presented as a ladder, each rung closer to success, or whatever our society has defined as success. Perhaps climbing the ladder is tiring, but it is not confusing. You are never left wondering if you’ve made the wrong choice, or expended energy in the wrong direction, because there is only the one rung above you. Get good grades. Get better at your sport. Take the SAT. Do volunteer work. Apply to colleges. Choose a college. But then you get to college, and suddenly you’re out of rungs and that ladder has turned into a massive tree with hundreds of sprawling limbs, and progress is no longer a thing you can easily measure, because there are now thousands of paths to millions of destinations. And none are linear.

when you’re young, the distinction between an activity that truly satisfies your soul and one that merely brings accolades is difficult to parse.

“How do you survive those less-than-perfect situations when discipline isn’t enough? When grittiness gets you through the workouts but can’t seem to get you through the rest of the day?

One study found that an average high school student today likely deals with as much anxiety as did a psychiatric patient in the 1950s.

As free play decreases, anxiety increases. Correlation does not equal causation, but considering that free play helps kids develop their sense of self, their problem-solving abilities, their ability to self-soothe, and their ability to play well with others, it’s not a stretch to see why scientists believe the decrease in free play is possibly affecting their mental health.

Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 968 “friends” that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.