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

by Kate Fagan

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

EVERYTHING we do is seen as instrumental towards marketing ourselves for the college admission boards, or for the job market, or to help us rush a fraternity or sorority, or to help us win friends, or to help us be a more attractive potential partner. You see the capitalist worldview has infiltrated our psychology, and our sense of self-worth. And it is toxic. It results in fear of being ourselves and following what we really want to do. It results in micro-managing every aspect of our lives to best effect so that it looks good for Facebook or LinkedIn or Tinder.

It results in constant comparisons with our peers (which causes depression) and catastrophizing of any potential dent to our marketability (which results in anxiety). Essentially, it results in a dehumanized mindset. Of

Comparing your everyday existence to someone else’s highlight reel is dangerous for both of you. At

Now we spend hours a day consuming one another online. Moreover, digital natives have known only this reality. They have grown up on Instagram and Snapchat, absorbing hundreds of images a day. And most of these perfect pictures, loaded into boxes, reflect little of each person’s reality. We’re consuming an increasingly filtered world yet walking through our own realities unfiltered. Maybe this matters less when life is good. Maybe when we’re in a good space, when we’re “happy,” it’s nice to launch social media and see how well everyone else is doing. The whole experience might feel like momentum, all this beauty and goodness gracefully stacking higher and higher. And when you’re in this place, you’re often rational, too, because your mind isn’t in fight-or-flight mode. Your pulse is low. Your thinking is clear. You’re able to recognize how edited so much of it is. But that’s okay, you tell yourself, because life is so good, and beautiful pictures and projected happiness are lovely.

Then what impact does the perfectly manicured landscape of social media have on our brains? A study of more than seven hundred college students by researchers at the University of Missouri found that Facebook could spark feelings of envy, which can lead to symptoms of depression. When you’re anxious and low, and out of habit (and addiction) you launch social media, it is unlikely that images of others will help you feel connected. Rather, they almost certainly further pry apart the space between you and everyone else, because you are not happy and everyone else seems to be.

“Teenagers who spoke with their parents over the phone or in person released similar amounts of oxytocin [an indication of bonding and well-being] and showed similar low levels of cortisol [a marker of stress], indicative of a reduction in stress.

Thus while the younger generation may favor non-oral modes of communication, when it comes to providing emotional support, messaging appears comparable to not speaking with anyone at all.”

How much of our happiness is fueled by society’s validation of our choices? It seems that the younger we are, the more dependent we are on making choices others will value and praise—perhaps because we haven’t developed, or don’t yet fully trust, our ability to name or even know what makes us happy. In

Was it eroding the quality of their experiences? When you are not concerned with sharing every moment with hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of others, does the moment belong to you in a more profound way? Sometimes when we talk of Hollywood stars, we hypothesize that all of the pictures they’ve had taken of themselves, those posed for and those stolen, have somehow zapped them of an unquantifiable essence, like a distant cousin of what happens to the photographs themselves, which fade over time. If you share a picture of yourself eating pie, instead of simply enjoying the pie in real time, is your absorption of the sensation diluted?