Screenagers Next Chapter: Uncovering Skills

Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER: Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience and is about helping young people thrive in our screen and stress-filled world. This is a great follow-on to the popular Screenagers Movie.

Filmmaker and physician Delaney Ruston uses a personal lens and professional eye to help us all flip the script on stress, anxiety, and depression. We follow Delaney as she finds herself at a loss on how to help her own teens as they struggle with their emotional wellbeing. Ruston sets out to understand these challenges in our current screen-filled society, and how we as parents and schools empower teens to overcome mental health challenges and build emotional agility, communication savvy, and stress resilience. 

Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER shows us that this is an urgent issue for families:

• Since 2011, there has been a 59% increase in teens reporting depressive symptoms

• Scientific data shows that 2+ hours a day on social media correlates with a higher chance of having unhappy feelings

• Teens say their main way of coping with stress is to turn to a screen—this is concerning for many reasons and we need to ensure they have other coping skills

• State of the art therapies, including mindfulness, exposure therapy, and behavior activation, are being used to successfully treat anxiety and depression and yet many teens and adults don’t know that these proven interventions exist

• When teens suppress emotions, research shows it negatively impacts their school work and other cognitive tasks

• Just like toddlers’ brains are primed to learn languages, teenage brains are primed for learning skills to navigate complicated emotions

• A recent study shows that when parents jump in, their stress goes down but their kid’s stress goes up

• Why it’s important to help teens get comfortable feeling uncomfortable

• Forward-thinking, concrete solutions for parents, counselors, and educators

Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER shows many ways parents, counselors, and educators can help teens build crucial skills for navigating stress, anxiety, and depression. 

Some of the featured experts in the film include:

• Daniel Pine, MD, Chief Psychiatrist, National Institute of Mental Health

• Dan Siegel, MD, Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA

• Drs. John and Julie Gottman, founders of The Gottman Institute 

• Ronald E. Dahl, MD., Center on the Developing Adolescent at UC Berkeley 

• Laura Kastner, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Wise-Minded Parenting

• Ned Johnson, co-author of The Self-Driven Child

• Adriana Galvan, Ph.D., Chair in Behavioral Neuroscience UCLA

• Lynn Lyons, MSW, Author of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents