A Look at Social Media Addiction in Adolescent Girls

A graduate of the University of Idaho and the University of Idaho College of Law, L. Jay Mitchell founded the Greenbrier Academy for Girls in 2007. L. Jay Mitchell serves as the principal owner and program director of the West Virginia therapeutic boarding school, which combines academic learning with therapeutic interventions for emotional and behavioral problems in adolescent girls.

As social-media use continues to rise across all US populations, mental health professionals are becoming increasingly concerned about social media addiction in young women. People with this condition devote so much time to social media use that it negatively affects other aspects of their lives. According to a study from Pew Research, teenage girls have the highest usage rate among individuals aged 13 to 17 and log an average of more than 140 minutes daily on sites such as Snapchat and TikTok.

These and similar applications often become the primary source of social connection for teenagers addicted to social media, leading to extreme emotional reactions to boundaries on usage. Other signs of addiction range from anxiousness when unable to check accounts and correlations between mood and the amount of attention received online. In addition to interfering with relationships and hobbies, excessive social media use leaves adolescent girls particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying due to its links with isolation and depression. For instance, many develop low self-esteem as a result of judging themselves against unrealistic standards.

Treating social media addition can involve equipping girls with the tools to navigate online platforms in healthy and constructive ways, thereby helping them to build confidence and connections rather than feed insecurities.

Greenbrier Academy for Girls Brings

In 2007, attorney, author, neurolinguistics trainer, and experienced therapeutic youth-program director L. Jay Mitchell established Greenbrier Academy for Girls (GBA) in the rolling foothills of West Virginia. This therapeutic boarding school operates with an equal focus on academics and the personal journey of healing, offering young women the chance to gain new insights into their lives and relationships and cope successfully with issues such as depression, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, substance abuse, and fractured relationships. L. Jay Mitchell and his team make students’ families a central part of the therapeutic process, believing that the most successful outcomes consider students as part of a family system.

GBA’s experienced staff observe the numerous positive changes in a student’s ability to handle her own emotions and live a full and rewarding life of conscience, character, and integrity. The GBA experience is specifically designed to help families grow for the better, as well.

In many cases, a young woman’s negative behavior patterns are based in unconscious or poorly expressed desires to see a change in the way her family members relate to her and to each other. A typical GBA student’s personal conflicts and problems did not originate in a vacuum; they will not be fully addressed in a vacuum either.

While Greenbrier Academy therapists’ regular phone conversations with parents cover the issues their daughters are working through, families have another powerful tool at hand through the Family Healing Program. This allows for the exploration of multi-generational patterns of miscommunication and misunderstanding while bolstering intra-familial connections and helping everyone ground themselves in strategies for coping and healing, long after the student leaves the school.