As Screens Take Over, Advocates Say Play, Culture Are Key to Native Youth Mental Health 36%
By Elyse Wild53%
8/3/2026, 5:36:22 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Optimism Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20.6% saturation with 205 hits. Analysis detected 1,481 faulty-reasoning hits from 995 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 37.4% and a BS Rank of 36% (17,029 of 26,402 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 64.50% of the article peer group.
The answer to a growing mental health crisis in a world in which screens are omnipresent and social media is fueling a sense of despair among the nation’s young people may be simple: get outside and play.
That’s according to a new report by Kaboom!, a nonprofit that builds playgrounds around the nation.
The report was created in collaboration with IndigiFit Kids , a three-year campaign by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community aimed at improving the physical and mental health of Native youth in Minnesota.
The report outlines data that shows mental health among the nation’s young people is plummeting, and Native youth are the most at risk.
Increased screen time, reduced physical activity, slashed recess times, and more than 28 million kids lacking access to a green space or playground point to a shrinking childhood.
From 2017 to 2021, depression diagnoses among children rose by 60%, with anxiety rising by 31%.
While the issue touches every community, Native communities bear the brunt: suicide rates among Native youth ages 15 to 19 are double that of white youth.
But among the bleak numbers, there is hope: kids who spend 60 minutes a day in nature have a 50% lower risk of mental health issues.
Dr.
Mark Baez (Coahuiltecan Tribe) is the president of the Society for Indian Psychologists, whose clinic work focuses on adolescents and children.
Baez told Native News Online that the issues driving the plummeting youth mental health are compounded in Native communities by the lasting effects of colonialism: poverty, generational trauma, geographic isolation, and loss of culture through federal campaigns to erase Native Americans.
“Many youth carry both online and historical trauma stressors simultaneously,” Baez said.
Those stressors, he said, result in a sense of isolation, antithetical to the core of many Native cultures and communities: connection.
“As clinicians, some of the signs that we see are loneliness, depression, anxiety, difficulty maintaining face-to-face relationships,” Baez said.
“For Native youth, we see a lot of our kids on social media being digitally connected while simultaneously feeling disconnected from their family, community, culture, and peers.”
While putting down the phones and getting outside to play might be part of the solution, Native communities are seriously lacking in accessible, safe play spaces compared to other communities.
An assessment of 237 playgrounds on or near tribal lands and urban areas with high Native populations found nearly 70% posed safety hazards, with varying degrees of repair and replacement needed.
Ashley Cornforth, Secretary-Treasurer for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux, told Native News Online building play spaces for youth can be part of a tribe’s stewardship of their land and seven-generations planning.
“We have a connection to our ancestral land,” she said.
“We’re always going to be here.
Play spaces are so integral to getting out and playing, and that physical activity has such a connection to mental health.
How do we show that we want to maintain it?
We want to make it stay good for our next youth.”
While the effects have been clear for many years, a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation confirmed what many parents suspected: social media harms children’s mental health, and the tech giants behind the most popular apps are well aware.
In recent years, Tribal Nations have filed suit against the social media companies , including Meta, Snap, ByteDance, and Alphabet, for their role in the youth mental health and suicide crisis plaguing Native communities.
The suits point to addictive algorithms, gambling-like features, and exploitation of reciprocity.
On top of being designed to draw youth in over and over again, social media can provide ample opportunity for cruel bullying, far from the eyes of adults.
“We think, ‘just walk away, close the screen,’ right?”
Baez said.
“It’s easier said than done.
The exposure to trauma and harmful content is very real: bullying, racism, lateral violence, misinformation.
It has real harm.”
While the prevalence of screens in modern life may make screen time feel like an insurmountable obstacle for parents, both Baez and Cornforth said that healing Native youth and bringing them back to their culture starts with adults.
“If we want them to put their phones away, we need to do the same,” Baez said.
“It sounds cliché, but kids are sponges, so lead by example.
We need to create opportunities for youth to engage.
Culture is prevention, and I go a step further: culture is medicine, because this culture is what has given us the ability to be resilient.”
During a talking circle with Native youth in Minnesota about screen time led by IndigiFit Kids, Cornforth said the kids wanted to hear more about the positives of social media use.
“It’s so easy to go down the road that social media is fake, but there is also such goodness out there,” she said.
“A big reality for a lot of Minnesota tribal communities is their land base is massive, so they are far away from a lot.
Technology has become such a connector.
I can talk to my cousins now, or I can talk to my grandma.
And before, I didn’t have that.
I didn’t have that connection to culture or language.”
That talking circle represents what Cornforth said needs to be at the center of helping Native kids thrive: listening to them.
“[We need to] listen to our youth more, and they’ll tell us what they need,” she said.
IndigiFit will be building five play spaces in Native communities across Minnesota.
In the spirit of listening, Native youth will be leading the design.
“They get to be the ones to build it,” Cornforth said.
“They get to be the ones to design it.
They get to be the ones who see how they want to play with it and how they want to use it.
And that movement, that momentum of the kids getting to be the ones to drive everything, that makes me so excited.”
Speakers
5speakers53%attributed speech467writer words
Selected voice
86%flagged-word coverageMark Baez (Coahuiltecan Tribe)
229 attributed words43% of attributed speech83% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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