Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. Governor Spencer Cox has launched a statewide campaign to address the impact of social media on students. On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with one of the Governor's senior advisors, Aimee Winder Newton, who also serves as the Director of the Governor's new Office of Families. She tells us how the Public Awareness Campaign hopes to empower parents and provide them with the tools they need to educate their kids about the potential harms from using social media.

We're honored today to have Aimee Winder Newton in the studio. Aimee is a member of the Salt Lake County Council, as well as a senior advisor and director of the new Office of Families in the Governor's Office. So thank you very much for joining us today.

Aimee Winder Newton:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me a little bit about your work in the Office of Families. That's a new position that we're all excited about.

Aimee Winder Newton:
It is. Well, about a year and a half ago, the governor, when he did his State of the State address, talked about how we need to be looking proactively at how to better strengthen families. We want the best outcomes for kids and we know that that happens through strong families. So he developed this position and I was hired a year ago. We've got some initiatives that we've set out to accomplish and some policy objectives and it's been a great ride.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, we're really grateful to have you in that position. I know part of that has been helping the Governor and pushing this campaign to help raise awareness with families regarding the dangers of social media. And when you look through the materials, which I've done,  I appreciated the chance to be there when the campaign was announced. What's staggering really is the statistics that you see. It's difficult to see the numbers. We know the impact that it has, but when you see the hard numbers that show just how frequently students are involved, how deeply they're involved with social media, and the obvious negative impacts, it's really harrowing to see that.

Aimee Winder Newton:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you as school administrators and our school teachers and others in the classroom, they see the impact, right? You see how it's impacting kids. So just a few data points. In Utah, only 37% of our Utah youth got at least eight hours of sleep on an average school night. You know how important it is for kids to be to school well rested and ready to learn. And these kids are not getting enough sleep. Now, this is all according to the SHARP survey, which has been a great help for us as we look at data for our Utah youth.

Some other data points- 32% of Utah youth felt sad or hopeless for two weeks or more in a row during the past year. And 18%, that's one in six, of our Utah youth seriously considered suicide in the past year. So it's very concerning. We do have some other interesting data points too, because social media seems to affect young women at a higher rate than it does young men. So 53% of female high school students had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, which is a 61% increase since 2009 when social media was invented. So some of these numbers are startling. We see this correlation and causati