Like a lot of students these days, a lot of kids in Mason, Ohio, are sad and anxious. And theyre talking about it on the internet, saying things like this:<\/p>\n
\"I have no friends. How can I make friends?\" Or \"Im feeling alone. I am hopeless. I dont have a reason to live.\"<\/p>\n
Mason started using technology to track students' online activity years ago. Mostly to make sure they werent looking at inappropriate content. Or talking about violence.<\/p>\n
But now the schools are monitoring students to try to figure out who might be heading for a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n
\"It gives us insight into what the student's thinking that we otherwise would not see or hear,\" says Nicole Pfirman, mental wellness coordinator for schools in Mason.<\/p>\n
Mason uses a company called Securly to track its students. Machine learning lets the company flag words that suggest a student is thinking about hurting him or herself, or otherwise in trouble, and then notifies the school district so it can intervene.<\/p>\n
\"It's not a magic wand, it's not going to prevent everything in a school, but it's going to give schools a lot more information than they ever had before and it's gonna be good information that they can go and have a conversation with a student about,\" says Mike Jolley, who is in charge of K-12 safety at Securly.<\/p>\n
Jolley says that around the country, Securly's technology has been flagging more and more younger kids.<\/p>\n
The mental health struggles of school kids mean a business opportunity for companies like Securly. More and more are marketing themselves as a way to track students' mental health. Here's one line from a promotional ad from the company Gaggle:<\/p>\n
\"[In the last school year,] Gaggle identified 64,000 student references to suicide and self-harm. Each reference is a cry for help.\"<\/p>\n
It's a persuasive message. Gaggle says its customer base regularly grows between 20 and 25 percent a year. And grew even more than that last year.<\/p>\n
On its website, Gaggle claims to have helped school districts \"save the lives of 927 students.\" But it's hard to know what that actually means or how it gets counted.<\/p>\n
Companies like Gaggle and Securly offer lots of anecdotes about kids they've helped. But even they acknowledge nobody really knows how well these programs prevent self-harm or suicide.<\/p>\n
Ellen Yan directs Beacon. Thats the division that tracks student suicide risk at another monitoring company, GoGuardian.<\/p>\n
\"There is honestly not a lot of data at the national level around in terms of suicide prevention,\" she says.<\/p>\n
One reason there's not a lot of data is that using the technology this way is still pretty new. And it's hard to prove that the technology tracking stopped a kid from hurting themselves.<\/p>\n
Plus the companies don't see everything students are doing online. One company might not see posts on social media. Another could miss internet searches.<\/p>\n
Programs can also trigger false alarms: a student who's writing a paper about Romeo and Juliet, say, or gun control. (For its part, Securly says its technology is able to differentiate between a search out of curiosity and a genuine crisis.)<\/p>\n
The cost of this kind of surveillance varies from company to company and district to district. Jolley says Securly's services range from a dollar a student for the basic model to more than $15 a student for the higher end.<\/p>\n
Nicole Pfirman says that in Mason, it's money well spent. She says there have been times at the Mason schools that an alert saved a kid's life.<\/p>\n
\"Had we have not been able to get the alert, respond to the alert, and put the appropriate supports in place, say on a Friday night,\" she says. \"It is oftentimes difficult to think about what may have happened before Monday.\"<\/p>\n
Mason partners with therapists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital. And over the last year, Pfirman and her team have ended up connecting a lot more students to that program.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the technology companies continue to position themselves on the front lines of student mental health. The latest example? This fall, Gaggle announced a new product line. It will now contract with school districts to connect them with therapists for students who need mental health care.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on American Public Media and has been adapted for online.<\/p>\n
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Read more from the original source: <\/p>\n
How Mason City Schools Is Using Technology To Monitor Students' Mental Health - WVXU<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like a lot of students these days, a lot of kids in Mason, Ohio, are sad and anxious. And theyre talking about it on the internet, saying things like this: \"I have no friends. How can I make friends?\" Or \"Im feeling alone. Continue reading