The night of December 12, Madison texted her dad I need to come home. Immediately he wrote her back, told her to book the first train out of Philadelphia the following morning. He would pick her up at the Newark station. Track practice, studying for finals, those things were secondary; most important was that they see her, talk, put some sort of plan in motion to fix whatever was happening. Later they could figure out the logistics of what she might miss.
Everything had escalated so quickly in her mind. How had that happened? She had been fending off the worst thoughts for weeks, the ones she knew she shouldn’t be having. She’d been focusing instead on ways to calm herself, to make things better. But the worst thoughts were persistent, bold, incessantly tugging at her consciousness. She really didn’t want to let them in. But at some point she did, convincing herself that she could open the door just a sliver, just to take a break from the constant knocking. Maybe the thoughts would come in and sit still. In a backward way, the worst thoughts actually calmed her. They were reassuring, like knowing that there was a secret escape route in case the room caught fire. Of course, there was a chance that these thoughts might destroy everything, actually set the room on fire. Was that what was happening? Or did the fire already exist?
Over the past few weeks—each time practice, or studying for final exams, or looking at someone else’s beautiful and carefree Instagram feed, like those of the Penn seniors whose friendships seemed everlasting, hadn’t gone well—those worst thoughts would begin to boil. They did not obey. They did not just simmer in the background. And they were offering something clear-cut: a way out.
Suicide. That word felt heavy and sharp, impossible for Madison to even think about, let alone say out loud. Everything else in her mind felt abstract, so abstract that Maddy felt immobilized by the lack of clarity. Where had all this darkness come from? Her mind had always been a wilderness, but a mostly well-lit one, so she could see her footing. But now shadows had settled over parts, blackness rolling into all the crevices. Peeking around corners felt dangerous.
The scariest part was that out of this foggy world would occasionally come one slice of frightening clarity. Thoughts, so purposeful and disciplined, would burst through like a train cutting through a snowstorm, an iron fist on a collision course with its destination. Maddy had, in fact, thought of the power of such a train—a real one. And thought also of how defenseless she would be standing in its path. What would that feel like? Would it be exhilarating? In a single moment, a cold, inhuman force could turn fear into fearlessness. At least, maybe that’s how others would see it, would see her, instead of the soul-crushing panic she actually felt.
According to one close friend, she was thinking of this train. She thought of walking onto the tracks, just a mile or two down the road. She couldn’t go to the 30th Street Station, with its marble floors and vaulted ceilings, because trains were either idle there or pulling into or out of the building, so slow as to be harmless. She thought instead about the stretch of track that ran parallel to the Schuylkill, the river that separated University City from Center City. In Dutch, Schuylkill literally means “hidden river,” so the easy way to tell locals from outsiders is whether they add the word “river” after Schuylkill: the hidden river river. Maddy had learned this fact upon first moving to Philly. The tracks were near Penn, down an embankment, and trains had usually picked up steam by the time they passed through.
She thought of leaving her dorm room, of those final minutes, of the relief gained by making such a clear and decisive choice. God—what was she even talking about? Who owned this new voice inside her?
This couldn’t happen. She desperately needed her mom and dad.
That morning, December 13, as she rode Amtrak home, she sent an e-mail to her assistant coach, Robin Martin, explaining why she would miss practice that afternoon:
From: Madison Holleran
To: Robin Martin
Hi coach Martin! I have some bad news. I woke up this morning feeling very very sick and threw up a lot. I don’t know what exactly is wrong but my parents thought it’d be best for me to come home for the weekend and rest for finals. I’m taking the train home soon so I obviously won’t be at practice today. I don’t know how this happened :( hope practice goes well and I’ll see you soon!
From: Robin Martin
To: Madison Holleran
No worries. Get better!
Before sending the e-mail to Martin, Maddy texted a number of her friends, letting them know that whatever plans she had made with them for the rest of that week, she couldn’t keep. Each text was almost identical to the others and paralleled the story she’d told Martin.
Maddy: Hi friend!! I hope you aced your math final!! Just wanted to let you know I’m going home for the weekend. Woke up feeling so sick And threw up a lot and my parents thought it would be best to come home and rest so I’m getting on a train now
Ingrid: Oh my god I’m so sorry!! Are you feeling any better? I wish I could do something to help!!
Of course, Ingrid could not help. Perhaps she could have, perhaps she would have said and done just the right thing—if she’d known the real problem. But she thought Maddy needed things you could buy at the store, deflated ginger ale and Tylenol, and maybe a fun party to take her mind off track practices. But what was the fix if you needed to take your mind off… your mind?
Jim met Maddy at the Newark station. She climbed into the front seat of the Ford. He looked at his daughter, looked quickly away. What had happened? She had been home for Thanksgiving not three weeks before. Things hadn’t been great, but they weren’t like this. He put the car into gear, turned the wheel, looked back at her.
“Madison,” he said. “I think you look depressed.”
He didn’t know how else to describe her. He was sure, in that moment, that the word he had used was not hyperbole, but precise, necessary. She leaned back in the seat. Her head touched the headrest. She was wearing a sweatshirt, her hair pulled back. All the color that was once in her cheeks had migrated to the rims of her eyes. When she spoke, her voice, usually high, was low, as if forming words took energy she didn’t have.
“Dad,” she whispered, “all I want to do is go to sleep.”
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
Madison walked through the front door and immediately went upstairs to lie down. Jim wasn’t sure what to expect from her over the next few days. Rather, he didn’t have expectations. He was just relieved she was beneath their roof. He and Stacy discussed what was happening, how different their daughter seemed, how concerned they were. “We need to start getting her consistent professional help—as quickly as we can,” they agreed. They called the therapist they had connected with over Thanksgiving break, scheduled an appointment for that weekend. Maddy surprised them when she came downstairs just an hour later. She was dressed in workout clothes, her sneakers on.
“I want to go join a gym,” she said. She was going to be home that weekend, also over winter break after finals, and she needed a place to stay in shape for the next month, she explained. Just a few hours earlier, opening the car door seemed to have exhausted her, but now she was determined to burn energy as if she possessed an endless supply.
This had become the cycle, the endless battle: like carrying a weight on her shoulders, then finally dropping to her knees because it was too much, then telling herself not to be weak, to get up as she always had, to find a way to keep moving forward. Then she would stand, tell herself she could handle this, and start walking again. Until, of course, she would again collapse beneath the weight.
This sequence was not unlike high-intensity intervals on the track. And, just like those, each repetition took more effort than the previous one. That was actually the point of interval training: raising your heart rate to 180, then dropping it to resting, then raising it again—this drained energy much faster than maintaining a steady pace. How many more intervals could she run? She wasn’t sure, but she had to keep getting up, because perhaps the next one would be the last, perhaps the weight would disappear as quickly as it had appeared.
Jim drove Maddy to Retro Fitness, a few miles away on Route 17, and they signed her up for a monthlong membership. Sometimes she ran on the treadmill, other times she sat on the bike for dozens of miles, sweat dripping across the display, her head down and legs churning through hills. She needed the endorphins. The rush of them made her feel like herself, even if it was fleeting, even if she could often feel the sensation leaking from her body before she pulled on her sweats and opened the door to leave the gym. The alternative was lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling, and just hoping and praying that something would change. But that wasn’t her—that had never been her. She wanted to keep doing the things that had once made her feel good. And so instead of sleeping in her childhood bed, turning from side to side, letting the exhaustion wash over her, drown her, she decided to get up and put on her sneakers. She would keep making that choice. Maybe she could churn out the darkness, force it to seep out of her, like sweat, if she just ran fast enough, long enough.
That first evening, she spent a couple hours at the gym. While there, she got a text from her high school friend Erin: “Going over to your house!” Erin did not know that Maddy was home from school, but she had just finished finals and was home for winter break. She was close to Ashley Holleran, who was back from Alabama, as well as the rest of the Holleran family. When she texted, Erin thought Maddy was still at Penn, so she was surprised when she got a message back that said, “I’m at the gym, be back soon.”
Erin and another of Ashley’s friends, Brandon, were at the Hollerans’ when Maddy walked through the door. Erin was expecting to see the person she remembered from high school, the Maddy who was laughing and happy, the Maddy who would bolt up the stairs to shower, then come back down ready to hear all about what had happened during first semester. But that person did not walk through the door. Erin couldn’t quite figure out what was happening. Maddy seemed evasive, avoiding eye contact as if she had something to hide. She quickly excused herself.
Erin had just spent seven days in the library, studying for finals, so she reminded herself how anxious and tired she had felt during that time. That’s all this was. Maddy was still in the middle of it all, cramming for her first-ever Ivy League exams. And anyway, it was late at night. The whole interaction was understandable, explainable even. It was dark out, and Erin was seeing Maddy in the artificial light of the room, so maybe it was a kind of optical illusion. Maybe she wasn’t quite as pale and empty as she looked.
Over the next few days, Jim and Stacy tried to understand exactly what was going on, but Madison seemed incapable of articulating what she was feeling. She kept falling back on the stress of finals, and how she felt she was failing multiple courses. And when she wasn’t talking about that anxiety, she simply kept saying, “Something is wrong, something is really wrong.”
They soon believed that the solution to their daughter’s struggle was beyond their purview, which as parents they found hard to accept. They felt that only a highly trained professional could help Maddy. “She had a really hard time talking about what was going on,” Jim said. “I think she was really confused. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what was going on exactly. I just knew that I couldn’t help her. I felt that she needed a psychologist, or somebody that was really well trained and qualified. And we had insurance through my work, so we knew she was covered.”
Madison wanted the help. Mostly. Her worst thoughts were encouraging her to reject help, to keep the feelings to herself. The creature seemed to want to convince her that she needed to find a solution on her own, that she was becoming burdensome to those around her, to her family.
Mackenzie was a junior at Highlands; Brendan was a freshman. Just as, one year earlier, Madison could not comprehend why Ashley was unhappy at Penn State, Mackenzie could not fathom why Maddy was so miserable at Penn. Wasn’t college all Madison had talked about? When they were growing up, every time she yelled at Mack for borrowing one of her tops or a pair of her jeans, Maddy would talk about how she would soon be out of the house, off to somewhere much more exciting and interesting, where she wouldn’t have to deal with such an annoying little sister.
As much as it seemed from the outside that they were always fighting, that was only because they were so much alike. Beneath the façade of feuding sisters, they had laid the groundwork for a great friendship. Before Maddy left for Penn, she wrote Mackenzie a letter:
I am so thankful to call you my sister. You are gorgeous (yes I admit it), talented, mature (for the most part), responsible, modest, and so fun to be around. I know these aren’t things you hear from me often but they are the honest truth. And I know I yell at you a lot but most of the time I don’t mean to, it’s just what I’m used to… so I’m sorry for that. Can’t believe you’re 16 years old and I also cannot believe we won’t be living together anymore in just over a month. The thought of not being under the same roof as each other is actually scary to me. Not going to lie, I’m already a tad bit nervous. You better be prepared to visit me frequently because as much as I hate to admit it, I will miss you a lot. I’m proud of the person you have become and how much you’ve matured over the years. The amount that you’ve changed just since you started out at Highlands is insane… Remember to always keep your head up no matter how many times people try to put you down. “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” There’s a lot I will miss about you when I go off to college. I will miss singing (belting out) country songs together. I will miss watching the Voice together and having you yell at me every time I speak. I will miss making fun of Jimbo together. I will miss our trips to Starbucks every Monday and Friday before school. I will miss trying to break into Ashley’s closet to steal her clothes. I will miss your annoying and infectious laugh. But I can’t wait to come back home and hear about all of the latest Highlands gossip. Maybe when I come home you will actually have a BOYFRIEND. That’d be cray now wouldn’t it ;). I know you are only halfway done with high school but I’m telling you, embrace every second of it because it’s over in the blink of an eye. Stay focused throughout Junior year in regards to schoolwork, tennis and track but live it up as well. Don’t party as hard as I did (do?) but it’s ok to go a lil crazy at times. Even though I’ll be in Philly and away at college, I’ll always be here for you. LOVE YOU YA CRAZY SKANK RASCAL HOE MUNCHKIN.
Love, ur fav, obviously… Madison.
A week before unexpectedly taking the train home, Maddy had texted with her younger sister, seemingly trying to connect, to share her pain. But Mackenzie couldn’t quite grasp how college—that place of adulthood, freedom, dreams—could be making her sister unhappy. Like many such connection failures, this was actually a failure of imagination. Mackenzie and others pictured college in one way; Madison experienced it in another.
Mack: How is it
Maddy: How is what
Mack: Penn
Maddy: It sucks Mackenzie
Maddy: It sucks so much
Mack: What are you doing rn
Maddy: Going to dinner
Mack: With who
Maddy: My friend Eleanor. I can’t do this anymore
Maddy: I hate this place
Mack: Why r u so miserable
Maddy: It’s everything especially track
Maddy: I hate it so much
Mack: Do u have fun at party’s
Mack: Do u get with people
Maddy: Not rlly
Madison had to return to Philly for a few days to finish finals and to complete first semester. Jim and Stacy reassured her that her time in Philly was temporary, and that she would be back home the following week, with an entire month to figure out what was happening. All she needed to do was manage for a few days, and then she could come right back to Allendale. “In high school, everything that could go right for Madison, did,” says Mackenzie. “High school wasn’t a struggle for her, so it was hard to understand how college had so quickly gone bad. With track, she got to be the best because of how hard she worked. She got a 4.0 in school because she studied so much. And she was even partying less in college. I wanted to visit her, and she said that she only goes out one night a week in college. I was surprised. She started going out less, started doing everything less.”
The first night I started writing this book, I spent ten hours in front of Madison’s computer. I had driven the hour from Brooklyn to Allendale that afternoon, to the Hollerans’ home, where Ashley was waiting for me, MacBook in hand. Madison’s computer was Brendan’s now, but her account had been preserved and was just a few keystrokes away. Thankfully, Brendan was willing to part with the device for the weekend.
On the TV that night was Thursday Night Football: Denver vs. Kansas City. I remember glancing at the New York City skyline and feeling a burst of gratitude, a frequent emotion of mine, that I lived in such a dynamic place. At another point, I remember reaching over to rest my hand on the leg of my girlfriend. Other than these two brief moments, I lived inside a screen. Time passed imperceptibly, the way it does when you zone out while driving, the miles rolling along, and then the gas light dings and you can’t remember having covered a long stretch of road.
On Madison’s computer I looked through photographs. I accessed (with the help of her family) her Gmail and University of Pennsylvania accounts, scrolling back through years of messages. As I carefully looked through everything, the blue iMessage icon containing all Madison’s text messages loomed on the dashboard. The icon seemed to radiate energy. I was saving it for last. Or maybe I was avoiding it—scared of what clues it might or might not contain.
I was reconstructing Madison, which meant simultaneously deconstructing myself. To be fully present in Maddy’s online world, I had to absent myself from my own. I was building Maddy more clearly—her thoughts, her important moments—from the data on a screen, drawing whole ideas and even conclusions from fragments of her thinking, from the slivers of herself that she dared expose to the world. Using the deluge of information held in that computer, I was building a portrait to make Maddy come alive. In attempting this, I became for varying lengths of time someone who wasn’t.
We’re all doing exactly this, all the time now. Even before I began learning about Madison, I had started the process of erasing myself from the present world in favor of social media—carving out chunks of myself, stretching them into an online skeleton: two people from one, like some kind of medical miracle. I had been doing this for a long time, of my own volition. In the past few years, I’ve spent almost as much time constructing and maintaining my online self as I have my real, human self. I’ve certainly spent more time on Instagram exercising my image than I have in the gym exercising my body.
These two presentations are not the same person; in fact, they are often two very different people. The online version is static, and therefore easily paused on perfection, because the conditions in that space allow it. The parameters of the actual world are expansive, and people can view you from any angle (literally and metaphorically), while online you need only fit yourself into a fixed box whose conditions you control and manipulate. The offline version of me is obviously deeply flawed, though it’s easy to start believing otherwise, because I spend so much time immersed in my online self. Online, I can create someone who is not impatient, does not misspeak, is not self-centered, is always standing in the best lighting, and on and on. The highlights of my life are posted in that space, and everyone reacts in predictable ways—that is, the ways I want them to. And sometimes it feels much easier to live in that reality than in the one where I am always flawed and challenged, and occasionally sad.
So what do these two versions of me have in common? Honestly, not much at all. For example, imagine that over the course of a year I posted images of sentences from this book online, and after seeing several hundred of them, you started to believe that you knew what the book was about, its energy and message. Imagine that you then actually got hold of the book and read it cover to cover. Perhaps I had carefully selected passages that reflected the whole—that’s possible. More likely, though, I had selected passages that made the book seem interesting, that put forth the story line or narrative I liked best. The book could seem like a romance but actually be horror, or it could seem like suspense but actually be comedy, or it could seem well written but actually be a mess. You’ve no clue.
I imagine this is true for almost everyone’s social persona, Madison included. One of the trickiest parts of social media is recognizing that everyone is doing the same thing you’re doing: presenting their best self. Everyone is now a brand, and all of digital life is a fashion magazine. While it’s easy to understand intrinsically that your presence on social media is only one small sliver of your full story, it’s more difficult to apply that logic to everyone else. Because you actually lived the full night, not just the two-second snapshot of everyone laughing, arms around shoulders. All you see of other people’s nights is an endless string of laughing snapshots, which your brain easily extrapolates to fantastic evenings filled with warmth and love, with good wine and delicious food. Comparing your everyday existence to someone else’s highlight reel is dangerous for both of you.
At the same time, existing online often feels less risky, less challenging, than existing in the real world, where things often become messy. Online, you can just plug in and edit everything. Plus, there is no body language that you’re forced to interpret. When you try to build a relationship in person, or meet a group of friends, you face the possibility of awkward pauses, confusing body language, and the disappointment of not saying precisely what you mean. In person, time moves steadily past and you either keep the rhythm of the interaction or you don’t. Online, there is only the artificial rhythm you create, the beat slowed down or sped up depending on what you choose. But that’s not quite dancing. Dancing is giving your body over to a larger energy. Dancing is finding the rhythm and beauty in whatever song is playing.
It’s easier to feel connected online than to truly connect in real life. So plugging in becomes addicting. We’d rather sign on and feel some superficial sense of connection than work and possibly fail at true connection offline. Being in the real world can be uncomfortable, especially after you spend so much time online.
“Split Image,” my espnW story about Madison’s life and her death, went online while I was sitting alone in a small room with the door closed. I was perched on a chair, bright lights overhead, staring into a camera, preparing to tape Around the Horn. Yet all I could think about was the story, which for nearly a year existed only in my head or on my computer screen, but now also existed on other people’s screens, in other people’s heads. Would anyone feel what I felt? What would they think? How would the story make them feel?
I hit Send on a tweet I’d spent an hour writing, the tweet like a carrier pigeon swooping across the Internet with the story’s link. And between the taping of each block of Around the Horn, I refreshed Twitter. Had anyone finished the piece yet? Did they care enough to respond? As I walked out of the ESPN Times Square building after filming, I kept refreshing, and the following sentence is not much of an exaggeration: I did not stop refreshing Twitter for five months. At night, for hours, I would rotate loading Twitter, then Instagram, Gmail, and iMessage. I stopped reading books because I couldn’t concentrate; I would launch my phone after reading each page. I rarely called people on the phone, but I sent thousands of texts, many with emojis. The point is, even before I lost myself trying to reconstruct Maddy, I had already lost myself to some hollow online version of me. The volume of the response to “Split Image,” as well as the intensity of the messages, felt like a kind of drug. For weeks, every time I refreshed my e-mail or Twitter, I got a hit of dopamine. And so in the months afterward, I continued to feverishly refresh those accounts, hoping for more digital feedback and interaction.
In her book Mind Change, Susan Greenfield asks this relevant question: “What if a cyber airbrushed persona started to elbow out the real you?” It’s easy to imagine your social persona as the most polished version of yourself. In the 1800s, this would be the “you” that showed up at the ball, or the dance, or Christmas Day service: best clothes, best face, ready to charm. And of course there’s nothing radical about presenting edited versions of ourselves, which we’ve always done. We once sent letters by horseback that contained only the words and ideas we wanted relayed. We once commissioned artists to paint our likeness, and these paintings almost certainly incorporated the equivalent of filters, specific instructions to paint the subject in the best possible light, from the best angle—soften the features, please. Self-editing began at the beginning. The only difference now is the volume of one another’s edited lives that we consume.
In December 2016, The New Yorker posted an article by Jia Tolentino, “The Worst Year Ever, Until Next Year.” In it, Tolentino addresses the potential, yet still unknowable, problems created by digital consumption. “There is no limit to the amount of misfortune a person can take in via the Internet,” she writes. “And there’s no easy way to properly calibrate it—no guidebook for how to expand your heart to accommodate these simultaneous scales of human experience; no way to train your heart to separate the banal from the profound. Our ability to change things is not increasing at the same rate as our ability to know about them. No, 2016 is not the worst year ever, but it’s the year I started feeling like the Internet would only ever induce the sense of powerlessness that comes when the sphere of what a person can influence remains static, while the sphere of what can influence us seems to expand without limit, allowing no respite at all.”
Before social media, we mostly interacted with one another in the bright light of day, where we all have so much less control over how we might look or seem. Now we spend hours a day consuming one another online. Moreover, digital natives have known only this reality. They have grown up on Instagram and Snapchat, absorbing hundreds of images a day. And most of these perfect pictures, loaded into boxes, reflect little of each person’s reality. We’re consuming an increasingly filtered world yet walking through our own realities unfiltered.
Maybe this matters less when life is good. Maybe when we’re in a good space, when we’re “happy,” it’s nice to launch social media and see how well everyone else is doing. The whole experience might feel like momentum, all this beauty and goodness gracefully stacking higher and higher. And when you’re in this place, you’re often rational, too, because your mind isn’t in fight-or-flight mode. Your pulse is low. Your thinking is clear. You’re able to recognize how edited so much of it is. But that’s okay, you tell yourself, because life is so good, and beautiful pictures and projected happiness are lovely.
But how often are we in that sane and safe place? And what about the rest of the time, when life is cloudy and gray, and getting out of your head is a struggle? Then what impact does the perfectly manicured landscape of social media have on our brains? A study of more than seven hundred college students by researchers at the University of Missouri found that Facebook could spark feelings of envy, which can lead to symptoms of depression. When you’re anxious and low, and out of habit (and addiction) you launch social media, it is unlikely that images of others will help you feel connected. Rather, they almost certainly further pry apart the space between you and everyone else, because you are not happy and everyone else seems to be.
Social media has psychological side effects. Paradoxically, hyperconnectivity may create feelings of disconnection—not only between us and others, but within ourselves. In Mind Change, clinical psychologist Larry Rosen points out that a “dangerous gap could grow between this idealized ‘front stage’ you and the real ‘backstage’ you, leading to a feeling of disconnection and isolation.” Social media doesn’t represent the first chance we’ve had to “distort” our identity, but it is the first that allows us to do so in such volume, and with such accessibility. Many celebrities have long felt the extreme disconnect between the public and private versions of themselves. Now the lived experience of a fractured persona, and the emotional impact of it, is being felt to varying degrees by millions of us.
This potential “division” within ourselves is compounded by a decrease in our attention spans and depth of thinking. Throughout human history, we have soothed ourselves by creating, by mining our brains and hearts, turning pain into thoughts, thoughts into art. Now we are tethered to a steady hum of the superficial, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect, to turn inward, away from that buzz. Even our sense of time has shape-shifted, because everything can be accessed instantaneously. It’s not hard to see, when viewed through this lens, that carefully considered responses are being replaced by knee-jerk reactions.
Another addition to this technological whirlwind: texting and emojis. Social media and texting have something specific in common: they both allow you to easily create a version of yourself that is more palatable—to others and to yourself. Texting gives the user ultimate control. A face-to-face conversation, or even a telephone call, might reveal more than someone intends or desires. Like water, verbal communication is hard to contain, easily spilling over. On text, users answer only what they want to answer and can easily end the conversation abruptly if they don’t like where it’s going. Or for any reason at all. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle writes that young people “prefer to deal with strong feelings from the safe haven of the Net. It gives them an alternative to processing emotions in real time.”
Young adults now predominantly communicate through text, or on Instagram and Snapchat. All of us, adults included, call people on the phone less frequently. Text is absolutely an efficient mode of staying in touch, because we can engage with numerous people while working—a steady stream of contact. And again, this may be fine when you’re feeling healthy and happy. But when you’re not, studies show that relying on these modes of digital communication does little to curb feelings of isolation and sadness.
Efficient communication does not mean effective communication. Our perception of efficacy is dependent on our desired outcome. We communicate for many different reasons: sometimes merely to make plans, sometimes out of boredom or duty, and other times because we are struggling and need compassion and empathy. Most worrisome are the ways social media complicates or reduces our ability to reach one another when we’re in distress.
Consider this passage from Mind Change: “Teenagers who spoke with their parents over the phone or in person released similar amounts of oxytocin [an indication of bonding and well-being] and showed similar low levels of cortisol [a marker of stress], indicative of a reduction in stress. In comparison, those who instant-messaged their parents released no oxytocin and had salivary cortisol levels as high as those who did not interact with their parents at all. Thus while the younger generation may favor non-oral modes of communication, when it comes to providing emotional support, messaging appears comparable to not speaking with anyone at all.”
Finally, after searching every crevice of Madison’s computer, I slowly moved the mouse to the dashboard and hovered over the blue iMessage icon. If someone accessed my iMessage file, they would find a blow-by-blow account of my days, as there are numerous people with whom I keep in pretty much constant contact. I’m also relatively forthcoming—at least with my close friends—about how I’m feeling. So while certain details are of course omitted (everyone has their secrets), the texts would provide a transparent view of my thinking, my mental state. I wondered whether Madison’s would provide the same.
I launched the application. Months and months of messages popped onto the screen. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed, as if I were staring into a cluttered garage with no idea where to find what I was looking for. Perhaps Maddy sent something meaningful a month ago to a friend she never texted again, an exchange buried beneath more recent interactions. I pictured a block of blue text, the words capturing everything going through Madison’s mind. Meticulous work would reveal this long-buried clue.
I started reading the conversations with her closest friends, those whose names I knew, because their communication happened to be more recent. Only a few minutes passed before I realized that I would not find anything insightful within Madison’s iMessage account. In fact, the most important realization I would arrive at was how superficial the medium could be. She sent thousands of messages, perhaps ten thousand words—and yet little was actually said.
We have this idea that someone’s phone will reveal their life, that if you found an iPhone on the street you’d have access to photos, e-mail, notes, texts, videos, apps. Each of these would project an angle of light that would gradually illuminate a whole person. But the truth is nothing like that. The truth is that a phone will help you build something like a hologram, and if you tried to touch it, your hand would breeze right through the image.
Still, I looked through every last one of Madison’s messages. After about an hour of clicking on names, reading, then clicking out, I launched an exchange with another friend, and my hands froze over the keyboard. My heart banged inside my chest. There, in the text box, were five words Maddy had typed but never sent—hey, what are you doing—followed by a blinking cursor. It was the cursor that caused my heart to race. The thin line seemed to be alive, waiting for Madison’s next move, like a blinking red traffic light at which she was idling, looking both ways, considering where to go next.
I thought, Wow, this is like having Madison, right here in front of me.
But is it really?