Englyn was the baby of the bunch. We have eight in total – five girls and three boys. Everybody knew she was spoiled, they spoiled her, we spoiled her. We were so close and so happy – we don’t think we could ever get close to describing the amount of love and happiness we had.
Englyn loved fashion. We would all be outside playing games in the yard and she would have on one outfit. And next thing we know, she’d come out and she’d have on something else. A little while later, she’d change again. She’d change four times in one day! She also loved to turn daddy’s music up. She loved dancing and singing at the top of her lungs. It was her way of just having fun and letting her voice be heard. Even when she was a baby, we would play this one song and every time she heard it she would jump in our arms and dance with us. The title of the song is ‘(No Matter How High I Get) I’ll Still Be Looking Up To You’. And that’s the case right now. We still look up to her.
She had a smartphone so she could stay connected with us when she would go to dancing or stay at a friend’s house. It was that simple. When she was 12 or 13, we knew she was using the phone to post funny videos or photos from around the house or listening to music. Just really simple, fun things that any young child would do.
But what we know now is that she had become addicted to social media. We thought social media was something for our kids to stay connected and have fun and post pictures, to let the world know their personality. We didn’t know about the dangers of it.
The day it happened, there was not one warning sign. She was just being the silly person that she could be at times – laughing and dancing. She spent the day taking pictures, playing on her phone, watching movies and listening to music – a normal, happy child. Our family game over and we cooked and played games. Before she went to bed, Englyn asked us what we were doing tomorrow, to which we replied “we’ll see.” She told us she loved us and that she’d see us in the morning and then went up to her room.
After it happened, we found notes that she had locked in her phone. Notes about how she was feeling and how she was depressed – it was so heartbreaking. And her social media feeds were sending her harmful content based on, what we assume to be, her searches about feeling down.
Social media platforms have the power to make their product safer for our kids. The harm their algorithms are doing is real and it’s affecting too many families like ours. It’s enough and it has to stop. We’re part of this network to help save other families from going through this mess – to save them from the grief that we’ll experience for the rest of our lives.