We recently connected with Jen Libby and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
I am a therapist for teens and young people and can say confidently that I love my job. However, when I moved to NJ 20 years ago, there were 3 teen suicides on 6 years in the general geographic area where I treat kids. Then in 2009, I started to see a major increase of approximately 6-9 teen suicides every year, with 15 in just one year in 2020 in the same exact geographic area.
Kids would say to me, “Jen, adults created social media, they know it’s harming kids- even killing kids. Why haven’t the adults stepped up to fix it? Do they just not care about us? Are we just an experiment generation?”
I would routinely tell them “I’m sure Facebook or Google must be working on something – aren’t they in education somehow? I think we need to be patient – it’s obviously bad, but someone must be working on this”.
In 2015, my son, Patrick, died unexpectedly at 9 months old and I became a parent who now knows first hand the extreme pain of losing a child.
When I returned to work, amidst the growing teen mental health and suicide crisis, it was no longer acceptable for me to just treat 30 patients a week when there was not a scalable, accessible and widely utilized mental health option for young people. And kids are dying. The problem is too big, kids aren’t using mental health apps like we had hoped, and the current social medias are causing more harm than anticipated. There had to be a better strategy.
In 2019, I built a small team of young GenZ leaders that has grown to over 200 young people today to build a new social networking ecosystem together called Promly.
There is so much more to say about Promly as we have a publication, podcast, policy advocacy platform that works with policy makers in DC, and we just launched a mobile app for teens to build more genuine connections by matching teens based on 20by20 life goals. We also offer layers of mental health support in our app with actual anxiety/panic heart rate monitoring and coping built into the flash of the phone. We amplify the reach of numerous strategic partners and nonprofits (that wouldn’t have a tech presence on their own) who are built directly into the Promly ecosystem so that kids have easy access to real life support and opportunities to complete daily challenges and 20by20 life goals.
See Promly.org
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I grew up in a home where routinely taking in those who needed a home was just part of life. Though my family was not considered even middle class, my parents housed more than 35 people in our family that would otherwise have been considered homeless throughout their lives. That being the case, at a very young age, I got to see the direct impact of what drugs, human trafficking, homelessness, and untreated mental health could do to someone. Further, I also was fortunate to see the value of taking chances, providing resources and building more meaningful connectedness for strangers in need. As a result, I decided to become a therapist that specializes in treating high risk young people and have thoroughly enjoyed working with all of my patients.
Here is a brief bio:
Jennifer Libby has been a psychotherapist for over 20 years treating at-risk adolescents. Jennifer has been sounding the alarm for many years about the rapidly emerging youth mental health crisis exacerbated by less than responsible social media platforms. Frustrated by the slow movement by the social media industry to “do better” for kids, and in response to her own family tragedy, Jennifer founded Promly as a healthier alternative to legacy social media. Jennifer’s advocacy for better treatment of youth by Big Tech was well received recently in Washington, D.C. where she spoke to a large group of U.S. House Representatives regarding her on-going efforts (informed by client experience and Promly’s Gen Z advisory board) to have YouTube remove and/or disrupt the algorithm for the “how to tie a noose” and “how to hang yourself” videos that provide step by step video instructions often created by teens themselves. Of note, suicide by hanging in children and teens has increased by exponential numbers in the last 10 years. It is examples like this that drive Promly to re-imagine how social media can “do better” for teens. Jennifer also speaks publicly on a variety of other mental health concerns impacting teens and has provided consultation with numerous agencies including Center for Humane Tech (producers of the “The Social Dilemma”) on best practices for teens and tech. Jennifer is already helping to raise awareness of the indications of and mitigations for youth distress through speaking engagements scheduled at technology and health forums, as well as large corporate partnerships, and other organizations throughout the year. Jennifer now resides in the great Garden State with her husband and four daughters. She loves TikTok dances, skiing, is a huge fan of Gen Z, and feels like life would be better if every room had a disco ball
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Certainly you can reference the fact that my son, Patrick died at 9 months old and dramatically changed my path and career.
However, early on, resilience was modeled for me when at age 5, my house caught on fire, we were trapped inside, ultimately survived, but lost everything we owned and was homeless for about a year – moving from various locations while my parents rebuilt our house.
However, never did I feel homeless or like a victim because my parent modeled confidence and vision despite losing every material thing they had.
That attitude is something that has stuck with me amidst immense tragedy and horrific loss.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Psychics and mediums we’re against the rules in my childhood. They were seen as anti-God and therefore, not even talked about.
In May before I lost my son, Patrick, my 3 year old daughter told me repeatedly that “someone was going to die in our family”. I blamed the daycare first. But she kept saying the same thing for months despite numerous conversations with the caregivers that worked with her. Then, a week before Baby Patrick died, she said “I don’t want Baby Patrick to die. It’s going to be so sad. You’re going to cry buckets of tears.”
Of course, I talked to the daycare again- assuming something else happened there. And then a week later. My son died and I still cry buckets of tears.
As it turned out, my daughter was extremely intuitive and not only predicted our family tragedy but also went on to have numerous “conversations with God” that seemed unbelievable for a 4 year old but ended up offering tremendous insight.
I didn’t know how to parent a child like this and nothing in my education prepared me to understand how this works so I actually signed up for a class on becoming a medium – not for my career but to be a better parent. It was extremely insightful and allowed a much greater peace for me in my grieving and my understanding of how intuition works. I now believe it’s a missing piece in much of what we have traditionally overlooked in mental health education.
Further, I know now how to better treat my clients who are naturally intuitive in a much more effective and compassionate way and understanding the gift of intuition with my own child helped me to ignite Promly with the belief that my sons death had to be the change agent for a more meaningful impact long term
Contact Info:
- Website: www.promly.org
- Instagram: @promlyapp
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-libby-changemaker
- Twitter: @promlyapp
- Youtube: @promlyapp46