Collin Kartchner: Social media activist from Utah has died

Collin Kartchner, a Utah-based activist who traveled the country raising awareness of the damage social media can have on children’s mental and emotional health, has died, according to an Instagram post from his wife.

“We’ve never known such pain,” Elizabeth Kartchner wrote on Instagram Wednesday. “He peacefully passed away unexpectedly due to natural causes in his beautiful body that we are unclear of yet.”

Kartchner was a prominent social media activist who created a popular parody Instagram account in 2017 to make fun of social media and “the culture of toxic perfectionism it has created,” according to his website. He transformed that account, which to date has 224,000 followers, into a #SavetheKids campaign in 2018, using it to shed light on how social media is causing teen anxiety, depression and suicide — a belief he expressed in a 2018 op-ed for the Deseret News.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes called Kartchner a “warrior for our children.”

“He spent every day of his 40 years on this earth giving to those around him,” a GoFundMe account reads. “Caring for strangers, quietly serving. Giving the shirt off his back and the Jordans off his feet. You likely heard his moving message to #savethekids and #savetheparents, encouraging us to put our phones down and go live a beautiful life.”

In his piece for the Deseret News, Kartchner called social media a “public health crisis.”

“As I travel all over the state and country speaking to middle school and high school kids about the negative effects of social media, one thing rings true: Giving our kids with underdeveloped brains untethered access to all social expression is like giving them a loaded gun with zero training. We are giving our children the keys to the family car at age 12 with no driver’s education, and then we sit back and wonder why they keep crashing and burning,” he wrote. “… It is time we rethink the technology we hand over to our children.”

Kartchner shared that message to more than 500,000 youths and adults across the country, including TedXSaltLakeCity in 2018. In that lecture, Kartchner encouraged listeners to stand up to the big tech companies that were “deliberately exploiting and manipulating our kids, all for insane profit.”

“We have got to put on the brakes and ask some tough questions,” he said. “The answer of how do we save these kids is that we can’t until we first save ourselves. We as adults and as parents, we have to break free from our screen dependency and our social media addiction.”

Kartchner also recently spoke to kids and parents about using social media for good and to promote self-worth in Idaho and Texas earlier this month.

“We traveled the country near and far together screaming from rooftops to protect kids from the harmful effects of social media,” wrote fellow activist Katey McPherson in a tribute on Facebook. “I counted we went to at least 30 states together and gosh, he spoke to at least 250k kids probably 500k+ in those years. He saved hundreds of kids’ lives.”

In an Instagram post on Oct. 19, Kartchner wrote a reminder to “keep your kids, especially those girls, as far away from the darkness of social media as long as you possibly can.”

“We credit him with awakening the ‘sleeping giant’ of parents worldwide to the perils of granting powerful technologies to young people too soon,” wrote Family Tech University, an organization that prepares children for using technology, in an Instagram tribute. “His wake up call will live on.⁣”

A celebration of life will be announced at a later date, according to GoFundMe page.