What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“What had she been going through, unseen and unheard, behind all those filters?”

In the Foreword, Alison Overholt reflects on the contrast between Madison’s seemingly perfect life and her inner struggles. To the world, Madison was an excellent athlete and an accomplished student, recruited to a Division I team at an Ivy League school. On social media, Madison’s life seemed perfect. Overholt argues that Madison is like many of us who feel pressure to hide our rough edges and sadness. Overhold describes this book as a way of changing the narrative around mental health, pointing to the ambitions of the book.

“She’s not happy, he thought. That’s not a happy kid.”

While Madison seems like she had the world at her feet, her family and friends notice her declining mental health. Her father Jim notices her unhappiness as he drives her back to Penn after the Christmas holidays. They discuss transferring and her finding a new therapist. Jim is worried but thinks that they have plenty of time to get Madison back on track emotionally. Madison committed suicide days later.

“Madison and her friends were the first generation of ‘digital natives’—kids who’d never known anything but connectivity. That connection, at its most basic level, meant that instead of calling your parents once a week from the dorm hallway, you could call and text them all day long, even seeking their approval for your most mundane choices, like what to eat at the dining hall. Constant communication may seem reassuring, the closing of physical distance, but it quickly becomes inhibiting. Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations have experienced.”

Fagan repeatedly emphasizes how social media has changed young people’s experience. This passage serves as a reminder of how much things have changed between Madison’s parents’ generation and the present. Fagan describes how despite connecting people, social media and text messaging isolate young people.