Politicians and the media are riding the latest wave of attributing young people’s mental health problems to causes other than the real cause: dysfunctional adults.
The ‘dangers’ of social media make for alarming headlines, especially when there are high-profile incidents of social media-based abuse and violence. That’s why many commentators, advocates, and members of Congress are simply blaming teens for the increased stress and have proposed banning people under 16 from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. We are proceeding with this.
Like many policy efforts regarding youth, this misses the point and ignores the real crisis afflicting youth.
The real dangers facing the most troubled teens include: parents’ We are seeing an increase in addiction, suicidal thoughts and addictive behaviors, and violent and emotional abuse. As research shows that the highest proportion of young people who are struggling use social media to connect with others and find “someone to support them in difficult times,” Banning young people from online access is dangerous.
Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just released its Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which contains some alarming findings: “Teen girls are ‘engulfed’ in violence and trauma, CDC finds.” It’s generating headlines and inviting just such distractions and scapegoating. A reckless ban was imposed on them.
The latest report found a strange contradiction. Meanwhile, teens themselves have generally improved their behavior regarding drugs and alcohol, school violence, and sexual responsibility, and the FBI, CDC, and Census Bureau report on actual crimes, unwanted pregnancies, and youth dropping out of school. This is similar to the survey results. It’s plummeting. Only 15% to 16% report bullying (even under a very broad definition) at school or online. Commentators and coaches seem to be obsessed with his two venues.
Decades of research has shown that troubled teens are the products of abusive and troubled adult families.
Meanwhile, new CDC report reveals dangers and violence for teens given by someone else is increasing dramatically. For example, 18% of girls reported having been sexually victimized. But like other endangered areas, the CDC has failed to investigate. who is committing the violence. In cases of rape and sexual assault, as reported by the FBI by The number of teenagers is at an all-time low, but who is sexually victimizing young women?
The CDC’s latest report also found alarming levels of forced sex and violence among LGBTQ+ youth and other youth who have had same-sex sexual contact. Then questions about the culprit fail again. are they partners? fellow? adult? Proud Boys? If anything, the CDC seems to be speculating about who is to blame.
The CDC’s previous study, released in March 2022, similarly declared a teen mental health crisis, but raised more questions than the latest report. The results found that 11% of high school respondents reported violent abuse, and a shocking 55% reported psychological abuse by a parent or adult in the household. A 2013-2014 study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, using slightly different criteria and age groups, found a sharp increase in reports of violent and emotional abuse by teen parents and caregivers. Shown.
The CDC’s 2022 report lists violent parental abuse as including physical injuries such as hitting, punching, or kicking a child, while psychological abuse includes insulting, cursing, or calling a child names. . The CDC did not ask about sexual abuse by parents or adults, which was consistent with the opinion of leading commentators: atlanticwith Jonathan Haidt new yorkerCal Newport’s reporting completely sidesteps the abuse issue and blames the teen’s problems on social media.
The CDC’s 2022 report found that three more teens reported abuse by a parent (55%) compared to the 2023 report on school bullying (15%) and cyberbullying (16%). It turned out to be ~4 times more common. However, even though the CDC’s definition of parental abuse is narrower than that for co-workers, bullying. LGBTQ+ youth are once again suffering the most. They are four times more likely to experience violence from adults in their household and three to five times more likely to attempt suicide than non-LGBTQ+ youth.
Decades of research has shown that troubled teens are the products of abusive and troubled adult families. Physical and emotional abuse by adults in the household is firmly linked to later depression and suicide in children, with increasing numbers of teens reporting having “persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.” (26% in 2013, 44% in 2021).
The crisis facing American adults is grave. Over the past 30 years, the per capita suicide rate and drug and alcohol overdose death rate among adults of his parents’ generation has more than tripled, and from 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, he It reached a record peak in 2022. A 2020 Boston University study found that depression among adults has also tripled in recent years.
Compared to a 15-year-old, a 45-year-old today is 1.5 times more likely to be killed by a gunshot, 1.5 times more likely to be arrested criminally, 3 times more likely to commit suicide, and 4.5 times more likely to die from any violent act. It has doubled. The CDC and FBI report that illicit drugs are 25 times more likely to cause a fatal overdose (including 23 times more likely for fentanyl) and more than 100 times more likely to die from a binge. Rising mortality rates are just the tip of an iceberg that points to a much larger family problem.
This is not a “teen mental health crisis.” It is a troubled adult crisis made worse by the indifference of derelict leaders and interest groups who have failed to address America’s surging epidemic.If there were any teenagers out there, they’d be shocked. It wasn’t like that You become more anxious and depressed.
Abuse causes real injury and death. The most recent Child Abuse report for 2020 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau found approximately 160,000 victims of physical and sexual abuse, as well as severe psychological abuse inflicted by parents or others. It counts approximately 40,000 victims of abuse. The participation of household heads in proven cases that represent only a fraction of what actually happens. In 2020, about 500 homicide victims between the ages of 12 and 17 were killed by people 25 years or older, according to an FBI tally, compared to the number of victims killed in school shootings. This is several tens of times higher.
Missing (and misrepresenting) the point
Almost all coverage seems to avoid acknowledging the disturbing reality that teens cannot avoid.
A classic example is the scary-sounding but meaningless statistic that suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers. That’s not because suicide is particularly prevalent among teenagers, but because teenagers rarely die from natural causes. For example, so far in 2021 and 2022, the CDC has recorded 4,184 suicides and 2,705 deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer among 12- to 19-year-olds. There were 8,661 suicides among people aged 42 to 49, and 73,257 deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer. It is possible to mourn a death without completely misrepresenting teenagers as particularly remorseful.
Unfortunately, members of Congress and other leaders are trying to explain why drug and alcohol deaths, gun violence, suicide, and related self-destructive behaviors that collectively killed more than 400,000 people in the United States in 2020 The United States proved unable and unwilling to devise an effective response to the outbreak. ~2021. However, many of those same commentators and leaders are passionately blaming social media and teens.
Should young people also be prohibited from socializing with their parents, going to church, joining organizations like Scouts, playing sports, and attending school? All of these organizations have a history of large-scale abuse of children and young people and systematic cover-ups.
Studies that have looked at the effects of social media in subtle ways have found that the majority of teens benefit. In a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, only 9% said social media had a negative impact on them personally. (Interestingly, 32% believe it has had a negative impact. other According to a Pew study, “80% say social media gives them some connection to what’s going on in their friends’ lives, and 71% say social media is a place where they can express their creativity; 67% said social media makes them feel safe.” 58% said having people who support them makes them feel accepted. (According to Pew, one implicit motivation for Republicans to support restrictions is that more young people identify with the Democratic Party and politics than do Republican young people, and they use social media to communicate and organize.) (Maybe that’s a high possibility.)
In contrast, those who perceive social media both positively and negatively report negative experiences such as peer pressure, feelings of alienation, feeling bad about their life, and being “overwhelmed by all the drama.” Few teens reported . Both groups of her teens said the online experience was better than their parents expected.
The survey asks youth questions about issues selected by the researcher. When surveyed teens were asked to name their biggest problems, they cited finances, caring for their families and themselves, and worries about the future, not social media.
leave those kids alone
Congress has a disastrous record of imposing de facto age limits on what it deems dangerous conduct. A long-term study using improved technology has lowered the nation’s drinking age, initially hailed for “saving lives” (albeit at the cost of hundreds of thousands of teen arrests annually). It turns out that raising the age to 21 actually discourages drinking and only “postpones death” into young adulthood. It is extremely important to gain “experience” with alcohol.Similarly, enacting stricter teen driving laws was associated with an increase in youth fatal crashes more than a decrease in teen fatal crashes.
For more than a century, the vigilance leveled at all young generations has proven to be ineffective. Within a few years, alarmists resurfaced and were proclaiming a new youth crisis, more serious than ever.
Leading psychologists in the early 1900s touted an “extraordinary increase” in “child suicides,” blaming popular media (“cheap theaters, gloomy literature, sensational reporting”). A 1936 examination by the American Commission on Youth found that 75% of young people had debilitating mental problems. science newsletter In 1937, it reported that “children between the ages of 6 and 13” were being treated for suicidal thoughts. (Experts now refer to these children as the “Greatest Generation”).
Research shows that in the 1980s, mental health professionals average Teenagers had more mental disorders psychiatric patient. In the 1980s, the psychiatric industry profited by advertising that teen suicides were tripling to fill empty beds in overbuilt hospitals. In the 1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center, led by Tipper Gore, argued that rock music was the cause of teenagers’ problems. A 1995 CDC report announced that suicides were “soaring” among young adolescents. In 1998, rolling stone He blamed television for children, saying they were “the most damaged and confused generation this country has ever produced.” In the early 2000s, college counselors declared a “campus mental health crisis” and won tuition increases to fund more staff. Apparently, it had no effect. Counselors are back and demanding more money because “students’ mental health is at risk.”
What we should be studying is what it means for teenagers to be impulsive, miserable, “temporary sociopaths.” unlikely engages in self-destructive behavior compared to mature adults who appear to be stable. They do not need the authorities to step in again and impose misplaced alarm and destructive bans that trivialize the real problems they face.
mike mails He is a senior fellow at the Center for Youth and Criminal Justice, a principal investigator at YouthFacts, and the author of five books about America’s youth.
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