I appreciate anyone mentioning the “other side.” However, Jean Twenge’s refutation here is not convincing.
The New Yorker article Twenge cites is typically superficial. The teenagers are mere props, too unimportant to merit serious, hard-hitting investigation into what really underlay their suicides. This is about justifying grownups. The shallowness of articles like these is infuriating for anyone like me who worked for years inside families and communities and saw the family stresses what we call “at risk” teenagers endure.
Of course, the New Yorker writer could have chosen the vastly more common adult tragedies affecting teens – or, conversely, the vastly greater numbers of teens from among the 60-80% who told Pew Research they use social media to connect with people who “help them get through tough times” as examples of teens saved by social media. Instead, he adopts the view that only his grownup peers are entitled to have their grief recognized and justified. This is a society that doesn’t care about kids. This article, aping others, declares: we grownups are the victims here of kids' social media and terrible behaviors.
The same pop-media authors and substack commentators who summon understandable sympathy for parents who lose a child to suicide seem unable to summon any sympathy – in fact, only callous indifference – toward the vastly greater numbers of children and teens who lose tens of thousands of parents and nearby adults to suicide and overdoses every year and live daily with millions of parents’ serious troubles and abuses.
Over the last three years, 1,781 teens ages 10-14 died from suicide and self-inflicted overdoses. All are tragedies worth understanding; their parents’ grief is afforded intense attention and lamenting. However, during that same period, 38,492 Americans ages 40-44 died from suicides and self-inflicted overdoses, most of these parents, parents’ partners, family members, and other grownups who powerfully affect teenagers. Yet – no mention, no sympathy, no attention. Look at the thousands of book, media commentaries, substack pages – absolutely no mention of the teenagers who suffer grownup tragedies and abuses.
Another example: six times more children and teenaged youths are shot to death at home than at school, overwhelmingly by shooters 21 and older. There are no anguished commentaries on these young gun violence victims; only fleeting mention in buried news articles, if that. We only care about kids if their parents do.
Even when the Surgeon General finally issued an advisory on parents’ widespread mental health and addiction issues that directly challenges Twenge's claim that parents today are healthy, the few commentaries it got ignored the effects on children and teens. Twenge once again dodges the most convincing explanation for teenagers’ increased depression: exploding drug abuse and widespread violent and emotional abuses inflicted on teens, especially girls and LGBTQ youth, by their parents and household adults.
Among ages 25-64 from 2010 to 2021, deaths from overdoses surged from 27,399 to 93,107, hospital ER overdose cases rose from 440,000 to 1,040,000, and annual ER cases involving drugs and alcohol rose from 2.8 million to over 5 million. Contrary to Twenge’s dismissals, these mammoth numbers, surging in the US and all across Anglo countries during exactly the period teens became more depressed are not “small.”
Think correlation strongly suggests causation, as Twenge states? Soaring parent-age drug/alcohol crises and teens’ rising depression and suicide rates correlate at r=0.80 plus, orders of magnitude higher than the weak, near-nothing social-media correlations (0.20 and lower) Twenge cites.
We now have further estimates of the grownup-caused difficulties a majority of America’s youth, especially girls and LGBTQ teens, face in their homes. The Centers for Disease Control’s massive, just-released 2023 survey of 19,000 teens finally reveals how appallingly widespread parents’ and adults’ addiction, depression, suicidality, jailing, absence, domestic violence, and emotional and violent abuses are associated with teenagers’ poor mental health. This survey is devastating – which is why I suspect it is receiving no attention. I will detail on my substack how the new CDC survey demolishes conventional discussion of teens, depression, social media, and home life within a few days.
I agree with everything you say here except the "especially LGBTQ" teens part. Because what I have seen as a parent is that label used as a rouse to control parents. Being LGBT isn't an issue where I live. No one cares! And still the rates of kids in serious trouble are mind blowing. Time and time again I have seen teens AND parents latch in to "identity" to obfuscate the real problems underneath. Like you say, drugs is a big one. But also domestic violence, homelessness, financial stress, community violence, and neurodivergence.
To find solace and also to differentiate themselves these kid turn to the trendiest community outlet... LGBT. In my day it was goth and punk and skateboards. Now it's LGBT. But I think its a grave error on our part to make that a cause instead of a symptom.
Thanks for taking the time and energy to call out inappropriate ways of using data in the general media. As professionals, we need to hold them accountable to cite research accurately.
I greatly appreciate reading the comments Dr. Twenge's essay provoked. The cause of maladaptive behavior is complex and, sadly, too often politicized. But here I see you all honestly struggling for insightful diagnosis so that the right treatment can be brought to bear.
In the comments, both rightly point to the family and societal structures and tensions that leave children pulled apart--trauma of all sorts, including life threatening and sudden and chronic. The youth researcher Dr. Mert Strommen, who founded the Search Institute, commented to me in 1999 that clearest indictor from a meta-analysis of youth being at risk for depression and anxiety and worse was to agree with the question "My mom and dad don't get along" -- only death of a parent, abuse, and incarceration predicted worse outcomes. It wasn't poverty, or education, or health access, et al. It was simply swimming everyday in conflict never resolved.
As a clinician, my take is congruent with what you all offer--too often its the parents struggling and not confronting their stuff, typically trauma or passivity, anything that's grown into resentment. In the last 10 years I only work with children if the parent guidance is included and they can show me that they are doing their emotional/relational work too.
I love how none of these people spend any time IN the hospitals with these kids. Well I have. Over 5 years. My daughter spent from 14-17 in 6 hospitals, 3 months in wilderness therapy, 8 months in a state residential treatment locked facility. Then she went to a Special Ed school for kids who have been in these places. Almost all of them there for suicide attempts. Because unless you are trying suicide you can't get in! There is no funding for anything less han the ultimate safety call.
You have to understand, the behavior risk kids go to other tailored facilities. The addicts have their own programs. So there is a highly seleactive cohort of kids in the top line mental health facilities who can be studied... no kne does. By top line I mean "highest level of care". Literally the suicide kids. Anything less is outpatient over and over until they try suicide again and again. Then they bump you up.
I can say HANDS DOWN definitively, 1000%, these kids don't care what's going in in the world. They have NO CLUE what's happening with climate change. This is ridiculous. Literally just walk into a hospital and ask the staff. Most of those kids are years behind grade level. They couldn't tell you the name of a news paper let alone what's in it. We were the ONLY family in the state of MA who has ever brought a lawyer to an intake. That's what we were told. Sure suicide hits all walks of life but you would be surprised how many are working class/blue collar. We don't hear about them because they "take their meds" or often go to jail.
These kids are suffering from TRAUMA. End Stop. Trauma that is exacerbated 24/7 by access to a little portable self-sooth machine called a cell phone with social media. That's it!
It could be family trauma, rape (lots of sexual assault), divorce (lots of nasty divorce), trafficing, lots of eating disorders... and layered in almost of the cases are things like untreated dyslexia, adhd and autism. The untreated part is key, because these kids lilive life being tortured for being different. Often bullied by their own parents. THAT'S traumatic. Mostly, it's kids whose parents are struggling with controling their own emotions with and around kids who have poorly treated underlying mental health or neuro divergent issues. And the kids go deep into anxiety and then self sooth with social media till their hearts and minds brake.
There is nothing more in those hospitals. Ask the staff! Ask the people running these places! No one asks. Its ALL just political commentary on made up hypotheses. Literally not one kid I have ever met in these places was suicidal over discrimination or the world falling apart. That's laughable! They are suicidal because they feel unloved! But the adults can't seem to handle the guilt so we just ignore it. Its sick. But its also very easy to figure this out if you ask the right people the right questions. Journalists are WILLFULLY ignoring searching for the truth.
I appreciate anyone mentioning the “other side.” However, Jean Twenge’s refutation here is not convincing.
The New Yorker article Twenge cites is typically superficial. The teenagers are mere props, too unimportant to merit serious, hard-hitting investigation into what really underlay their suicides. This is about justifying grownups. The shallowness of articles like these is infuriating for anyone like me who worked for years inside families and communities and saw the family stresses what we call “at risk” teenagers endure.
Of course, the New Yorker writer could have chosen the vastly more common adult tragedies affecting teens – or, conversely, the vastly greater numbers of teens from among the 60-80% who told Pew Research they use social media to connect with people who “help them get through tough times” as examples of teens saved by social media. Instead, he adopts the view that only his grownup peers are entitled to have their grief recognized and justified. This is a society that doesn’t care about kids. This article, aping others, declares: we grownups are the victims here of kids' social media and terrible behaviors.
The same pop-media authors and substack commentators who summon understandable sympathy for parents who lose a child to suicide seem unable to summon any sympathy – in fact, only callous indifference – toward the vastly greater numbers of children and teens who lose tens of thousands of parents and nearby adults to suicide and overdoses every year and live daily with millions of parents’ serious troubles and abuses.
Over the last three years, 1,781 teens ages 10-14 died from suicide and self-inflicted overdoses. All are tragedies worth understanding; their parents’ grief is afforded intense attention and lamenting. However, during that same period, 38,492 Americans ages 40-44 died from suicides and self-inflicted overdoses, most of these parents, parents’ partners, family members, and other grownups who powerfully affect teenagers. Yet – no mention, no sympathy, no attention. Look at the thousands of book, media commentaries, substack pages – absolutely no mention of the teenagers who suffer grownup tragedies and abuses.
Another example: six times more children and teenaged youths are shot to death at home than at school, overwhelmingly by shooters 21 and older. There are no anguished commentaries on these young gun violence victims; only fleeting mention in buried news articles, if that. We only care about kids if their parents do.
Even when the Surgeon General finally issued an advisory on parents’ widespread mental health and addiction issues that directly challenges Twenge's claim that parents today are healthy, the few commentaries it got ignored the effects on children and teens. Twenge once again dodges the most convincing explanation for teenagers’ increased depression: exploding drug abuse and widespread violent and emotional abuses inflicted on teens, especially girls and LGBTQ youth, by their parents and household adults.
Among ages 25-64 from 2010 to 2021, deaths from overdoses surged from 27,399 to 93,107, hospital ER overdose cases rose from 440,000 to 1,040,000, and annual ER cases involving drugs and alcohol rose from 2.8 million to over 5 million. Contrary to Twenge’s dismissals, these mammoth numbers, surging in the US and all across Anglo countries during exactly the period teens became more depressed are not “small.”
Think correlation strongly suggests causation, as Twenge states? Soaring parent-age drug/alcohol crises and teens’ rising depression and suicide rates correlate at r=0.80 plus, orders of magnitude higher than the weak, near-nothing social-media correlations (0.20 and lower) Twenge cites.
We now have further estimates of the grownup-caused difficulties a majority of America’s youth, especially girls and LGBTQ teens, face in their homes. The Centers for Disease Control’s massive, just-released 2023 survey of 19,000 teens finally reveals how appallingly widespread parents’ and adults’ addiction, depression, suicidality, jailing, absence, domestic violence, and emotional and violent abuses are associated with teenagers’ poor mental health. This survey is devastating – which is why I suspect it is receiving no attention. I will detail on my substack how the new CDC survey demolishes conventional discussion of teens, depression, social media, and home life within a few days.
I agree with everything you say here except the "especially LGBTQ" teens part. Because what I have seen as a parent is that label used as a rouse to control parents. Being LGBT isn't an issue where I live. No one cares! And still the rates of kids in serious trouble are mind blowing. Time and time again I have seen teens AND parents latch in to "identity" to obfuscate the real problems underneath. Like you say, drugs is a big one. But also domestic violence, homelessness, financial stress, community violence, and neurodivergence.
To find solace and also to differentiate themselves these kid turn to the trendiest community outlet... LGBT. In my day it was goth and punk and skateboards. Now it's LGBT. But I think its a grave error on our part to make that a cause instead of a symptom.
Thanks for taking the time and energy to call out inappropriate ways of using data in the general media. As professionals, we need to hold them accountable to cite research accurately.
I greatly appreciate reading the comments Dr. Twenge's essay provoked. The cause of maladaptive behavior is complex and, sadly, too often politicized. But here I see you all honestly struggling for insightful diagnosis so that the right treatment can be brought to bear.
In the comments, both rightly point to the family and societal structures and tensions that leave children pulled apart--trauma of all sorts, including life threatening and sudden and chronic. The youth researcher Dr. Mert Strommen, who founded the Search Institute, commented to me in 1999 that clearest indictor from a meta-analysis of youth being at risk for depression and anxiety and worse was to agree with the question "My mom and dad don't get along" -- only death of a parent, abuse, and incarceration predicted worse outcomes. It wasn't poverty, or education, or health access, et al. It was simply swimming everyday in conflict never resolved.
As a clinician, my take is congruent with what you all offer--too often its the parents struggling and not confronting their stuff, typically trauma or passivity, anything that's grown into resentment. In the last 10 years I only work with children if the parent guidance is included and they can show me that they are doing their emotional/relational work too.
I love how none of these people spend any time IN the hospitals with these kids. Well I have. Over 5 years. My daughter spent from 14-17 in 6 hospitals, 3 months in wilderness therapy, 8 months in a state residential treatment locked facility. Then she went to a Special Ed school for kids who have been in these places. Almost all of them there for suicide attempts. Because unless you are trying suicide you can't get in! There is no funding for anything less han the ultimate safety call.
You have to understand, the behavior risk kids go to other tailored facilities. The addicts have their own programs. So there is a highly seleactive cohort of kids in the top line mental health facilities who can be studied... no kne does. By top line I mean "highest level of care". Literally the suicide kids. Anything less is outpatient over and over until they try suicide again and again. Then they bump you up.
I can say HANDS DOWN definitively, 1000%, these kids don't care what's going in in the world. They have NO CLUE what's happening with climate change. This is ridiculous. Literally just walk into a hospital and ask the staff. Most of those kids are years behind grade level. They couldn't tell you the name of a news paper let alone what's in it. We were the ONLY family in the state of MA who has ever brought a lawyer to an intake. That's what we were told. Sure suicide hits all walks of life but you would be surprised how many are working class/blue collar. We don't hear about them because they "take their meds" or often go to jail.
These kids are suffering from TRAUMA. End Stop. Trauma that is exacerbated 24/7 by access to a little portable self-sooth machine called a cell phone with social media. That's it!
It could be family trauma, rape (lots of sexual assault), divorce (lots of nasty divorce), trafficing, lots of eating disorders... and layered in almost of the cases are things like untreated dyslexia, adhd and autism. The untreated part is key, because these kids lilive life being tortured for being different. Often bullied by their own parents. THAT'S traumatic. Mostly, it's kids whose parents are struggling with controling their own emotions with and around kids who have poorly treated underlying mental health or neuro divergent issues. And the kids go deep into anxiety and then self sooth with social media till their hearts and minds brake.
There is nothing more in those hospitals. Ask the staff! Ask the people running these places! No one asks. Its ALL just political commentary on made up hypotheses. Literally not one kid I have ever met in these places was suicidal over discrimination or the world falling apart. That's laughable! They are suicidal because they feel unloved! But the adults can't seem to handle the guilt so we just ignore it. Its sick. But its also very easy to figure this out if you ask the right people the right questions. Journalists are WILLFULLY ignoring searching for the truth.
Thank you once again for this vital work which can help to save lives.