Twice as many teens say they do not enjoy life
As the world opened up post-pandemic, teens were a little better but still not OK
A few months after the hardcover edition of Generations was published in 2023, a version of a graph from the book on trends in teen depression (Figure 6.34) was published in the New York Post.
It looked like this:
Soon after, @paulgp (Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham) and @besttrousers (Matt Darling) noted on X/Twitter that they had trouble replicating the graph using the Monitoring the Future codebooks. Goldsmith-Pinkham posted, “Do we really think 44% of kids think their life is useless? I can’t seem to get remotely close with the data, but maybe I’m missing something.”
Then @JoannaVenator (Joanna Venator) pointed out that including the “neither” responses (as in neither agreeing or disagreeing) replicated the numbers. And she is correct: the numbers in the figure above for “can’t do anything right” and “my life is not useful” included those responding agree, mostly agree, or neither (and for “enjoy life,” they included those responding disagree, mostly disagree, or neither). Goldsmith-Pinkham responded that that was probably right, but he strongly disagreed with analyzing the data that way.
I now think Goldsmith-Pinkham is correct: It’s more informative and fair to show only the percentage who agreed, leaving out those who responded “neither.” So that’s what the graph in the paperback edition of Generations (out today!) does.
Figure 1 is that graph updated to 2023, the latest year available. I’m hoping publishing the graph here will eliminate any confusion about replicating the results, as well as responding to a valid criticism of the hardcover graph published in the Post.
Figure 1: Percent of 13- to 18-year-olds who agree “I can’t do anything right” or “My life isn’t useful,” or who disagree “I enjoy life as much as anyone,” 1991-2023. Source: Monitoring the Future surveys of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. Note: The 2020 data were collected in February and early March before COVID lockdowns.
Plus: These are stunning changes in teens’ views. Compared to 2012, twice as many teens in 2023 did not enjoy life (a 107% increase). Fifty-three percent more think their life isn’t useful, and 39% more believe they can’t do anything right.
Similar to the overall average of the 6 depressive symptoms items – which I covered in my last post – agreement with these items increases steadily from 2012 to 2019, spikes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, and then decreases in the post-pandemic years of 2022 and 2023.
To get another view of the trends, we can remove the years around the pandemic (2020, 2021, and 2022) and connect the lines from 2019 to 2023; see Figure 2.
Figure 2: Percent of 13- to 18-year-olds who agree “I can’t do anything right” or “My life isn’t useful,” or who disagree “I enjoy life as much as anyone,” 1991-2023, with 2020-2022 removed. Source: Monitoring the Future surveys of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders.
From 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 2023 (post-pandemic), the number of teens who disagreed that they enjoy life increased 13%, the number who agreed they can’t do anything right increased 4%, and the number who agreed their life isn’t useful increased 4%. These are smaller changes than the 2012 to 2019 timespan. The impacts of the smartphone and ubiquitous social media are already baked in, and the post-pandemic years were a relief after the lockdowns and deaths during 2020 and 2021.
Still, these are historically high rates for depressive symptoms. The kids are not OK, and they won’t be OK until parents, policy makers, and teens themselves can roll back the extraordinary amount of time teens spend using digital media (nearly 5 hours a day on social media alone, according to Gallup).
More time on screens, less time with friends in person, and less time sleeping is not a good formula for mental health. Even with the joy of emerging from a global pandemic and being able to resume normal activities again, teens were still much more depressed in the post-pandemic era than they were a decade prior.
The large changes in teens not enjoying life are particularly striking. Especially when you’re a teen, how enjoyable can life be when you’re constantly sitting alone in a room on your phone instead of being with your friends in person? The allure of the phone is a trap: It’s more convenient and draws us in with algorithms, but that time ends up being empty calories. It’s not real, and it’s ultimately not enjoyable even when we think it’s going to be.
I understand the manifold problems with social media, and in fact have spoken loudly about it throughout my community. However, I think we're not paying enough attention to the deleterious effects of instant gratification culture and the overall erosion of distress tolerance.
Parents raised in the 80s with participation trophies and awards simply for showing up (myself included) are now raising children who throw tantrums - mild to extreme - when they don't get what they think they deserve. Because we can't tolerate our own discomfort, we're far more likely not to tolerate that of the children, and in turn more likely to bail them out of it sooner.
The result is what you see in the graph, often presenting as suicidality and histrionics, counterbalanced by a whole lot of narcissism as they get older. We must teach ourselves, and then our kids (in that order) boundaries, limits, and distress tolerance if we want to reverse this trend. We must learn to say no to ourselves and to them as well.
Look no further than the average consumer debt metrics for further validation of this hypothesis; the curves are almost identical.
Can we leave this "social media" and "pop culture" distraction behind? Gen Z, especially girls, have told us, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, what is depressing them, and driving self-harm and suicide: parents' and adults' violence and emotional abuses and parents'/adults' skyrocketing drug/alcohol abuse and severe mental health problems.
The CDC's own analysis of its 2023 YRBS survey of 20,000 teens powerfully associated parental abuses and troubles with two-thirds of teens depression and 90% of teens' suicide attempts. When are we going to pay attention to this epidemic of parent and grownup crises as the major known factor in teens' mental health problems? The scientific case for blaming social media, which the CDC and other analyses have shown is a vanishingly small issue -- complicated by the fact that parent-abused teens use social media more -- has disappeared just at the time craven politicians discovered it.
We can keep dredging up excuses to hide behind claims that the grownups are just fine, insisting we have no mental health or drug problems, even as overdose deaths and hospital ER cases in the 25-64 age group raising teens soars into the millions during exactly the 2010-22 period teens got more depressed. Gen Z is a remarkably tolerant generation with no way of knowing how adults are supposed to act, and if the CDC and Monitoring the Future surveys are accurate, today's teens are spending little time with grownups (six in 10 girls eat dinner with parents 3 or fewer days a week) but still report high levels of serious depression associated with troubles among the adults around them. When are we going to take the "grownup crises" seriously?