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 probl…
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?
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?