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Dr. Stein formerly raised parents’ “deaths of abandonment,” but that crucial issue keeps getting ignored in the stampede to blame teens and social media for their “mental health crisis.”

Hard evidence shows the “adolescent mental health crisis” is not driven by social media. It is a normal, predictable teenaged response to drastically deteriorating adult behaviors. It includes a healthy reaction against larger social crises such as climate change, newer studies suggest.

Consider all self-destructive deaths (suicides plus unintentional/undetermined overdose/poisonings, gunshots, cuttings, and hanging/suffocations) for the worst years selected to make teenagers look bad, 2021 vs 2011:

• Girls age 10-14: 119 to 294; up 175 deaths; or 1.6 per 100,000 population.

• Girls age 15-19; 602 to 1,081; up 479; 4.6.

• Boys age 10-14: 296 to 459; up 163; 1.4.

• Boys age 15-19: 2,145 to 3,054; up 909; 8.4.

versus an identical population of parents:

• Women age 40-44: 2,801 to 4,592; up 1,791 deaths; or 17.2 per 100,000 population.

• Women age 45-49: 3,487 to 4,101; up 614; 10.3.

• Men age 40-44: 5,714 to 12,191; up 6,477; 60.5.

• Men age 45-49: 6,802 to 10,352; up 3,550; 42.7.

Skyrocketing, widespread suicide/self-destruction by middle-aged parents from 2011 to 2021, rising much faster to levels appallingly higher, dwarf any crisis afflicting teenagers even during teens’ worst period. Among teens age 10-19, suicide/self-destructive deaths rose by 1,726 to 4,888; among parents age 40-49, by 12,432 to 31,236. Absolute changes, unlike percentage changes misleadingly comparing radically different-sized risk numbers, quantify real impacts on individuals and families.

Among the middle-ages parenting teens, 35-64, suicide/self-destructive deaths rocketed from 48,673 in 2011 to 92,000 in 2021. An appalling 700,000 parent-aged grownups died from rising suicides/self-destructive causes during 2011-2021, the equivalent of all middle-aged adults in Houston dying as Generation Z grew into adolescence.

Authorities insist by their silence that such catastrophes in teens’ homes couldn’t possibly drive teenage depression. Teenagers enjoy no similar luxury to evade reality. Current measures are inadequate. CDC and other surveys haven’t evolved to query teens on parents’ mental health, addiction, and other troubles.

The 2021 CDC survey did ask teens about adults’ abuses. The results were devastating. Violent and emotional abuses inflicted by parents and household adults victimize 63% of girls and 48% of boys. Parental/grownup abuses are by far the most decisive drivers of EVERY teenage mental health, suicide, and behavior-risk issue, obliterating all other factors.

When 16% of teens reported being cyberbullied, health authorities voiced endless outrage. When 55% of teens reported on the same CDC survey being injured and bullied by parents and grownups, authorities (including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy) went silent.

Instead, authorities blamed teens’ Smartphones, TikTok, Instagram, and cyberbullying – factors multivariate regression associates with 1% of teens’ depression (a reverse correlation, since abused youths more frequently use social media for contacts and medical/mental health services). Parent and grownup abuses are associated with 17% of teenagers’ depression. (If researchers similarly ignored the key cause of lung cancer, smoking, they’d blame country music for high rural rates.)

The CDC survey also shows that teens who use social media 4+ hours per day are 20% LESS likely to attempt suicide than teens who spend less than 1 hour per day or no hours online. Authorities ignore that, too.

I assume today’s psychological community is competent enough to know the obvious facts cited here. The dereliction they inflict on teenagers is harsher than anything I’ve seen in 50 years of social science work. Hopefully, teens will defy any social-media restrictions ill-motivated authorities enact and will continue their vital connections and activism.

The “adolescent mental health crisis” is real but grossly distorted. It consists of teenaged depression and anxiety, particularly by girls and marginalized youth, reacting against severe deteriorations in adult behaviors that today’s disturbed psychological and political authorities refuse to confront.

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