A huge population of American teens is practically immune to suicide and self-harm. What’s their secret?
Weirdly, authorities who claim they want to see depression- and suicide-free teenagers show no interest in learning from 12 million teens who have virtually achieved exactly that – spectacularly.
A large teen population with very low risks is shown in the Centers for Disease Control’s massive, 116-question survey of 7,000 teens that, even at this late date, remains the only useful source for analyzing varied factors in the teenage “mental health crisis.”
That survey reveals three large populations of otherwise similar America teenagers that display such radically differing rates of mental health and risk behaviors that they might as well be from different planets.
What, besides risk levels, differentiates these three teen populations? Not age, gender, or racial demographics, nor social media habits, which are all very similar.
No, the biggest differences between these three teenaged populations is stark and obvious: whether they were abused by their parents and household grownups. That’s by far the biggest factor in teen mental health and behavior revealed in the CDC survey – yet, one totally ignored by authorities.
Figure 1. What really drives teens’ depression and suicide
Source: CDC (2022).
What are the characteristics of these teen populations?
· Non-abused teens (approximately 45% of the teen population) – report no violent or emotional abuse by parents/household adults, and spend an average of 4.6 hours a day using screens.
· Rarely abused teens (20% of the teen population) – report no violent and only occasional emotional abuse by parents/household adults, and spend an average of 4.6 hours a day using screens.
· Abused teens (35% of the teen population) – report violent abuse and/or regular or frequent emotional abuse by parents/household adults, and spend an average of 4.7 hours a day using screens.
Abuse level, not screen time, defines teen risks
Compared to non-abused teens, abused teens are 2.8 times more likely to report persistent sadness and 3.2 times more likely to report poor mental health, and an appalling 21 times more likely to self-harm and 22 times more likely to attempt suicide. Teens who are occasionally emotionally abused by adults are in between.
Stated in reverse, non-abused teens are 64% less likely to report being persistently sad, 68% less likely to report frequently poor mental health, 95% less likely to attempt suicide, and 95% less likely to be medically treated for self-harm compared to abused teens.
These non-abused teens who frequently use social media also are much safer than other teens from other risks such as lack of sleep, drug and alcohol abuse, dating and other violence, rape, weapons carrying, cyberbullying, and school failure. Non-abused teens are the safest of any population of any age (other than pre-teen children) from deadly and/or injurious self-inflicted harm.
That’s an astonishing achievement for a large population of American teenagers, an age group and generation relentlessly stereotyped as depressed, miserable, and risk-happy. Yet, they’re ignored – possibly because they disconfirm authorities’ popular, pet notions of what makes teens go wrong.
It’s not social media. For all three teen groups, as well as for all ages and genders separately, teens with less than 1 hour or no screen time per day were consistently more likely to attempt suicide and to self-harm than were teens who regularly used screens. Overall, members of the three groups spent identical amounts of time using screens.
In particular, depressed teens (nearly 70% of all abused teens report being frequently depressed) benefit from social media access. Depressed teens who rarely/never use screens are 2.3 times more likely to attempt suicide and nearly 3 times more likely to self-harm than teens who are online the most, the CDC survey shows.
To drastically reduce teen suicide and self-harm to very low levels, then, two major actions are imperative: (a) an urgent, national-priority initiative to reduce parents’ and household grownups’ violent and emotional abuses victimizing teenagers, and (b) preserving unrestricted social media access for teens of all ages.
There are further complications on this issue, but the bottom line is why, two years later, the basic facts of the CDC’s definitive survey continue to be misrepresented and its truly incisive, crucial findings abjectly ignored. I hope we would all at least agree that if we want to prevent poor mental health and depression, the best information – including studying healthy teen populations instead of denying they exist – is vital.