The massive adult drug abuse crisis erupted all over the Western world during the time teens got more depressed. That’s not a coincidence.

Yet, David Blanchflower, Jonathan Haidt, Zach Rausch, Jean Twenge, Vivek Murthy, et al., blame TikTok and Instagram while pretending rising millions of grownup addicts don't affect teens.

Figure 1. Middle-aged drug/poisoning deaths, 10 Western countries

Sources: United Nations, Deaths by cause of death, age and sex (WHO data) (2024). Accidental poisonings (nearly all from drugs or alcohol) for ages 25-64; United Kingdom and Wales, drug misuse deaths, ages 30-69. Note: does not include drug-related deaths from suicides, chronic abuse, or drug-related accidents, homicides, or unknown intent.

During the time teenagers reported getting more depressed, drug abuse among grownups of ages to be parents, parents’ partners, family members, teachers, coaches, and other adults around teens erupted not just in the United States, but in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, and across the Western world.

In England and Wales, deaths from “drug misuse” tripled among ages 40-49 and rose 780% among ages 50-69. Many countries reliably tabulated by the World Health Organization suffered massive increases in accidental poisonings (overwhelmingly drugs and alcohol) during the 2000s: Australia (up 170%), Canada (more than tripled), UK (more than quadrupled), Germany (doubled), Ireland, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Czechia, Sweden, Brazil, and Colombia, among the countries with more recent and complete reports. (Most countries do not have updated vital statistics, complete counts, and/or politics-free tabulations.)

Unfortunately, Blanchflower, psychologist Jonathan Haidt (After Babel), Twenge, and colleagues committed themselves years ago to blaming social media without assessing far more obvious, crucial factors like soaring parental and grownup drug/alcohol and violent/emotional abuse. Now, they’re committed to denying that the epidemic of overdosing, hospitalized, dead, abusive, and arrested grownup addicts could possibly have anything to do with teens’ getting more depressed.

The numbers they must deny are staggering. Deaths and hospital ER cases are just the iceberg tip of adults’ drug and alcohol abuse crisis affecting teens in millions of households. From 2011 to 2022, among Americans ages 25-64, overdose deaths soared from 59,000 to 137,000, ER-treated overdose cases rose from 680,000 to 1.4 million, and total hospital emergency cases involving illicit drug and/or alcohol abuse rose from 2.8 million to over 5 million per year.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that one-fourth of U.S. children and teens live in families with drug and/or alcohol problems. A mountain of research shows parents’ drug/alcohol woes severely increase teens’ depression and other risks.

But no – that can’t be why teens are more depressed, insists Twenge (the only cyber-blamer even to address this crisis. The rest, including the nation’s chief health officer Murthy, just ignore it. Too bad teens don’t enjoy that luxury.).

First, Twenge argues without evidence, teenagers get more depressed only if their parents actually die from drugs; even tens of thousands of deaths are too few to have caused teens’ depression increase. No, teens couldn’t possibly get depressed over the trivial reality of millions of parents, parents’ partners, relatives, family friends, teachers, coaches, etc., abusing drugs and alcohol, overdosing, going to ER, getting arrested, going to rehab, inflicting abuses, nearly (but not quite) dying, and just being wasted.

Having worked for a dozen years directly in homes with teens and families, I can’t fathom that illogic. From 2010 through 2022, coroners and hospital ER departments report a staggering 13 million adults ages 25-64 died or were treated for overdoses of drugs and alcohol, with many millions more treated for other forms of substance abuse. If just half those adults affected teenagers, the impact would be catastrophic.

Second, Twenge argues that parents claim on selected surveys that they’re fine and don’t use drugs: “overall, the picture of middle-aged parents in this data is quite positive.” Oh, well, then. All those coroners and hospitals reporting over 5 million real drug/alcohol-related deaths and ER cases afflicting adults ages 25-64 in 2022 alone – equal to the entire middle-aged population of Michigan, a 250% increase since 2011 – must be hallucinating. The fact that middle-agers are the most likely age by far to be prescribed anti-depressants couldn’t possibly be because more of them are depressed while denying such socially-stigmatized conditions on self-reporting surveys.

Twenge’s most convincing counter-argument confirms an intriguing class issue. Among both teens and adults, depression manifests itself in much deadlier ways among poorer, less-educated groups than in more affluent populations. For both teens and adults, rich and poor admit to more depression and liberals report being more bummed. Yet, those most likely to die from overdoses, suicides, and related self-destructive causes tend to be from lower-income groups in more conservative areas.

The bottom line: Blanchflower, Haidt, Twenge, Murthy, and cyber-blaming colleagues are talking nonsense. They haven’t studied the eruption in grownups’ drug/alcohol abuse across many Western nations (non-Western ones mostly don’t reliably report), the effects of 62% of girls telling the US Centers for Disease Control’s 2021 survey they were emotionally and/or violently abused by parents and household grownups, that online girls are much less at risk from serious crises than non-online girls, the Pew study and rising long-term studies showing smartphones and social media are not “destroying” or “rewiring the brains” of teens of any age – nor anything else challenging their years-ago pre-set ideology.

The cyber-blamers do, however, exploit a bitter political reality: popularity-seeking Surgeon General Murthy, governors, attorneys general, senators, etc., love culture-war “save the children!” grandstanding, pointing accusing fingers at big-tech moguls (who deserve vilification for many reasons). Conversely, politicians are loathe to confront unpopular issues like addictions and abuses by their powerful middle-aged constituencies, no matter how much they provably harm children and teens who cannot dodge these realities. No political gains in that.

It’s sad that politicians in the UK and other Western countries are joining the U.S. in culture-war escapism. Haven’t they noticed the tragi-travesty of America’s endless epidemics of intractable, soaring social crises these same authorities can’t even honestly describe, let alone confront?