Alarming new analysis shows parents’ abuses and troubles harm teenagers’ mental health far more than today's worthless debate admits

Our leading health survey exposes social-media-obsessed authorities’ grotesque failure to confront widespread family crises.

This is ugly. In coming days this substack will present results from a comprehensive analysis of the Centers for Disease Control’s mammoth 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey that go beyond those presented before.

Readers know I extensively analyze this definitive 107-question, million-data-point CDC survey of 20,000 13-18-year-olds – the one everyone (mis)cites. The reason is simple: this survey is the ONLY one to ask American teens about parents’ and adults’ violent, abusive, addicted, mentally troubled, and criminal behaviors.

As a preview, the table shows the appalling proportions of U.S. teens who suffered frequent, multiple abuses while growing up inflicted by parents and household adults.

Percent of U.S. teens age 13-18 whose parents and household adults inflict multiple, serious to very serious abuses and adversities

Source: CDC, 2023.

Four in 10 teens, including half of girls and 6 in 10 LGBTQ youth, suffer multiple abuses and adversities at home, typically including violence. The most-abused teens, 23% of all youth, experienced parents and household grownups who were regularly emotionally/violently abusive, abused drugs/alcohol, were severely mentally ill, and/or jailed. Around 8% of teens suffered even worse (think Huckleberry Finn’s pappy).

There are uninvestigated mysteries within these findings – why, for example, girls report much more abuse than boys do. There are also expected tragedies, such as the much higher abuse levels reported by LGBTQ teens. Increasing levels of parental abuse/adversity directly parallel teens’ increasing levels of depression, suicidality, self-harm, sleeplessness, school failure, and other commonly deplored risks.

Think about the incredible dereliction

Authorities are well aware of these alarming patterns. Yet, the commentators dominating discussion seem so blinded by hostility toward teenagers (evidenced by psychologist Jean Twenge), obsession with porn and predators to the exclusion of all else (psychologist Jonathan Haidt), their own personal online troubles (see Haidt’s After Babel for a continuous stream), and eagerness to benefit from inflaming age-old panics that “young people today” are too wild and independent.

We’ve learned nothing. After a decade of raging hullaballoo over the teenage “mental health crisis” atop decades of research showing parental and family environments crucially affect teens’ mental health, only THREE surveys* I can find around the world even ask about these issues – and those generate no official reactions.

Authorities take advantage of their own derelictions in their stampede to blame teens’ use of social media, smartphones, and screens. Given the family conditions teens grow up in, it’s shocking that only 30% report being depressed.

Are teens just exaggerating and lying on surveys?

I looked for patterns to indicate false or embellished answers. These answers do not show evidence of being faked or biased in any systematic direction.

Absent a sophisticated conspiracy coordinated by thousands of teens across hundreds of schools, the main way systematically false and exaggerated answers biasing survey results could occur would be by lots of jokers independently checking maximum-badness answers. Yet, only 21 of 20,000 respondents claimed they suffered all 15 abuses/adversities at home. There are no “I do it all” boastings on behavior risk questions (carry guns, drive drunk, do heroin, do coke, have mass sex with scores of partners, etc.). Exaggerations, then, seem to be rare and would be offset by others’ under-reporting. For example, 28% of teens report perfect homes with zero abuses or adversities ever, better than Modern Family.

Finally, teens’ response patterns are consistent with behavioral research. The same teens who report abusive and adverse conditions also report the risks with the “dose-response” escalations previous research suggests they should. Teens out to falsify answers would have to fake consistency across dozens of measures.

What is scientifically fraudulent is authorities’ and advocates’ subterfuge of enthusiastically hyping teens’ reports of poor mental health and risky behaviors, then turning around and ignoring those same teens’ reports on the same survey of parental abuses and family troubles.

What do these findings mean?

Catastrophe. The survey analysis I will post not only challenges authorities’ lunatic obsession with teens using social media, it calls into question the right of today’s adults to govern young people. When the vast majority of researchers and all political authorities just leave out crucial issues like parental abuses and family adversities, it means they don’t care enough about society’s young to confront the disturbing, often distressing causes that really affect their well-being. These authorities are shirking their most basic grownup obligations.

You can judge whether I overstate the case. I will offer detailed data tables and figures across multiple teen subgroups, along with links to raw data sets for re-analyses.

Method

Keep in mind that everything I cite is from the standard CDC teen-risk survey conducted biannually by our leading health agency. I previously used an abbreviated 4-item “abuse/adversity scale” to assess a few teenage outcomes.

For this new analysis, I created a more comprehensive abuse and adversity scale consisting of all 7 variables relating to adverse childhood experiences: emotional abuse by parents/household adults (scaled from 0, no abuse, to 4, daily abuse); violent abuse by parents/household adults (similarly scaled 0 to 4); other household violence between adults (scaled 0 to 4); drug/alcohol abuse by parents/household adults (0, no abuse, to 1, abuse); severe mental health problems by parents/household adults (0 to 1); and jailing of parents/household adults (0 to 1).

Adding the scales together creates an abuse/adversity score ranging from 0 (teen experiences no abuses or adversities) to 15 (teen suffers all abuses/adversities at maximum levels). I used standard SPSS software to present this abuse/adversity score alongside a broader variety of teen outcomes (mental health, suicidality, school and cyberbullying, dating violence, vaping, sleeplessness, school failure, school friends, etc.) across several gender and racial subgroups.

*The 2021 CDC survey first asked 2 questions about parents’/adults’ emotional and violent abuses. The only other study among hundreds I could find that queried teenagers’ experiences of adverse childhood experiences caused by parental and family abuses, addiction, suicidal behaviors, etc., is the international Global Mind Project’s Database. I have applied to receive their mammoth database and will report what it shows. I don’t know how CDC scientist(s) got 5 such questions on parental abuses/violence/addiction/mental issues/jailings into the 2023 survey and analyzed responses for their in-house Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, but congratulations. As I’ve pointed out, the CDC’s own analysis associated these adverse childhood experiences with two-thirds to nearly 90% of know factors in teens mental health, drug abuse, and suicide problems – not the near-nothing findings associated with social media use.