New CDC survey also show the stampede to ban younger boys from smartphones and social media is dangerously misguided

Unfortunately, anti-social-media crusaders are selectively (or sloppily) misrepresenting surveys.

The Centers for Disease Control’s definitive 2023 survey of 20,000 teenagers found boys only half as likely to report depression, sadness, and suicide attempts, and one-third as likely to harm themselves, compared to girls. However,in real life, boys are much more likely to commit suicide (3,516 by boys ages 15 and younger since 2018) than girls (1,934), even though (or because) boys admit to fewer mental health problems and are much less likely to call attention to them (i.e., by self-harming).

To keep perspective, their parents are much more at risk: 22,088 suicides among men and 6,399 among women ages 40-45 since 2018, which brings us to the problem. Like girls’, boys’ biggest mental health correlate by far is troubled and abusive parents and adults, the CDC’s 2023 survey’s numbers show. Even in the broadest, uncontrolled analysis, boys’ social media use has nothing to do with boys’ mental health or suicide attempts, using the standard Cohen’s d measure of association:

·  Social media use’s association with boys’ poor mental health: d = 0.06 (nothing)

·  Social media use and boys’ suicide attempts: d = 0.03 (nothing)

·  Parent/adult abuse’s association with boys’ poor mental health: d = 0.82 (strong)

·  Parent/adult abuse and boys’ suicide attempt: d = 0.56 (moderate)

Unfortunately, authorities’ all-consuming obsession with smartphones and screens is interfering with addressing the very real, powerful association of parental/household adult abuses with under-16 boys’ mental health:

·  Boys never abused by parents/adults: 11% suffer poor mental health (n=1,223)

·  Boys rarely abused by parents/adults: 17% suffer poor mental health (n=721)

·  Boys sometimes abused by parents/adults: 29% suffer poor mental health (n=353)

·  Boys often abused by parents/adults: 55% suffer poor mental health (n=186)

The association of parental/household adult abuses with under-16 boys’ suicide is even more compelling:

·  Boys never abused by parents/adults: 2% attempt suicide

·  Boys rarely abused by parents/adults: 5% attempt suicide

·  Boys sometimes abused by parents/adults: 11% attempt suicide

·  Boys often abused by parents/adults: 25% attempt suicide

Boys self-report little self-harm, but the self-harming percent is higher for sometimes/frequently abused boys (1.7%) than for never-abused boys (0.6%).

The biggest factors associated with boys’ poor mental health are emotional abuse by parents, parents’ depression, school bullying, parents’ absence, parents’ addiction, and cyberbullying. The biggest factors in boys’ suicide attempts are parents’ domestic violence, parents’ emotional abuse, cyberbullying, parents’ absence, parents’ depression, and parents’ jailing.

Of these, parents’ abuse and domestic violence, by far the biggest factors, are tentatively and obscurely recognized in a new Surgeon General advisory and CDC analysis – neither receiving much attention from authorities.

Social media use doesn’t show up even as a blip, either as a harmful factor for mental health or a protective factor preventing suicide attempts. That may be because depressed boys use social media only somewhat more (42%) than non-depressed boys (34%), compared to 48% and 32%, respectively, for girls, weakening the reverse-correlation effects that superficially make social media use appear harmful to girls.

School bullying and cyberbullying do show up as small factors in boys’ poor mental health and suicide attempts, ones greatly inflated by authorities who simply ignore that parents’ emotional abuse is closely tied to school and cyberbullying:

·  Boys never abused by parents/adults: 7% are cyberbullied; 12% are school bullied

·  Boys rarely abused by parents/adults: 15% also cyberbullied; 22% also school bullied

·  Boys sometimes abused by parents/adults: 22% also cyberbullied; 31% also school bullied

·  Boys often abused by parents/adults: 34% also cyberbullied; 46% also school bullied

This powerful association should give pause to those who might say: we believe teens when they say they’re bullied by mean peers, but they must be lying or dramatizing when many more say they’re emotionally abused by parents and adults. These are largely the same teens.

Health organizations and psychologists like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge wrote entire reports and books – and “experts” vent daily commentaries on “how parents can help their bullied kids.” None mention that the best advice experts should give parents and household adults concerned about their kids being bullied and depressed is: stop bullying them yourselves.