Our top health agency’s surveys found what really makes teenagers depressed. Authorities' deafening silence said: no one cares

A brief history of how the Centers for Disease Control got the memo: No more honest science; ignore real troubles in teens’ lives; just join the stampede to blame “social media.”

What a difference a few years makes in the lunatic crusade against teenagers and social media. The evolution of today’s panic is disgraceful. Let me recount it.

Back in the halcyon long-ago yore of 2021, the CDC’s biannual Youth Risk Behavior Survey asked its thousands of 13-18-year-old subjects for the first time about parents’ emotional and violent abuses.

Gee, could getting beaten, kicked, degraded, etc., by grownups in their homes (the CDC was too polite to add shot, stabbed, and raped) have anything to do with the teenage “mental health crisis” experts were proclaiming? Ya think?

The results, hardly surprising, were staggering. Teens reported powerful connections between parental abuses and teenagers’ poor mental health, suicide attempts, self-harm, and serious risks that dwarfed all other factors combined.

The more honest CDC led off its 2021 survey press release (now archived and harder to find) with the following:

New CDC analyses, published today, shine additional light on the mental health of U.S. high school students… including a disproportionate level of threats that some students experienced…

· More than half (55%) reported they experienced emotional abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including swearing at, insulting, or putting down the student.

· 11% experienced physical abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including hitting, beating, kicking, or physically hurting the student.

…Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and female youth reported greater levels of poor mental health; emotional abuse by a parent or caregiver; and having attempted suicide than their counterparts.

It’s hard to believe, but just 5 years ago, our nation’s leading health agency made no mention of social media, even though its survey asked about screen use.

Bad CDC. Since then, authorities’ silence on these issues make it clear the CDC’s statement, however scientific, was out of step. Science was not what authorities and politicians wanted. Spare us about why teenagers are really depressed.

I wasn’t invited to high level meetings. But authorities had to be envying the rocketing popularity of psychologists like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, whose books, op-eds, and avalanche of worshipful press splashes simply blamed social media and smartphones for “rewiring” and “destroying” young people while never mentioning the rough stuff teens actually endure in their homes.

Some were not yet on message. Media and political interests back then didn’t completely ignore the CDC’s emphasis on parental abuses. One-time squibs in the New York Times, NBC News and a few outlets briefly lamented that teens’ high rates of being abused might be a problem. You’ll never see even whispers in today’s lockstep panic.

2023: Authorities’ silence should have been their first clue

I don’t know whether admirably brave scientists inside the CDC had insisted on bringing the issue of parental abuses and troubles to the forefront of the teen mental health debate where it belonged, or if the CDC genuinely failed to perceive how strongly health, politicians, and media would prefer silence on unpopular complications.

In any case, the CDC expanded questions on its 2023 survey to include parents’ abuses and “adverse” behaviors like parents’ drug/alcohol abuse, severe mental troubles, jailing, and household violence. Those questions were asked of older teens and younger ones alike.

These additional questions yielded even more staggering results. In 2023, 62% of teens (70% of girls, 54% of boys) reported histories of violent/emotional abuses by parents and household adults, up from 55% (62% of girls, 47% of boys) in 2021.

Again, as in 2021, abused teens from troubled families reported frequently poor mental health, suicide attempts, self-harm, and other risks many times more than non-abused teens. For example, having a parent with severe mental health problems boosted the odds of poor mental health among teens by 2.3 times (2.4 times for ages under 16), self-harm by 3.2 times (3.3 times for under-16s), and suicide attempts by 4.1 times (5.1 times).

The CDC’s definitive findings were incredibly useful in designing policy to address family health — but incredibly threatening to authorities’ political needs.

2024: The CDC gets the memo

Finally catching the drift, the CDC led off its 2024 press publicity on its survey results with its own advance report narrowly fixated on popular issues: “Frequent Social Media Use and Experiences with Bullying Victimization, Persistent Feelings of Sadness or Hopelessness, and Suicide Risk Among High School Students.”

It was the reverse of 2021. No mention of parental abuses, anywhere. Teen problems were all just social media and bullying peers.

That report was utter crap. Its own Table 4 (to anyone who scrutinized it) showed “frequent social media use” and school and cyber bullying – even when singled out as the ONLY things in teenagers’ lives – presented only trivial threats to teens’ mental health and no effect at all on teens’ suicide risk.

No matter. The CDC’s initial report received loving media and political forum coverage, as did Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s equally narrow, hugely-quoted “Social Media and Youth Mental Health.”

A sliver of scientific honor did survive. Belatedly, in October 2024, the CDC released the full 2023 survey data set for independent analysis along with a more analytical, disturbing report: “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Health Conditions and Risk Behaviors Among High School Students.”

Unlike its worthless initial media-friendly report, the CDC’s second report (buried in its inhouse journal) did find big things – ones I repeatedly cite because no one else will:

· Of the known factors driving teenagers’ problems, parental abuses/adversities were associated with two-thirds of teens’ poor mental health, 84% of teens’ opiate abuse, and 89% of teens’ suicide attempts.

True to its duty as the nation’s top health agency, the CDC had identified, albeit obscurely, the big reason why 30% of teens reported frequent unhappiness and some abused drugs and/or attempted suicide. Murthy also issued a lesser-noticed follow-up report on “parents under pressure” that did mention abuse affecting children and teens… ONCE, in a list, in 35 pages.

2025: Message received

The CDC’s new 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey eliminated all of the 2023 survey’s questions on parents’ and household adults’ drug/alcohol abuse, mental illness, jailing, and household violence. It did retain 2 questions on parents’ emotional and violent abuses, confined to its National High School survey and only older teens.

That is, at a time of national furor over the teenage “mental health crisis,” the CDC eliminated most questions on parent-inflicted troubles its own analysis powerfully associated with teens’ poor mental health — and eliminated all such questions for younger teens.

All authorities, politicians, and commentators want to hear about is social media social media social media. Even here, an irony: Teens in abusive, troubled families average 2 more hours a day using social media than teens in healthy families. Surely, big powers who are so frantic to reduce teens’ social media use might mention that reducing parental abuses and family troubles is one key (haha, this grim essay needed some levity).

My dismal prophecy, happy if proven wrong

Later this summer, I predict, the CDC will release its 2025 Youth Behavior Risk Survey (YRBS) results. The CDC’s press summary, as in 2023, will sensationally blame social media and peer bullying for teens’ mental health problems, especially if these problems increase. Or, if they decrease, the CDC will credit smartphone and state social media bans. No mention will be made of parental abuse findings.

Officials and media will uncritically cheer.

A few months later, in the fall, the CDC will post the raw 2025 survey data set. It will show that, as in 2021 and 2023, parents’ emotional and violent abuses are by far the largest contributors to teens’ poor mental health, and that no other factors amount to doodley-squat.

No one important will care.

That’s because this panic is not about teenagers, not about teens’ mental health, not about the well-being of children. It is about increasingly troubled and irresponsible older generations feeling good about ourselves, abetted by greedy political and media powers taking advantage of our irresponsibility to grab even more power.