Why do authorities who claim “concern” for bullied teenagers lie shamelessly about who’s bullying them?

Because teens – especially younger, female, and LGBTQ teens – say the worst bullies are older and at home. That's not what authorities want to hear.

Figure 1. Source: CDC, Adolescent Behavior and Risk Survey, 2022.

The Surgeon General, professional associations, school counselors’ lobbies, and other mental health authorities deserve withering contempt for their self-serving cowardice in crusading against teenage “bullying” while ducking who is really bullying teens.

See if you agree after systematic review of the Centers for Disease Control’s 2022 Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, the massive one that defined the teenage “mental health crisis.”

The healthy complexity the CDC introduced by including first-time questions on violence and bullying by parents was followed by abject official dereliction in suppressing the explosive results: a staggering 55% of 13-18-year-olds (including 58% of younger teens, 54% of older teens, 62% of girls, 48% of boys, and 73% of LGBQ teens) reported that parents and household grownups inflicted emotional abuses, and 14% injurious violence, on them.

Surely, America’s mental health leaders leaped on that bombshell finding to proclaim a family crisis in which grownups’ abuses were driving teenage “mental health” troubles.

[Insert laugh track here.] They did nothing of the sort. Authorities ignored domestic violence and, instead, blamed teens’ use of social media, especially iPhones while loudly berating peer bullies.

Devastating results of grownups’ abuses

Although these findings apply to all teens, I’m featuring the 2,300 younger teens the CDC surveyed because they’re supposedly the most bullied and most targeted for social media bans to “protect” them.

The results were once again appalling (Figure 1). By far the worst abusers victimizing teens are their parents and adults around them, dwarfing cyberbullies and school bullies. That despite the fact that the CDC’s definition of peer-inflicted bullying (which includes property damage and social exclusion) is broader than the definition of grownup-inflicted abuse.

Compared to non-abused younger teens, parent-abused younger teens were 4 times more likely to report poor mental health, 12 times more likely to attempt suicide and 80 times more likely to self-harm – as well as many times more likely to suffer other risks like sleep deprivation (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Source: CDC 2022.

It gets even worse. Top professionals, political leaders, and media commentators don’t even have the basic integrity to confront another ugliness: bullying victims have all-ages tormentors. Teens bullied at home by parents are the same ones most often bullied online and at school (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Source: CDC 2022.

These are simple, clear, critically important findings from the CDC survey. They need immediate attention, expanded investigation (especially the links between abuse and skyrocketing adult drug/alcohol crises), and refinement in future surveys. How long is official and professional America going to continue their silence and denial?