Thoughts on the Reports on Teen Depression
Is social media, honestly, the only thing to blame?
The other day I saw an article on NPR that reported that depression rates doubled in teens between the years 2009 to 2019. Over the past year, the article stated that nearly 1 in 3 teen girls report suicidal ideation. Additionally, about 1 in 5 teens who identified as LGBTQ+ say that they have attempted suicide.
The article, essentially, focuses on social media and its psychological impact on teens. There’s been a lot of articles on this topic in the last few years, which is good because there was a period of time in the late 2010’s where I saw a lot of parents asking about it but very little information on the psychological impacts.
I’ve written about social media before and have recommended Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus to clients because I think it is really important that we do understand how social media impacts our psychology.
Though I think that social media is having a negative impact, I also get the sense that we’re overlooking other external factors at play that impact these teen statistics.
First of all, I think it’s worth noting that depression has always been an issue among teens. We can look at this in a rose colored glasses way of “It wasn’t as bad when I was a kid”, but the reality is that these have always been issues in this population. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self harm, etc. are not uncommon issues among teens. It might just look a little different for each generation.
I think the big question worth asking is: Are depression and suicide rates really that much higher in teens compared to other age groups?
The answer is: No.
In fact, according to data from the CDC, teens are one of the least suicidal age groups compared to all of the other age groups.
So who is the most suicidal? Actually, it’s the elderly, but that rarely (if ever) makes headlines.
I’ve known this for years, but I’ve generally interpreted our high focus on teen depression, suicide, and mental health issues as this: These are young people, so we are more concerned about their health and well-being. Which, makes sense because it’s an absolutely devastating loss when a young person dies for any reason. Young people are our future. They absolutely need and deserve the added attention and support for that reason.
But I can see a bit of a problem with headlines like this because it paints a distorted picture for people consuming these news headlines. And that’s important. Why? Because parent could easily read an article like that and interpret it as “I really need to control my kid’s social media usage”, while the root of the problem might be something else. And we’re just not helping parents if they’re wasting energy focusing on putting out one fire when really there’s another one looming in the background that they might not even notice.
After all, this article from 2017 shares data that’s showing that there’s been a steady decline in mental health for the last 20 years. (Side note: This article talks about a lot of factors, including the increase in overall suicide rate per 100,000 people, the opiate epidemic, and PTSD — all of which are complex topics that I could dive into individually in separate articles, which I’ll leave for another day).
In addition, there are reports that 90% of Americans believe that we are currently in a mental health crisis.
So rather then say “Teens are increasingly struggling with mental health”, perhaps a more accurate way to put it is: Everyone in our country are increasingly struggling with their mental health, and the experience of teens are a reflection of that collective struggle.
So I think the next question worth asking is: What has been going on in recent years to cause a decrease in mental health?
In the last few years, obviously, there’s been the pandemic, which I think we can all agree has had a huge influence. There’s been school closures and business closures. Social events were cancelled or delayed. There’s been health issues. There’s been stress around getting healthcare. There’s been burnout of healthcare workers. There have been separations and divorces due to the stress of living under the same roof 24/7 during the shelter in place. There’s been grief over loss of loved ones. There’s been shortages of various products (the first one notoriously being toilet paper, and one of the more recent ones being Adderall) that’s caused stress for families.
And this list could easily go on and on.
Most recently, there’s been high inflation and we’ve been seeing it on grocery items (what’s going on with the cost of eggs now… seriously?). There’s also been an increase in layoffs, particularly in the tech industry.
It’s probably safe to say that economic stress has been gradually creeping up in recent decades. When you look at the data, it makes a lot of sense as to why our mental health hasn’t been doing all that well.
Just consider this figure alone: From 1973 to 2013, worker productivity has gone up 74.4% while the compensation went up 9.3%. That’s quite a drastic difference — and that was 10 years ago. That’s not even taking into consideration the difference in productivity vs compensation from 2013 to now.
No wonder there’s been an increase in burnout.
So, sure, we can keep talking about social media’s impacts on teens and their mental health. But teens don’t live in a bubble with their cell phones (even though I’m know it can seem that way sometimes when they’re in a mode of escapism as a way to cope).
Teens are members of families. Teens are members of communities.
If the families and communities are struggling, then the teens (and kids) will inevitably struggle as well.
If a teen, child, or any human being regardless of age, is living through some really stressful times in history without adequate support (both social and financial) then of course they’re more likely to be depressed and have suicidal ideation. Not having adequate support is extremely stressful. It easily puts us into a perpetual fight or flight state aka “survival” state.
And what happens when someone has been living in a heightened state of survival for too long? They crash because their nervous system can’t take it anymore. They go into an extreme parasympathetic nervous system state in order to cope, which manifests as depression.
As human beings, we long for community. We long for human connection. We’re literally hardwired for it because having secure relationships with others allows us to feel a sense of safety and security.
Safety and security in relationships with others is the exact opposite of trauma. And if we can’t get that secure connection that we need for whatever reason, then some form of escapism through some kind of addiction (of social media, alcohol, drugs, food, etc.) can be a natural way to cope.
So while I appreciate the educational information on the psychological ramifications of social media and modern technology (I have shared my thoughts previously and have urged people to learn about it because it is valid after all), I feel like it’s a bit shortsighted. We have to also look at everything else that’s been going on in this country, collectively. Cause there’s plenty of other stuff going on that’s having a negative impact on the mental health families and, well, everyone.
Things I’ve enjoyed this week:
Matcha lattes in the morning
Reading and/or writing before bed as the baby sleeps
This article on how identifying your child’s essence is key to conscious parenting
Seeing Gabor Mate’s book Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder on the NY Times Bestseller list after all these years
Curling up with my weighted blanket on the cold and rainy nights