Much food for thought in this story by Mike Males, a researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.
There is, after all, some evidence that Gen-Z youth report higher rates of mental health conditions, especially depression, than prior generations. However, we must ask whether they've simply normalized the reporting of this and getting more help, especially therapy, than generations prior. Alternatively, consider this piece by the "Is Gen Z more depressed?" which suggests actually higher rates of depression than earlier generations.
That said, author Mike Males' sensemaking is on point:
If schools gave the tiniest iota about student mental health, they’d start schooldays later to accommodate youthful circadian rhythms instead of grownup convenience, end the mind-warping stresses of high-stakes standardized testing, and diligently pursue abuse reports against school staff instead of covering them up.
If youths could sue adults for inflicting mental injury, schools would be among the first hauled into court. Right alongside legislators, whose starving of higher education by cutting taxes for selfish property owners fostered $1.7 trillion in student debt. Punitive lifelong debt to get an education drives student stresses not inflicted on older generations.
Based on what we're witnessing currently in the Texas State Legislature where legislators—who are either Boomers or Gen-X-ers—are bringing a lot of stress and heartache to Gen-Z youth and younger millennials, I can't even imagine how one can be a young person and NOT be stressed or depressed by the hurtful agenda against them, their generation.
Post-pandemic life is still hard for lots of folks and these anti-diversity, anti-youth politicians are giving everybody a lot more grief than these youth, or anyone, deserve.
-Angela Valenzuela
Not Another “Teen Mental Health Crisis”
A t first glance, the lawsuit by American school districts against social media alleging damage to students’ mental health might seem like good institutions defending children against the predations of greedy corporations.
It is not. The suit is another sad example of American adulthood’s abject escapism and refusal to take responsibility for its own derelictions victimizing children and youth. Unfortunately, progressives keep buying the endless parade of “teenage mental health crises” proclaimed year after year, decade after decade, targeting every new generation.
Leading psychologists of the early 1900s blamed popular culture for the “extraordinary increase” in “child suicide”. The American Youth Commission’s 1936 testing found 75% of young men suffering debilitating mental troubles. Science News Letter reported in 1937 that kids “as young as six to thirteen” were being treated for suicidal thinking. (Yes, that was “The Greatest Generation”).
Surveys found 1980s professionals estimating the average teenager was more depressed and anxious than psychiatric patients. The psychiatric industry hyped a made-up “tripling in teen suicide” to fill empty beds in overbuilt hospitals. Tipper Gore and her “Washington wives” blamed rock music for teen crises. A 1995 CDC report declared suicide had “soared” among young adolescents. In 1998, Rolling Stone blamed television for creating “the most damaged and disturbed generation this country has ever produced.” In the 2000s, college and university counselors regularly proclaimed a “campus mental health crisis” and won tuition increases to boost their funding. Within a couple of years, campus authorities were back, declaring, “student mental health is in crisis.”
Why do progressives keep falling for this mass stigmatization? Maybe it’s because if our kids are crazier, that must mean the money-hungry corporate moguls are as evil as we claim – and we superior grownups are the rescuers. Unfortunately, the larger message is that today’s more racially diverse, liberal-activist youth are more psychologically disturbed than ever and require interventions.
Let’s analyze this latest, eagerly-proclaimed “teenage mental health crisis.” Begin with the schools’ lawsuit, which is an obscene joke, a transparent money-grab exploiting trendy demagoguery and anti-youth bigotry.
The real villains in teenage depression
If schools gave the tiniest iota about student mental health, they’d start schooldays later to accommodate youthful circadian rhythms instead of grownup convenience, end the mind-warping stresses of high-stakes standardized testing, and diligently pursue abuse reports against school staff instead of covering them up.
If youths could sue adults for inflicting mental injury, schools would be among the first hauled into court. Right alongside legislators, whose starving of higher education by cutting taxes for selfish property owners fostered $1.7 trillion in student debt. Punitive lifelong debt to get an education drives student stresses not inflicted on older generations.
The 2022 Centers for Disease Control survey hyping a teenage “mental health crisis” contained a far bigger, more disturbing finding: 11% of 12-17-year-olds reported violent abuses, and a staggering 55% emotional abuses, inflicted by parents and other household grownups – 200% and 400%, respectively, leaps in abuses over the previous decade.
Though largely ignored by media reporters and commentators, parents who hit, slap, kick, namecall, curse, and berate their kids are the major source of adolescent depression, especially for LGBT teens who are the most likely to be abused and depressed. The proportion of teens reporting household-adult bullying is three times more than report bullying at school (15%) or online (16%) – even though the CDC’s definition of school and online bullying is much broader than for parental emotional abuse.
Also ignored is the Administration on Children and Families’ annual Child Maltreatment report, which substantiated over 200,000 violent and sexual abuses (including 1,700 murders) and 60,000 severe psychological abuses victimizing children and youth inflicted by household adults averaging 35 and older in 2020 – a fraction of those that actually occur.
Accompanying rampant abuses that would merit a class-action suit by children and adolescents against grownups is the stampede by media and authorities to blame mental health troubles on social media and “teenage brain” and “adolescent development” myths. Blaming powerless outgroups’ biology, culture, and excessive freedoms has a long, ugly history in the United States and explains why Americans can’t seem to solve intractable social crises.
Parent’s statistics are appallingly worse than teens’ statistics – even among the privileged. Compared to their high-school-age teen, a White parent age 30-64 is twice as likely to commit a violent felony, twice as likely to die by guns, three times more likely to commit suicide, three times more likely to be criminally arrested, 10 times more likely to die from illicit-drug overdose (including fentanyl), and 30 times more likely to die by binge drinking – along with a tripling in adult depression and loony political attitudes.
Final CDC figures show the alleged teen suicide “surge” during the COVID-19 pandemic never happened. From 2018 to 2021, suicides and suspected suicides among ages 10-19 actually declined. Suicides rose the most among ages 30-39, a prime parent age. Alarmist claims about teen suicide require cherry-picking years to compare, not objective analysis. Likewise, the scary cliché that suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers is meaningless; teens rarely die from heart disease, cancer, or COVID.
Might those devastating grownup developments produce more depressed teens? Not according to our institutions, which lack the guts and decency to admit the adult crises damaging kids. Their mindless attacks on social media risk sabotaging young peoples’ efforts to escape their abuses and establish healthy connections.
Congressional bills to ban younger teens from social media, an idea hyped by Atlantic, New Yorker, and other clueless liberal commentators, is dangerous. In the most comprehensive survey, by Pew Research Center in 2022, few teens (9%) cited social media as negatively affecting their lives. Among both the large majority who find social media neutral or beneficial and the troubled fraction, Pew found “80% said social media gives them some level of connection to what is going on in their friends’ lives, 71% said it’s a place where they can show their creativity, 67% said social media reassures them that they have people to support them during tough times, and 58% said it makes them feel more accepted.”
Children and teens face far more dangerous, proven threats of mental and violent/sexual abuses from churches, the Scouts, sports personnel, and household adults than even the worst speculations blame on social media. When teens themselves are asked to name their biggest problems, they cite worries over finances, caring for family members, and the future, not social media.
American increasingly diverse youth have done their part, with mammoth reductions in young-age crime, unplanned pregnancy, and school dropout rates and increased college enrollment – all despite elders’ refusal to acknowledge them and efforts to sabotage progress with bans, restrictions, and degradations.
Teenagers are right to be more depressed and anxious, a healthy reaction against the severely troubled, oblivious “grownup” generations they endure. Grownups, fix thyselves.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment