PSYCHOLOGY, “TEEN BRAIN”
The opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the author and not necessarily those of YouthFacts.org
Who is killing California girls? No, it’s not Instagram and TikTok Officials have failed to stem domestic abuse victimizing teens, the real driver of violence and mental health troubles By
How American Institutions Are Failing Teenage Girls By Mike Males |October 2023 | American girls are being abused and murdered at appalling rates in domestic violence by grownups as cowardly authorities from the Surgeon General and mental health lobbies on down indulge ignorant commentaries falsely blaming peers and social media. Meanwhile, today’s generation of supposedly “depressed” girls’ stunning achievements in education and leadership are driving global activism. How long is America going to put up with antiquated prejudices?
We’ve gotten the “teenage mental health crisis” dangerously wrong By Mike Males | July 2023 | Depression drives social media use, not the other way around, while we ignore the real struggles young people face
Not Another “Teen Mental Health Crisis” By Mike Males | April 2023 | Year after year, decade after decade, authorities stigmatize each new youth generation and suffering unprecedented mental-health troubles.
Los Angeles’s Astounding Youth Trends Terrifying Everyone. By Mike Males | April 2023 | The LA Times and other media run tiresomely repetitive articles hyping “crises” of youths, guns, drugs, crime, and suicide that dodge real facts.
Social Media Isn’t the Main Reason Teens Are Depressed
By Mike Males | March 2023
Teens are right to be depressed — and it isn’t because of social media. Politicians and media are in their latest wave of ascribing young people’s mental health problems to anything but their real source: dysfunctional adults.
Mike Males| February 2022
Ninety-nine percent of the tens of thousands of news stories and commentaries on teenagers, suicide, and drug overdose lie. The willfully create a false impression.
“Unfortunately, across California, suicide rates among Black youth doubled between 2014 and 2020.”
Anthony Bernier | Dec 2022
This claim, highlighted in a recent youth writing program’s newsletter, was obviously designed to shock and awe readers into understanding the urgent necessity for the program’s contribution to the youth community.
But it’s crap. It’s fake news.
Why are Atlantic, New Yorker, Harper’s, and other liberal-intellectual journals peddling primitive psychobabble about young people? Are authors like Elizabeth Kolbert, Caitlin Flanagan, Rebecca Solnit, and Ron Powers so angry at teenagers that their middle-aged brains can’t think straight?
Do leaders and interests really care about “teen suicide” — or just how they can use it? Teens commit suicide at far lower rates than adults, and the few who do have real causes of distress led by their families’ rejection, violence, depression, and addiction. It’s unconscionable that politicians and interests cynically exploit “teen suicide” to popularize themselves and push their own agendas.
Blaming adolescents for adult depression is unwarranted. A recent study in the British Medical Journal receiving widespread publicity claimed bullying by teenagers was associated with one-third of adult depression. This is part of a growing effort to blame youths for adult problems. Our letter published in BMJ argues that study authors failed to control for obvious confounds — especially physical, sexual, and psychological abuse (that is, extreme bullying) of children and teenagers by adults.
Those reckless… grownups. Male drivers and drivers age 21-44 are less likely to use seat belts than teens… but guess who gets called reckless and immature?
Very few teens suffer eating disorders. Why are new findings that 97% of teens never had an eating disorder and 94% show no signs to developing one being treated as such bad news that authorities and experts insist on trying to convince young people that mass eating disorder is the normality?
Critics of students’ critical thinking skills ain’t no critical thinkers themselves. Former Harvard University President Derek Bok, the shallow, youth-bashing Miller-McCune magazine, and a host of lofty commentators eagerly aped a recent study claiming students today lack critical skills. But, funny thing, none of these lofty types displayed a shred of critical thinking themselves!
Terrible news! Teens are happier and getting more so. In a long-term finding certain to infuriate interest groups and upset many adults, Monitoring the Future reports the large majority of teenagers are happy with their friends, school, themselves, and many aspects of their lives, and getting more so. We grownups can’t have that! Convince those kids that, in the words of pop-psychologist Jean Twenge, they’re really “miserable”!
Why are ‘experts’ so traumatized by “Kid Nation”? Do we need to install V-chips on TVs to protect fragile grownups from CBS’s new reality series, “Kid Nation”? What accounts for the outpouring of apocalyptic fear about the dangers of a show that deputized 40 children ages 8 to 15 to spend a few weeks restoring a decrepit New Mexico mining town?