{"id":160796,"date":"2023-02-02T20:23:43","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T20:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160796"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:49:09","slug":"american-journalists-politicians-and-interest-groups-left-to-right-agree-its-okay-to-lie-about-teens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=160796","title":{"rendered":"American journalists, politicians, and interest groups left to right agree: It\u2019s okay to lie about teens."},"content":{"rendered":"

American journalists, politicians, and interest groups left to right agree: It\u2019s okay to lie about teens.<\/h1>\n

Mike Males | February 2023<\/p>\n

Ninety-nine percent of the tens of thousands of news stories and commentaries on teenagers, suicide,\u00a0and drug overdose lie. The willfully create a false impression.<\/p>\n

UCLA Health is cruder than most, posting the flat lie that \u201csuicide rates (are) highest among teens and\u00a0young adults.\u201d Other commentators are more subtle, dodging the disappointing truth about \u201crates\u201d and\u00a0instead reciting the scary-sounding but grossly misleading: “suicide is the third leading cause of death\u00a0among teens.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s meaningless. Of course an external cause like suicide, along with accidents and homicide, would\u00a0be leading death categories for teens, since teens rarely die from major natural causes like heart disease\u00a0or cancer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable that press reporters and the late comedian George Carlin might confuse \u201chigh rate\u201d\u00a0with \u201cleading cause.\u201d But it is astonishing that UCLA\u2019s famed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry unit would\u00a0be so ignorant and indifferent regarding basic suicide facts that such a mistake could remain posted.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, authorities caught psychiatric hospitals grossly sensationalizing suicide to scare parents\u00a0into filling overbuilt hospitals with teenage patients. Of course, UCLA Health took down my complaint\u00a0within hours \u2013 but left their false posting up. That\u2019s typical of American attitudes. Lying about teens is\u00a0ok; correcting lies is forbidden.<\/p>\n

Look for yourself. Every article on \u201cteen suicide\u201d and most on drug abuse (especially fentanyl) contain\u00a0the meaningless \u201cleading cause\u201d claim but universally omit the much more relevant, contextual fact that\u00a0teenage rates of suicide and overdose are much lower than adults\u2019 rates.<\/p>\n

Table 1 details the important and most recent statistics no one else will present. It combines high-schoolers with higher-risk 18-19 year-olds and includes only immediate, not chronic, deaths.<\/p>\n

Even with these conservatisms, adults of ages to be parents to teenagers are twice as likely as teenagers\u00a0to commit suicide, 7.5 times more likely to fatally overdose on drugs, including 6 times more likely for\u00a0fentanyl, and 15 times more likely to fatally binge-drink. Teens comprise 13.4% of the teen-adult\u00a0population but account for only 5.6% of suicides, 1.5% of drug overdoses, 1.8% of fentanyl deaths, and\u00a01.1% of binge-drinking deaths.<\/p>\n

Not only do commentators omit these crucial realities omitted from discussion, they peddle exactly the\u00a0opposite impression that teens are riskier than adults. This blatant misrepresentation contains more\u00a0cruelty than concern. Teenagers who suffer at-risk parents are afforded no attention, sympathy or\u00a0official help. No one advises teens on administering Narcan to parents who overdose on fentanyl \u2013 a\u00a0family crisis eight times more likely than a high-schooler overdosing.<\/p>\n

Major interests evade high adult rates of suicide and overdose, especially among White middle-aged\u00a0men, because mental disturbances and addiction are deeply stigmatized in American culture, especially\u00a0by medical and psychological authorities. The American prejudice is to pretend suicide and drugs afflict\u00a0only powerless groups, like youth.<\/p>\n

These unreasoning bigotries hamper reasoned solutions to America\u2019s social crises, evident in staggering\u00a0suicide and overdose tolls. We should learn why supposedly \u201cimpulsive\u201d teens have such low rates of\u00a0suicide, not inventing bogus measures to scapegoat them.<\/p>\n

Table 1. Deaths from suicides and suicide-suspected deaths, drug and fentanyl overdose, and alcohol\u00a0overdose, average annual rates per 100,000 population by age group, 2020-2022 (provisional).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSource: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American journalists, politicians, and interest groups left to right agree: It\u2019s okay to lie about teens. Mike Males | February 2023 Ninety-nine percent of the tens of thousands of news stories and commentaries on teenagers, suicide,\u00a0and drug overdose lie. The willfully create a false impression. UCLA Health is cruder than most, posting the flat lie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-160796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media-lies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160798,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160796\/revisions\/160798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}