Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| August 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n Jesse Pomeroy<\/a>\u00a0took extreme exception to people making fun of his deformed eye. From ages 11 to 14, he brutally beat, sexually assaulted, tortured, and dumped at least 10 children; his final murder was of a 10-year-old girl. Easy as it would be to blame \u201csocial media,\u201d Pomeroy\u2019s mayhem took place in the 1870s. He remains America\u2019s youngest multiple torturer and killer.<\/p>\n Shocker: pre-teens are American humans. Like other Americans, they commit violence,\u00a0though far less than us older folks<\/a>\u00a0did back when\u00a0we were youngsters or do now<\/a>.\u00a0The FBI<\/a>\u00a0reports around 100 people have been killed by pre-teen murderers across the country in the most recently reported decade. Before we indulge another outraged panic at \u201ckids today,\u201d note that 163,203 people were murdered in the United States over the period.<\/p>\n Pre-teen killers murder 4 or 5 victims age 25 and older (that is, important people) per year. Meanwhile, killers age 25 and older murder over 600 pre-teens.<\/p>\n Part 1: Let the mindless panic begin<\/strong><\/p>\n Amid his usual\u00a0crate of lies<\/a>\u00a0about crime being \u201cout of control<\/a>\u201d in Washington DC and other liberal cities, \u201cTrump’s primary targets are those he describes as criminals \u2014 in this case often teenagers, many of them Black,\u201d\u00a0NPR reported<\/a>. (Many?\u00a085%<\/em>\u00a0of persons arrested in DC are Black). Added NPR: \u201cWashington has struggled at times with violence caused by young men who sometimes ride motorcycles and four-wheelers.\u201d<\/p>\n One could demur that Trump,\u00a0ordered by two courts<\/a>\u00a0to pay $89 million to a victim he sexually assaulted and who pardoned\u00a0hundreds of fellow thugs<\/a>\u00a0to roam the streets, is DC\u2019s costliest, most prolific violent criminal.<\/p>\n In addition to the president and his pardonees, who actually commits violent crime in our nation\u2019s capital? The DC\u00a0Metropolitan Police<\/a>\u00a0report perpetrator ages in 8,724 violent crimes and 42,551 total offenses in the most recent 12 months tabulated. Of these, genuine \u201cpre-teens\u201d (those too young to have \u201cteen\u201d in their ages) committed a terrifying 0.4%. Further,<\/p>\n So, it isn\u2019t pre-teens, teens, or young men, four-wheeling or otherwise. Washington DC\u2019s worst ages for rates of committing crime and violence are:<\/p>\n Why do 25-44 ages commit 55% of Washington\u2019s violence and crime, twice as much as the entire crime volume perped by all pre-teens, teens, and young adults under age 25? Isn\u2019t that the real news, the big mystery for the grant-funded academics? Aren\u2019t these 25-44-agers supposed to enjoy fully developed, executive-reasoning cerebral cortexes as well as higher economic status that render them immune to committing crime?<\/p>\n Let me repeat: police figures show Washingtonians under age 18 account for less than 6% of violent crime and 11% of all crime.<\/p>\n If officials and the media wanted to address the truly high-crime and high-violence ages, why aren\u2019t the president, cops, \u201cexperts,\u201d press, and liberal podcasters hollering about the \u201c30-age\u201d crime scourge and demanding curfews for grownups? Urging kids to help keep the adults out of trouble? (Or at least implementing mutual deterrence, like GOP House Speaker\u00a0Mike Johnson<\/a>\u00a0enlisting his 17-year-old to keep both Dad and Son away from porn.)<\/p>\n Because that\u2019s no fun<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Over the last year, we\u2019ve seen a barrage of official statements and\u00a0news stories<\/a>\u00a0complaining of \u201ca number of violent crimes in recent years involving young people,\u201d as well as large gatherings where some \u201cyoung people\u201d allegedly commit crimes. The city has imposed another\u00a0pointless nighttime curfew<\/a>\u00a0and banned gatherings of 9 or more, applied only to persons under age 18. In a city in which over 200,000 people were arrested, including 40,000 for violent crimes, over the last 5 years \u2013 and those were\u00a0low years<\/em>\u00a0for DC crime \u2013 it would be shocking if juveniles didn\u2019t commit some of them.<\/p>\n Crime, like violence, like drugs, like suicide, like mental health, become disturbing topics if grownups have to admit\u00a0our own<\/em>\u00a0outsized numbers. Americans need powerless scapegoats to point outraged fingers at, like teens and \u201cpre-teens.\u201d<\/p>\n If a group 300 teens gathers (often we later find media-dubbed \u201cteenage\u201d or \u201cjuvenile\u201d groups are mostly adults), a few will do something bad that commentators can mass-blame on all youth. Of course, when crime-prone 25-44-agers go to bars and crimes result (450 people that age are arrested every week in DC), no one blames all adults.<\/p>\n The one thing far Left to far Right agree on is shutting down cerebral reasoning when talking about young people. All sides slurp from the shallowest dish: wildly exaggerate anything the commentator doesn\u2019t like, then blame \u201csocial media.\u201d<\/p>\n Part 2: Why did young men (and older people, but ignore that) vote more conservative in 2024?<\/strong><\/p>\n I talked about this\u00a0before<\/a>, but the progressive media keeps harping on this point. The bar set by The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u2019 Ezra Klein\u2019s\u00a0\u201cWhy Trump Won\u201d show<\/a>\u00a0and Democratic pollster David Shor recites an endlessly-repeated mantra that Gen Z is \u201cpotentially the most conservative generation.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s baloney. Major-media\u00a0exit polls<\/a>\u00a0in the 2024 election showed men ages 18-29 were more likely to vote AGAINST Trump (49%) than any older male age group \u2013 more anti-Trump than Klein\u2019s and Shor\u2019s generation. Gen Z were\u00a0overwhelmingly<\/em>\u00a0anti-Trump (61%).<\/p>\n Anyway, who do they blame for their non-fact? Of course, it\u2019s just \u201csocial media.\u201d \u201cThe \u2018manosphere\u2019\u201d online has \u201chad a huge effect on young men\u2019s political opinions,\u201d Klein declared, without a shred of evidence. Agreed Shor: \u201cSuddenly shifting a bunch of young people\u2019s social worlds to be entirely online all at once caused the political situation to change.\u201d<\/p>\n But wait. In April 2025, the\u00a0Harvard IOP poll<\/a>\u00a0showed men age 18-29 disapproved of Trump by a stunning 34-59% margin. How can this be? Did the \u201ctoxic manosphere\u201d suddenly veer Left? Or \u2013 ponder this \u2013 could young men\u2019s attitudes relate more to personally lived experiences than just aping shallow social media vibes?<\/p>\n Part 3: Netflix\u2019s \u201cAdolescence\u201d \u2013 brainless hate speech<\/strong><\/p>\n The wildly acclaimed Netflix series\u00a0\u201dAdolescence\u201d<\/a>, in four tedious, muddled hours, didn\u2019t even try to show its 13-year-old male protagonist was driven to kill a female classmate by online \u201cmanosphere\u201d misogyny (which he said he didn\u2019t like)\u2026 as opposed, say, to his family\u2019s history of male violence, led by the lad\u2019s father\u2019s and grandfather\u2019s rampages. In fact, boys\u2019 murders, including of girls,\u00a0plummeted in the UK and US<\/a>\u00a0as social media proliferated.<\/p>\n Again, family violence, is\u00a0no fun<\/em>\u00a0to talk about. So, screw the facts. Incited by actor\u00a0Stephen Graham<\/a>\u2019s demagoguery, the gullible media and academic herd stampeded: just blame boys and social media!<\/p>\n Part 4: The decline in boys\u2019 support for women\u2019s rights<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a troubling even if nuanced trend, one\u00a0I discussed 3 months ago<\/a>, now returning again to re-alarm\u00a0leftist media<\/a>. Among 8th<\/sup>\u00a0and 10th<\/sup>\u00a0grade boys surveyed by the University of Michigan\u2019s\u00a0Monitoring the Future<\/a>, support for women\u2019s job opportunities and equal pay fell sharply from 2018 to 2023.<\/p>\n Liberal\/Left podcasters\u2019 nanosecond-rushed explanation (no one even pretends critical thought any more):\u00a0It must be social media<\/em>! All those boys sitting alone in front of screens, snarfing misogynist toxicity.<\/p>\n What crap. Economist\u00a0David Waldron<\/a>\u00a0actually researched the trend and applied rare analytical thinking. \u201cMany commentators on the topic of misogyny among boys are quick to blame social media and internet subcultures such as the \u2018manosphere\u2019 or \u2018incels\u2019\u201d along with \u201csocial media algorithms [that] tend to amplify misogynistic content,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n Sadly, Waldron\u2019s analysis found, \u201cthis particular hypothesis is not confirmed by data from this survey.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, MTF \u201cdata shows that the sharper drops in the share of boys endorsing gender equality occurred in\u00a0those who spend the least time using social networks<\/em>.\u201d Further, boys who spend less time watching videos and playing video games show the LEAST decline in and a HIGHER level of support for women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t the \u201cloners in their bedrooms\u201d (UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer\u2019s demons) who show the biggest drop in support for women\u2019s rights \u2013 it\u2019s boys who spend the most time\u00a0hanging out with other people<\/em>.<\/p>\n Ponder that. Now, the big puzzler.<\/p>\n While fathers have little effect, boys with college-educated mothers (much more supportive of women\u2019s rights prior to 2018) show a bigger drop in support for women\u2019s equality since than boys with less educated mothers. That ain\u2019t spozed to be. Educated moms are supposed to raise enlightened liberal boys, especially now that more education is correlated with more liberal politics. We need to figure this one out.<\/p>\n Finally, and most crucial, a non-surprise: \u201cThat the popularity of gender equality plummeted so much among religious boys seems to be the main clue available in the survey about what factors might be driving this trend,\u201d Waldron finds.<\/p>\n In 1990, boys who reported religion is important and those saying religion is unimportant showed about the same \u201ccompletely agree\u201d support for women\u2019s job equality (52%). But by 2023, full support for women\u2019s job equality plummeted among religious boys (to 38%) while bouncing around and winding up the same among non-religious boys (52%).<\/p>\n Anti-social-media dogmatists\u2019 pet remedies \u2014 just get boys away from those screens, out in public with people, and going to church, and their attitudes will improve \u2014 actually would exacerbate boys\u2019 sentiments against women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n The obsession with social media is obscuring vital social factors, as I\u00a0detailed earlier.<\/a>\u00a0The\u00a0gender pay gap<\/a>\u00a0has dwindled among\u00a0under-20 workers<\/a>\u00a0to near parity while remaining distressingly large among older workers. Enjoying their lucrative, sexist pay gap privileges enables older-male commentators to smugly deride young men\u2019s anxieties.<\/p>\n The biggest challenges in this area are to confront the manufactured panic against youth, the manufactured panic against social media, and the very real political backlash against the remarkable progress of young women in educational, career, and activist realms. Meanwhile\u2026<\/p>\n Progressives: youth issues are not an excuse to send your brains on vacation. Get a grip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not another \u201cteenage panic.\u201d Call in the National Guard! Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| August 2025 Jesse Pomeroy\u00a0took extreme exception to people making fun of his deformed eye. From ages 11 to 14, he brutally beat, sexually assaulted, tortured, and dumped at least 10 children; his final murder was of a 10-year-old girl. Easy as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161177","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161179,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161177\/revisions\/161179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u00b7 All under-15 ages account for 3% of violence and less than 2% of all crime;<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Age 15-17: another 8% of violence and 4% of all crime;<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Added up, the total \u201cjuvenile\u201d and \u201cyouth violence\u201d and \u201cteenage mob\u201d toll the press, cops, and \u201cexperts\u201d endlessly bang on about perpetrate just 11% of the city\u2019s violent crime and less than 6% of its total crime.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Add age 18-24, and a total of 27% of Washington\u2019s violent crime and 22% of its total crime is committed by all persons under age 25. You\u2019d think it was 97%.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 30-34: 17% of violent crime, 17% of all crime;<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 25-29: 15% of violent crime, 17% of all crime; and<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 35-39: 12% of violent crime, 12% of all crime.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Age 40-44 is no slouch either: 10% of violent crime, 9% of all crime.<\/h5>\n