Surprising Centers for Disease Control numbers show teenage girls, especially those with drug\/alcohol abusing parents, have LOWER rates of suicide and self-harm the MORE they use social media.<\/h5>\n
The fervent concern over girls\u2019 mental health mysteriously vanishes when shocking realities \u2013 including from the Centers for Disease Control \u2013 challenge official dogmas.<\/p>\n
The CDC\u2019s massive\u00a02023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey<\/a>\u00a0of 20,000 high schoolers (the gold standard of the teenage \u201cmental health crisis\u201d and the only comprehensive survey available) found a disturbing 34% of girls ages 13-18 are growing up with parents and guardians who abuse drugs and\/or alcohol.<\/p>\n Confirming girls\u2019 survey answers is the\u00a0soaring body count<\/a>, as pointed out previously. Parent-aged (26-64) adults\u2019 suffered a record 230,000\u00a0deaths<\/a>\u00a0and 10.7 million\u00a0hospital emergency cases<\/a>\u00a0from drug\/alcohol overdoses in 2023 and so far tabulated in 2024, with annual tolls\u00a0more than doubling<\/em>\u00a0in the last 15 years as today\u2019s Gen Z teens grew up.<\/p>\n Despite powerful and blatantly obvious associations of parents\u2019 drug\/alcohol abuse and teens\u2019 mental health, suicide attempts, and self-harm, comfortable political, health, and media authorities refuse to engage this disturbing reality that millions of teens cope with in their homes every day.<\/p>\n Instead, authorities shut down all discussion of parental issues and simply blame girls themselves for their mental health troubles. Girls, the popular narrative goes, are just helpless, self-abusing \u201cvictims\u201d who make themselves depressed and suicidal by using social media and smartphones.<\/p>\n As a result of self-imposed ignorance and denial, authorities are implementing restrictions and bans that endanger millions of girls whose daily use social media is associated with significant\u00a0reductions<\/em>\u00a0in their risks of suicide and self-harm amid widespread grownup drug and alcohol abuse.<\/p>\n The surprising \u2013 and completely ignored \u2013 patterns<\/strong><\/p>\n The CDC survey shows girls age 13-18 are considerably more likely to grow up in homes where parents and grownups abuse drugs and alcohol (34%, versus 25% for boys), suffer severe mental health problems (41% vs. 25%), are violently abusive (35% vs. 30%), are emotionally abusive (70% vs 53%), and have been jailed (19% vs. 16%). It is not clear why girls suffer unhealthier households; perhaps girls take on caretaker roles in troubled families that keep them tied to home more than boys.<\/p>\n Completely ignoring girls\u2019 family conditions, authorities then express shock and dismay that girls also suffer poorer mental health (41% vs 20% for boys), suicide attempt (14% vs. 7%), and self-harm (3.9% vs. 1.4%). It must be that girls use social media more (88% daily, vs. 81% for boys), luminaries puzzle; can\u2019t think of anything else that might be bothering them.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s help the authorities out. The tables below show the progression from being depressed to suicide attempt and self-harm along with girls\u2019 social media use, a point I\u2019ve\u00a0explored before<\/a>\u00a0but now in the context of parents\u2019 rising drug\/alcohol abuse.<\/p>\n Table 1 shows the case that social media use causes girls\u2019 poor mental health. Daily social media use is associated with more depression regardless of whether parents abuse drugs\/alcohol. Many in the social-media debate don\u2019t seem to realize how superficial the argument for blaming social media for girls\u2019 depression is: simple \u201ccorrelation equals causation.\u201d The universal approach is simply to stop there: more social media use, more depression, go no further.<\/p>\n Tables 2 and 3 show why it\u2019s crucial that analysts dig deeper.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!KtbQ!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1760b4f-810f-4dc4-b8ee-83011b6236e7_1686x829.png)
<\/picture>\n