Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| January 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the clueless condescension, because it gets scarier.<\/p>\n National Public Radio\u2019s 1A (First Amendment)\u2019s lengthy 12\/18 \u201cNavigating modern adolescence<\/a>\u201d managed to dodge\u00a0ALL<\/em>\u00a0the family, community, economic, and global issues teenagers tell major surveys are their biggest worries.<\/p>\n Instead, NPR depicted teen concerns as mere \u201crabbit holes\u201d social media companies cook up to \u201cmonetize\u201d the adolescent\u2019s \u201cbrain and a body that are changing dramatically.\u201d \u201cTheir stress is not about you,\u201d NPR\u2019s clinical psychologist soothed parents and grownups.<\/p>\n Of course, no one mentioned the\u00a0Centers for Disease Control\u2019s Youth Risk Behavior Survey<\/a>, the big one everyone talks about but no one cites truthfully. Among teens who suffer depression, suicide attempts, gun carrying, fights, dating violence, etc., the biggest associates by far are parents\u2019 and nearby adults\u2019 psychological abuse (suffered by 62% of teens), violence (35%), \u201csevere\u201d mental health problems (35%), drug\/alcohol abuse (30%), and criminal arrests (20%).<\/p>\n Nor did NPR\u2019s experts and host mention the other big, definitive youth survey,\u00a0Monitoring the Future<\/a>, which shows poor relationships with parents, not social media use, are the biggest drivers of youthful unhappiness. Teenage girls concerned about climate change and social issues are unhappier than those who shrug them off, MTF\u2019s latest survey finds.<\/p>\n Officials and big interests don\u2019t like young activists; they prefer the shrug-offs. Just tell teens, \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad,\u201d NPR\u2019s experts advised parents and clinicians.<\/p>\n Young people have no real problems\u2026 just social-media-created \u201cphobias\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhy \u2018peniaphobia\u2019 [fear of being poor] is exploding among young people (and why we should be concerned),\u201d\u00a0headlines\u00a0<\/a>The Independent<\/a><\/em>, London\u2019s liberal-left paper (except on youth issues).<\/p>\n Seven in 10 18-29-year-olds think their generation will not be\u00a0better or as well off as their parents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sure, young people are being \u201cbrutally confronted with precariousness: student jobs lost, difficulties paying rent, and recourse to food banks\u201d and \u201ca feeling of economic vulnerability,\u201d the article admits, alongside failing to refute young people\u2019s well-founded fears of poverty. But those aren\u2019t the real problem.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the real problem? You guessed it \u2013 \u201csocial media platforms,\u201d whose materialistic images \u201cplay a major role in spreading this anxiety. On Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, the most popular content depicts idealized lives: dream vacations, luxury outfits, immaculate apartments, dazzling professional success… A lifestyle that seems out of reach for many, fueling feelings of failure or inferiority.\u201d<\/p>\n Young people\u2019s economic fears are really just an \u201cinsidious illness\u201d driven by social media\u2019s shallow \u201crace for success\u2026 as if not being able to be first calls their entire life into question,\u201d a child psychiatrist explains. \u201cFor some young people, this translates into a constant fear of \u2018failing in life\u2019 if they don\u2019t quickly achieve a certain level of material comfort. The constant comparison, combined with fear of the economic future, makes peniaphobia a breeding ground for mental distress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow can we allay (young people\u2019s) fear of being downgraded?\u201d the article asks. Not by leaders actually confronting wealth concentration, unaffordability, unemployment, housing and health costs, environmental degradation, Artificial Intelligence, etc. Perish the thought.<\/p>\n No; experts\u2019 solution is for young people to disconnect from social media, do breathing exercises, and \u201cseek professional help\u201d for their \u201cphobia\u201d to \u201cunderstand its origins and develop appropriate support.\u201d<\/p>\n Socially conscious young people \u2013 especially liberal girls \u2013 are mentally ill<\/strong><\/p>\n NPR\u2019s and\u00a0The Independent<\/em>\u2019s hosts and psychologists sound AI-programmed, like ordering, \u201cSiri! Devise a sentence or two dismissing young people\u2019s real concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n However, they\u2019re not the worst manifestation of growing mainstream-liberal pretend-sympathy campaigns that recast social-media \u201cvictimized\u201d young people\u2019s \u2013 especially young women\u2019s \u2013 concerns over climate change, Gaza, social justice, and larger issues as psychoses treatable by counseling and online banishments.<\/p>\n U.S. psychologist\u00a0Jean Twenge<\/a>\u00a0declares Gen Z liberal girls\u2019 social-justice and climate-change concerns are frivolous; psychologist\u00a0Jonathan Haidt<\/a>\u00a0ignores them altogether. Girls are depressed because they\u2019re duped by social media\u2019s shallow looks-and-popularity images and bullying by \u201cmean\u201d teenagers, Twenge says. Haidt insists liberal girls just need to get off social media and perhaps get psychological treatment. Teens only use social media for porn, cyberbullying, spreading bad values, and contact with predators, Haidt and Twenge say.<\/p>\n Both rely on their own prejudices against young people instead of evidence; they both ignore\u00a0Pew Research<\/a>,\u00a0CDC<\/a>, and other major surveys showing large majorities of teens use social media beneficially and encounter much more meanness from adults at home than online. No matter. Emotional calls to ban teens from social media are quotable and popular.<\/p>\n Right-wingers rejoice in these inchoate attacks on young people, but Democrats are leading the reprogram-youth crusade. Online analyst\u00a0Taylor Lorenz<\/a>\u00a0condemns \u201cdumb, dumb, dumb\u201d progressives and liberals who lead the charge to internet-ban and age-restrict Gen Z teens, potentially crippling their global advocacy for progressive causes.<\/p>\n And it gets still worse<\/strong><\/p>\n This banish\/redirect-youth crusade gets scarier still, as if the bottom has fallen out of human beings\u2019 long, painful struggle toward decency. You can plumb the darkest pits of the savage \u201cmanosphere\u201d cave and not find anything approaching the evil expressed by the Obama presidency\u2019s\u00a0Hillary Clinton<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sarah Hurwitz<\/a>\u00a0and roomfuls of applauding billionaire-funded luminaries.<\/p>\n Hurwitz, Clinton and their top-level audiences are deeply upset\u2026 not at the \u201ccarnage\u201d and \u201cwall of dead children\u201d in Gaza, their own words describing the mass-slaughter by Israeli forces armed by US, UK, and German governments.<\/p>\n No, Clinton and Hurwitz declare with shocking candor (they never thought their words would become public) to approving corporate, political, religious, media, and foundation elites, the villains are social media platforms like TikTok that are \u201csmashing our young people\u2019s brains\u201d by showing real on-the-ground reporting, graphic videos, and embarrassingly direct quotes from the Israeli press and leaders\u2019 openly genocidal statements on Gaza.<\/p>\n Clinton and Hurwitz yearned for a past when \u201cresponsible\u201d Western media censored harsh realities from public view. The \u201cconstant exposure to graphic images from Gaza social media feeds filled with footage of dead and injured Palestinian children are creating an emotional shock that \u2018makes it impossible\u2019 for her to defend Israel\u2019s actions in conversations with young people,\u201d\u00a0Hurwitz complained<\/a>.* Jewish schools should ban smartphones and social media until senior year, she said, to \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 \u201cprotect students\u2019 mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n Hurwitz is outraged<\/a>\u00a0that young people, especially Jewish students, are \u201cconfusing\u2026 essential Holocaust education\u201d with the logical ethical principle that \u201cbig powerful people hurting weaker people,\u201d as Nazis did to Jews, is wrong, an inhumane atrocity.<\/p>\n No, no, no, Hurwitz insists, the overly-egalitarian claim that the Holocaust lesson is \u201cnever again\u201d for\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0peoples is \u201canti-Semitic.\u201d Rather, Jewish and other young people must be taught that \u201cbig strong Israelis\u2026 hurting emaciated Palestinians\u201d (her words) is morally right.<\/p>\n An eye-blink ago,1980s and \u201890s authorities worried that violent movies, rap, and video games were\u00a0de-sensitizing<\/em>\u00a0children and teens to violence and molding a generation of \u201cadolescent super-predators.\u201d All baloney, as it turned out, but now, authorities complain that real images of harsh brutalities from Palestine are\u00a0over-sensitizing<\/em>\u00a0young people\u2019s humanitarian empathies, interfering with official carnages.<\/p>\n More nihilist than the darkest \u201cmanosphere\u201d pit<\/strong><\/p>\n If Western culture retains a shred of the civilized decency we boast about, the likes of Hurwitz, Clinton, and like-minded elites would be ostracized from public discourse. Instead, the reverse is happening: more dictatorial censorship edicts across the West to suppress all dissent \u2013 especially by young people, and especially concerning Gaza, climate change, and social justice.<\/p>\n Congressmembers<\/a>\u00a0freely declare they\u00a0forced the sale of TikTok<\/a>\u00a0to a pro-Israel mega-billionaire not for \u201cnational security\u201d or other made-up subterfuges, but to suppress young people\u2019s pro-Palestine views.\u00a0The UK<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0German governments<\/a>\u00a0allied with Big Tech (which delightedly exploits government \u201cage verification\u201d mandates to gather users\u2019 private information) likewise are decimating free speech principles to shut down advocacies officials broadly label as \u201canti-Semitic\u201d and \u201cterrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a01984<\/em>\u00a0metaphor is overworked, but still\u2026 it\u2019s hard to imagine worse Orwellisms than Clinton\u2019s denunciation of real-death videos from Palestine as \u201cmade up\u201d because they challenge official narratives, or the coalescing of government, Big Tech, anti-youth, psychological, and established media interests around\u00a0sweeping dictates<\/a>\u00a0to bar young people and dissidents from vital online resources in the name of preventing \u201cmental illness.\u201d We\u2019re living a dystopian cliche.<\/p>\n *I\u2019d love to see Hillary and Hurwitz debate political scientist\u00a0Norm Finkelstein<\/a>, Israeli historian\u00a0Ilan Papp\u00e9<\/a>, or campus activist\u00a0Simone Zimmerman<\/a>\u00a0on the \u201cfacts\u201d of Israel-Palestine. Never going to happen. The elites hide in safe, billionaire-sponsored forums and controlled media like\u00a0Fox News<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Morning Joe<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Authorities are recasting young people\u2019s concerns about climate change, Gaza, social justice, family crises, etc., as “mental illness” Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| January 2026 Let\u2019s start with the clueless condescension, because it gets scarier. National Public Radio\u2019s 1A (First Amendment)\u2019s lengthy 12\/18 \u201cNavigating modern adolescence\u201d managed to dodge\u00a0ALL\u00a0the family, community, economic, and global issues […]<\/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-161265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161265","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=161265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161266,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161265\/revisions\/161266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}