{"id":161337,"date":"2026-05-04T14:45:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161337"},"modified":"2026-05-27T15:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T22:31:16","slug":"parents-abuses-and-adversities-loom-so-large-in-teenagers-mental-health-that-obsessing-over-social-media-is-pointless-a-new-analysis-of-our-top-health-survey-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161337","title":{"rendered":"Parents\u2019 abuses and adversities loom so large in teenagers\u2019 mental health that obsessing over social media is pointless, a new analysis of our top health survey shows."},"content":{"rendered":"

Parents\u2019 abuses and adversities loom so large in teenagers\u2019 mental health that obsessing over social media is pointless, a new analysis of our top health survey shows.<\/h1>\n

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| May 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real issue crusaders deploring social media never mention: Troubled homes drive today’s teenagers\u2019 \u201cmental health crisis\u201d far more than previously thought.<\/h6>\n

Let\u2019s begin with what I hope is broad agreement: every child\/teenager deserves to grow up in homes 100% free of abusive, violent, addicted, severely troubled, and\/or criminal parents and grownups. That is, the perfect\u00a0Father Knows Best<\/em>\u00a0family (the TV version, not the actors\u2019 real lives) today\u2019s authorities pretend all teens live in.<\/p>\n

But families don\u2019t have to be perfect. Even in healthy ones, someone (adult and teen alike) occasionally indulges one too many, vents choice name calling (which everyone later admits was probably true), goes off the rails with small appliances, etc.<\/p>\n

Some non-violent lapses in America\u2019s perfect\/near-perfect 43% of families (see Table 1) ain\u2019t generating the teenage \u201cmental health crisis.\u201d\u00a0Their kids are nearly all doing fine<\/a>, the definitive\u00a0Centers for Disease Control survey<\/a>\u00a0used here shows.<\/p>\n

The healthy, responsible parents and grownups you never hear about are the polar opposites of the severely abusive\/troubled parents inexplicably lauded as heroes for lawsuits insisting social media must be causing their kids\u2019 serious problems \u2013 as we saw in the\u00a0appalling Los Angeles case.<\/a><\/p>\n

Newly\u00a0refined measures<\/a>\u00a0show the associations between teens\u2019 poor mental health and parents\u2019\/household adults\u2019 abuses (violent and psychological) plus adversities (other home violence, drug\/alcohol abuse, severe mental troubles, and jailings) is much more serious than\u00a0previously thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Table 1 shows that nearly 6 in 10 teens \u2013 including two-thirds of girls and three-fourths of LGBTQ youths \u2013 grow up in homes with regular to severe abuses and adversities, with one-third suffering violent, severely troubled parents. Not surprisingly, these are the teens showing up as depressed and troubled themselves.<\/p>\n

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Source:\u00a0CDC 2023<\/a>. For description and method used to analyze 15 types and severities of abuses\/adversities, see\u00a0previous substack<\/a>.<\/h5>\n

The serious damage abusive\/troubled parents and household grownups (many of whom are past victims themselves) inflict on teenagers begins with the famous teenage \u201cmental health crisis<\/a>\u201d some 30% of Gen Z teens are suffering (Table 2).<\/p>\n

This more comprehensive index shows that teens subjected to frequent\/severe\/extreme abuse\/adversity in their families are 7 times more likely to be frequently depressed than teens in families with no or very few abuses\/adversities (Odds Ratio = 6.98, 95% CI, 6.29-7.74;\u00a0effect size, d<\/a>\u00a0= 1.07, very strong).<\/p>\n

That the entire political and media discussion obsesses over teens\u2019 social media use is appalling official dereliction.\u00a0Recent analyses<\/a>\u00a0have continued demolishing any\u00a0scientific basis<\/a>, weak to begin with, for this obsession.<\/p>\n

Why are authorities fixating on social media?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Previous substacks have discussed the political expediency of popularity-obsessed\u00a0authorities diverting attention<\/a>\u00a0from distressing reality \u2013 that the biggest threat by far to children\u2019s and teenagers\u2019 physical and mental health are their parents and nearby grownups \u2013 into a profitable distraction. Just\u00a0blame social media<\/a>\u00a0(or, as\u00a0South Park<\/em>\u00a0suggests,\u00a0blame Canada<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The difference between today\u2019s furor blaming social media and past moral panics is that now, better measures of our leading health survey show parental\/grownup abuses and troubles are much more widespread and much more damaging to young people than previously realized.<\/p>\n

These more comprehensive measures also allow a closer look at the effects of social media time and cyberbullying on teens\u2019 mental health. Basically,\u00a0social media use is harmful for a small fraction of teens<\/a>\u00a0and adults, and this harm shows up in surveys \u2013 albeit at far lower levels than the harm caused by family troubles.<\/p>\n

As will be explored in future substacks, parents\u2019 and adults\u2019 abuses are associated with more social media use by teens and heavily associated with cyberbullying and school bullying. We have been relentlessly lied to about all aspects of constantly-cited teen \u201ccrises,\u201d one reason why we remain such a high-risk society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parents\u2019 abuses and adversities loom so large in teenagers\u2019 mental health that obsessing over social media is pointless, a new analysis of our top health survey shows. Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| May 2026 The real issue crusaders deploring social media never mention: Troubled homes drive today’s teenagers\u2019 \u201cmental health crisis\u201d far more than previously […]<\/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":[30],"class_list":["post-161337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161337","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=161337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161339,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161337\/revisions\/161339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}