{"id":161396,"date":"2026-07-10T11:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T18:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161396"},"modified":"2026-08-21T13:23:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T20:23:05","slug":"theres-no-global-increase-in-teenage-suicide-in-fact-29-of-32-western-nations-saw-teen-suicide-decrease-as-social-media-use-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/?p=161396","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no \u201cglobal increase in teenage suicide.\u201d In fact, 29 of 32 Western nations saw teen suicide DECREASE as social media use rose"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

How on earth have crusaders to ban teens from social media gotten away with fabricating the impression that social media use fosters more teen suicide?<\/h6>\n

Regarding my last substack, watch Candice Odgers\u2019 full\u00a0TED talk<\/a>. She argues succinctly to refute misleading and outright false statistics used to whip up national panics over teens using social media.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to another flat-out falsehood of the many incredible myths that ban-teens-from-social-media crusaders have sold to political and media authorities: that the social media era spawned a \u201cglobal increase\u201d in teen suicide.\u201d While some have confined the claim to girls\u2019 suicides \u2014 an interesting refinement since boys account for three-fourths of teen suicides, one that seems to escape attention \u2014 even that is open to discussion.<\/p>\n

The overall trend is clear, dramatic, and the opposite of what is publicly proclaimed. As social media use by teenagers skyrocketed across all Western nations since the mid-1990s, here\u2019s what did happen:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 3 nations \u2013 the United States, Japan, and Singapore \u2013 showed increases in their rates of suicides by teens.<\/h4>\n

\u00b7 29 nations \u2013 led by Germany, France, Korea, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Canada, and Australia \u2013 showed decreased teen suicide rates.<\/h4>\n

Teen suicide trends shown by the University of Washington School of Medicine\u2019s\u00a0Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation<\/a>\u00a0statistics (less-complete United Nations\u2019\u00a0World Health Organization tabulations<\/a>\u00a0show the same trends) demolish ban-teens advocate Jonathan Haidt\u2019s statistician\u00a0Zach Rausch\u2019s<\/a>.\u00a0The Economist<\/a><\/em>\u2019s, and others\u2019 simplistic, aggregated trends in total suicide changes. The problem with crude aggregation is that the United States and Japan, 2 countries that did show increased teen suicide, are large nations that together account for nearly two-thirds of the West\u2019s entire suicide total.<\/p>\n

Worse still, crusaders\u2019 analyses exploit only those few, select nations and often inconsistent, incomplete time periods cherry-picked to confirm their claim of increased social-media-driven teen suicide. And in the few cases where there are suicide increases, they simply blame social media without looking at more crucial factors such as many nations\u2019 rising, widespread drug abuse among grownups. The energy they put into avoiding this issue is painful to behold.<\/p>\n

The real question, given that teens in all the dozens of Western nations showed exploding increases in social media use in the post-1995 period, is this: why did 3 nations show an average increase in teen suicide rates of 46%, while 29 nations showed an average decrease of 38% during the same period? Not exactly a subtle difference, and one crucial to examine \u2013 assuming one wants to prevent suicide rather than exploit it to indulge culture-war panics.<\/p>\n

What is the \u201csocial media era\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Economist<\/em>\u00a0and Raush pick the post-2003 period.\u00a0Psychologist Jean Twenge<\/a>, instrumental along with Haidt in inflaming panics over social media, fixates on the post-2010 period and some weird time-period breakdowns, apparently to go after smartphones.<\/p>\n

This is seriously misleading. In 2003, U.S. Census data revealed that\u00a0three-fourths of U.S. 12-17-year-olds were going online<\/a>, up from 62% in 2000. By 2010, 93% of American teens age 12-17 were already using social media, 63% every day,\u00a0Pew Research reported<\/a>;\u00a0Monitoring the Future<\/a>\u00a0found 56% of 8-10th<\/sup>\u00a0graders and 63% of 12th<\/sup>\u00a0graders used social media every day. You can\u2019t analyze the effects of the internet and social media on teens by comparing periods in which the vast majority of teens were already online.<\/p>\n

The latest, most logical year defining the pre-social-media era would be 1995, when the best\u00a0estimate from crude surveys<\/a>\u00a0is that maybe 10% of teens went online regularly.\u00a0Social media first appeared in 199<\/a>7 (remember \u201cSix Degrees,\u201d \u201cClassmates,\u201d and \u201cLunar Storm\u201d?) One could pick a somewhat earlier year or later year, but the results will be the same \u2013 most nations experienced decreased teen suicide rates accompanying the rise of the social media era.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that from 1995 to 2010 or so, social media use among teens grew from very low levels to 90%-plus use across the Western world. In the post-2010 period, social media use grew little but did include smartphones, which offer nothing more than portable, small-screen internet access.<\/p>\n

My analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

I define the post-1995 period as the internet and social-media era. I rely on the University of Washington School of Medicine\u2019s definitive\u00a0Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation<\/a>, which provides consistently collected data on dozens of countries (I cite the 32 countries with near-complete\u00a0death registration systems<\/a>) for every year. No method is perfect, but this one at least standardizes often inconsistent national mortality reporting, and as mentioned, WHO statistics yield very similar results.<\/p>\n

One initial issue is that teen suicide is very rare, much rarer than suicide by grownups, a reality dodged by the many professionals and media reporters who obey primitive American cultural norms stigmatizing suicide. In the United States and Japan, for example, fewer than 1 in 60,000 girls ages 10-14 commit suicide in any given year; in Germany, fewer than 1 in 100,000; in the UK, just 1 in 400,000. Small numbers naturally fluctuate and are vulnerable to even small changes in death classification procedures.<\/p>\n

So, I don\u2019t pick just this arbitrary year to compare to that arbitrary year to affirm my prejudices (had I indulged that bamboozling, I could have shown ALL 32 countries had \u201cdecreases\u201d in teens suicides!). Instead, I use neutral regression analysis that incorporates all years and suicide numbers in the entire 28-year time period into one consistent trendline. Table 1 shows the results.<\/p>\n

Table 1. Change in numbers of suicides by persons under age 20 in 32 Western countries during the period in which social media use by teens increased<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Source: Global Burden of Disease, University of Washington School of Medicine\u00a0Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation<\/a>\u00a0(2026),\u00a0Data Tool<\/a>. Suicides are deaths from \u201cself-harm.\u201d Rates are suicides per 100,000 population age 10-19 by country. \u201cSocial media era\u201d is 1995 through 2023, with all countries supplying data for all 28 years.<\/h5>\n

Given that social media use increased sharply among teens across the Western world during the 1995-2023 period, the fact that teen suicide rates declined in 29 of 32 nations normally would indicate overwhelming evidence that social media\u2019s effects \u2013 if any \u2013 would be to deter, not promote, suicide.<\/p>\n

Spanish girls\u2019 suicide trends \u2013 an illustration<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ban-teens-from-social-media crusaders have famously made a special issue of trends in Spain \u2013 more correctly, distorting them.<\/p>\n

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So, let\u2019s sum up what happened in Spain as tabulated by University of Washington School of Medicine scientists during the social media era regarding supposedly skyrocketing suicide by teenaged girls:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0Among\u00a02.4 million Spanish teenaged girls<\/a>, annual suicides fluctuated from 12 (2009 and 2010) to 31 (1995 and 1996) and wound up at 24 (2023) \u2013 an averaged 28-year rate decrease over 1995-2023 of 7%<\/h4>\n

\u00b7 Among 2.6 million teenaged boys, annual suicides ranged from 39 to 92, with a 28-year rate decline of 40%<\/h4>\n

\u00b7 Among women of age to be mothers of teenaged girls (age 40-49), annual suicides ranged from 91 to 196, with an average rate increase of 14%<\/h4>\n

\u00b7 Among men of age to be fathers of teenaged girls (40-49), annual suicides ranged from 420 to 810, an average rate increase of 13%.<\/h4>\n

In the most recent year available (2023, more than a quarter-century after social media first took hold), there were 174 suicides among Spanish women and 575 among men of age (40-49) to be their parents \u2013 compared to 24 among teen girls (including 3 among girls age 10-14). It\u2019s understandable to lament suicide as the tragedy it is, but let\u2019s have some perspective before creating mass panics.<\/p>\n

Analysts could have started with the obvious summary fact that the large majority of countries show teen suicide declines during the social media era. I plan to follow up with examinations of suicide rates by gender and more detailed age and the drug-abuse epidemic that afflicted mainly over-25 adults (parent-age groups) during this period. Even where trends differ, there is no evident reason to blame social media and every reason to stop ignoring other vital trends in teens\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| July 2026 How on earth have crusaders to ban teens from social media gotten away with fabricating the impression that social media use fosters more teen suicide? Regarding my last substack, watch Candice Odgers\u2019 full\u00a0TED talk. She argues succinctly to refute misleading and outright false statistics used to whip up<\/p>\n

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