If your teenager seems moody, you’re not alone. According to a study released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of American high school students who report feeling “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26% in 2009 to 44% in 2021.
And don’t blame COVID-19 lockdowns, argues Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg: “Rising teenage sadness isn’t a new trend, but rather the acceleration and broadening of a trend that clearly started before the pandemic.”
The Atlantic
’s Derek Thompson identifies four other possible sources of rising teenage angst, including increased social media use, declining sociality, more stressful world news, and intensive modern parenting strategies.
And these aren’t all wrong. As Thompson notes, there was a significant spike in teenage sadness around 2012, which just also happens to be when the percentage of people in the United States who owned a smartphone passed 50%. But this doesn’t mean “social media” is the problem — you can access Twitter and Facebook on a regular computer — it means smartphones are.
And smartphones are probably to blame for Thomspon’s “stressful” news too. Even Thompson doesn’t argue that there is more bad news in the world than ever before, just that teenagers are exposed to it more — again through their smartphones. It’s not like if smartphones didn’t exist that teenagers would be tracking down print editions of the International Herald Tribune to find out the latest atrocity in Somalia. Teenagers are seeing more bad news than ever because they are constantly on their smartphones.
Finally, on parenting, Thompson admits that since it is really only “high-income parents” that are pushing their children to participate in a “rug rat race,” this reason also “can’t explain a generalized increase in teenage sadness.”
But you know what could? Marriage — or at least the decline of it. In 1960, fewer than 10% of children were born to single women. Today, more than half of children will be raised by a single parent for some point before they reach adulthood.
And there is ample research showing that children from homes without married parents suffer from
higher levels of depression
and other
psychiatric disorders
.
So if you want your teenager to be happy, get and stay married first — and maybe take away their iPhone too.
