Teen Girls Are Experiencing A Mental Health Crisis

A recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey is making headlines for its shocking findings on teens’ declining mental health. The survey, which was conducted in 2021, revealed 60% of teen girls felt an abiding sense of sadness and hopelessness, twice that of their male counterparts. Significantly more LGBTQ students also reported feeling sad and helpless compared to straight kids. These statistics reflect a microcosm of the general uptick in mental health issues across youth demographics. Forty percent of high school students say they feel disconnected from everyone at their school.

Tamar Mendelson, director of the Center for Adolescent Health at Johns Hopkins University, told Chalkbeat, “We need to be looking structurally at what is happening in society that is creating these kinds of traumas and pressures on young people. That ranges from structural racism to economic oppression, to just the pressures that come with a society with so many inequities.”

One piece published by The New York Times noted that physicians are feeling the effects of the teenage mental health crisis. The article, centered on Glasgow, Kentucky, explains how teens are increasingly turning to pediatricians for mental health guidance, even though it may not be their specialty. A lack of psychologists and local therapists exacerbates this desperation to find adequate mental treatment; the Times notes that no child or adolescent psychologists exist in 70% of U.S. counties. Where therapists are practicing, many are not only booked out months in advance but are also concentrated in wealthy areas where clients can afford steep out-of-pocket fees.

Some have blamed social media for teens’ plummeting mental health. Although the Times suggested there was not enough evidence to attribute these recent mental health statistics to social media, it only adds to existing outcry from the public about the detrimental effects of social media on young people — especially teen girls. In December, Fast Company reported that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) studied how controversial video sharing app TikTok harms vulnerable young girls. After creating fake accounts posing as 13-year-old-girls, the team created two groups: “vulnerable” accounts that expressed a desire to lose weight and standard accounts which acted as controls. The group found that TikTok fed standard accounts “harmful” content every 39 seconds, while vulnerable accounts received harmful content every 27 seconds. The study ultimately concluded that TikTok’s efforts to block self-harm and eating disorder content were inadequate.

Similar charges were made against Meta’s platform Instagram. In a series of lawsuits, plaintiffs argue that the government should treat Instagram the same way it treats other malfunctioning products and allege Meta knew about Instagram’s downsides but failed to address them. Alexis Spence, a plaintiff in one of the suits, said that her intense Instagram use, which she kept a secret from her parents, drove her to an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts. She told The Washington Post, “Seeing all of the knowledge that Meta had and looking back at my past and remembering everything that happened to me — they knew exactly what was happening.”

The CDC’s recent survey reveals another potential explanation for why mental health issues are taking an outsize toll on teen girls, though. The survey found that one in five teen girls experienced sexual violence, defined as forcible kissing or touching, in 2021. More than one in 10 girls reported being raped, marking a 20% increase in sexual violence since 2017. Unlike with social media, the data supporting a relationship between sexual violence and increased mental health issues is strong.

During a press conference, Debra Houry, chief medical officer for the CDC, stated, “America’s teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence, and trauma,” adding, “These data are hard to hear and should result in action.”

As Houry insinuated, listening, no matter how hard it may be, is the key to moving forward. Marwa Sahak, a California teenager, who NBC News interviewed about the recent findings, emphasized this point. “Some adults are really open to those kinds of conversations, but most adults sort of make you feel like you’re just another teenager complaining about insignificant issues when ‘there are more important things to worry about.’” She concluded, “It’s just frustrating how we are rarely ever taken seriously when it comes to issues that we care about.”