Are Today’s Teens Really Struggling More Compared to When We Were Teens? It Depends.
- The White Hatter
- 36 minutes ago
- 6 min read
At The White Hatter, one of our ongoing commitments is to help families step back from the emotional intensity surrounding youth, technology, and social media, to help bring perspective to important discussions surrounding technology. It’s natural for discussions about youth and teens to be shaped by nostalgia. Many of us instinctively compare our own adolescence to what young people face today. As Dr. Gray Kimbrough, an economist who studies generational discourse, puts it:
“Intergenerational carping is one of our great human traditions. With it, we relieve anxiety around aging and mortality, congratulating ourselves at being better than our replacements. The young may inherit the earth, but we will tell them they’re doing it wrong until our very last breaths.”
That quote captures something important. When parents and caregivers talk about youth mental health, it’s easy to slip into a narrative that paints the past as safer, simpler, and healthier. A common statement that we hear is that “depression, loneliness, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide have more than doubled since we were teens,” a belief that is usually pinned on technology or social media as the cause.
The question is whether that premise is accurate. What if our recollection of “better times” doesn’t line up with what the data actually shows?
Earlier this year, we published an article titled, “Teens Back Then vs. Teens Today”, where we compared several indicators across generations. (1) Suicide was one of those indicators.
In Canada throughout the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, suicide among 15 to 19 year olds often ranged between 12 and 16 deaths per 100,000 youth, with boys at a much higher risk than girls. (2) Today, Canada’s overall teen suicide rate has declined to roughly 6 to 10 per 100,000, even though clinicians are observing increases in anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation, particularly among teen girls.(3)(4)
In the United States, a similar pattern appears. Suicide rates have fallen since 2017, reaching lower levels in 2022 than those seen in the 1980s and 1990s. (5) The percentage of American teens reporting serious suicidal thoughts dropped nearly 13% between 2021 and 2024, and the prevalence of suicide attempts also decreased slightly. (6)(7)
So, are more teens dying by suicide than before? The answer is not a simple yes. The data suggests that deaths are not universally higher, but young people do seem to be carrying heavier emotional burdens. That reality still deserves our full attention, but it challenges the narrative that “it’s all much worse because of technology.”
In that same article, we examined additional trends. Across Canada and the U.S., rates of:
school dropout
teen crime
teen pregnancy
drug and alcohol use
motor-vehicle fatalities
Were all higher in the 1970s through the 1990s when cellphones, the internet, and social media were not around. This doesn’t mean teens today have it easy. It means the picture is more complicated than the one often painted in news headlines or social media posts. Every generation has its own challenges, risks, and pressures.
Another claims we often read and hear is that teens are lonelier than ever, which is again often tied by some to the rise of smartphones and social media. Dr. Mike Males, a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, recently examined this claim using the longest running dataset available; the “Monitoring the Future” survey. (8) For 48 years, this study has asked thousands of high school seniors the same question which is, “A lot of times I feel lonely.”
When Dr. Males graphed the full dataset, a surprising pattern emerged.
As you can see, self-reported loneliness among teens was higher in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, long before smartphones, social media, and the internet became part of everyday life.
When Dr When Dr. Males graphed the full dataset on happiness, here's what it revealed:
There was a clear spike in 2019, but parents may remember what else was happening that year. COVID-19 uprooted routines, shuttered schools, restricted peer contact, and isolated families. Loneliness rose for everyone, not just teens.
The long term trend tells a different story than the one often repeated in public debate. It reminds us that loneliness or happiness isn’t a modern invention and wasn’t born from TikTok, Instagram, or gaming platforms. It is a human experience that has existed across generations.
Why This Matters for Families
Parents want clarity. They want to understand what is truly affecting their child’s emotional well-being. When the narrative is framed as “everything was better before technology, the internet, and social media,” the risk is that families may focus on the wrong causes and overlook deeper, more complex factors.
Again, we must emphasize, that we do believe that social media and technology can play a negative role in "some" youth mental wellness in today’s onlife world. However, youth mental health is more nuanced and multifactorial than just pointing to social media and cell phones as the primary culprit. This was also echoed in a 2024 Stats Canada report "Digital well-being: the relationship between technology use, mental health and interpersonal relationships" where they stated (9):
"factors other than time spent online can contribute to the relationship between Internet use and mental health, such as the type of online activity, and the age, sex and gender of the user."
Experts in the mental health field have identified various confounding challenges that can frequently contribute to depression or suicidal ideations among youth outside of technology (10)(11). Some of these biological, social, and societal confounding challenges can include:
Instability at school
the increasing loss of independence
Academic pressure
Increase in school shootings and mass violence since 2007
Increased family conflict, family separation, and divorce rates
Domestic abuse
Parent/caregiver Job Loss
Loss of job opportunities
Increases in parental distress
Sexualized violence
Sexuality/orientation
Increased rates of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny
Increased rates of child abuse
Relationship navigation
Poor Peer friendships
Unstable housing / housing crisis
Food insecurity for lower-income families
Concerns about climate change
The current climate of political polarization
Household income level
Increased levels of child poverty in North America
Lack of prevention and early intervention treatment and counselling for youth mental health
loss of outside play / and youth community engagement programs
Inflation and the cost of living in the home
Student debt
Applying to and financially affording university
Substance abuse
The increased pace of change given the global economy
Physical health problems/disabilities
A youth's psychosocial makeup
Class dynamics - Indigenous people across the world, especially Indigenous youth higher rates of self-harm and suicide
adolescents without medical insurance to access mental health counselling
The emotional contagion effect
Genetic predisposition/family history of mental health
higher recognition and reporting of mental health challenges in youth than in the past
Teens who have lost one or more caregivers, close family members, and close friends during COVID
Technology plays a role in young people’s lives, and sometimes that role creates social and emotional pressure. However, attributing every mental health trend to technology can distract from the bigger picture.
The truth is more nuanced. Some things are harder today, some things are easier, and some things haven’t changed much at all.
Instead of providing a tidy answer that points a finger at technology, the internet, and social media, here are some questions worth asking:
If loneliness and suicide rates were already higher decades before smartphones, what else might be shaping teen well-being?
If some risks have gone down while others have risen, what does that tell us about the complexity of adolescence across generations?
If our memories of “simpler times” don’t match the data, how should that reshape the way we talk to teens about their challenges today?
If public debates often blame technology first, what important factors might we overlook in our efforts to support young people?
If today’s teens are navigating pressures we didn’t face, and avoiding some we did, what kind of guidance actually helps them, rather than simply warning them?
As parents and caregivers, holding these questions with curiosity rather than certainty may give us a clearer path forward. The goal isn’t to prove that one generation had it better, but to understand what young people need now, in their world, not the one we remember. This is something that we here at the White Hatter will continue to emphasize, based on the good evidence based research, no matter where it may take us.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech
References:
3/ https://health-infobase.canada.ca/mental-health/suicide-self-harm/suicide-mortality.html#sm_trends
