4 in 10 High Schoolers Report Persistent Sadness. The Adults Built This.

Four in ten American high school students say they have felt so sad or hopeless for two weeks or more in the past year that they stopped doing their usual activities.

That is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the largest ongoing national survey of teenagers’ health. In 2013, the figure was 30%. By 2023 it was 40%. CDC, YRBS Data Summary and Trends Report, 2013–2023.

Over the same decade, the share of high schoolers who seriously considered suicide rose from 17% to 20%. The share who made a plan went from 14% to 16%. The share who attempted went from 8% to 9%.

Behind every one of those percentages is a kid in a classroom near you. This is the lens of the Moral Decay Index that should make every adult uncomfortable, because the people responsible for the conditions these children grow up in are not the children.

The worst of it may have peaked

Here is the part the doom headlines leave out. The 2023 numbers were slightly better than 2021. Persistent sadness fell from 42% to 40% overall. Among girls it dropped from 57% to 53%. The share of girls who seriously considered suicide fell from 30% to 27%. CDC, 2023 YRBS Results.

That matters. A small improvement after the pandemic peak does not mean the crisis is over. Levels remain far above where they were a decade ago. But it does mean the trend is not destiny. Something in 2021 made it worse. Something since then made it slightly better. That is evidence that choices adults make can move these numbers.

The gaps are enormous

Averages hide the kids in the most trouble. In 2023, more than half of teenage girls reported persistent sadness or hopelessness, and roughly one in four seriously considered suicide. The CDC reports that more than three in five LGBTQ+ students experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness in the past year.

Bullying moved the wrong way. Nineteen percent of students said they were bullied at school in 2023, up from 15% in 2021.

When a crisis concentrates this heavily in specific groups, “teens are struggling” is too vague to be useful. Some teens are drowning, and we know which ones.

So is it the phones?

Everyone wants a single villain, and the smartphone is the obvious candidate. The evidence is serious, but it is not as simple as either side claims.

Start with exposure. According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory, up to 95% of young people ages 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, and more than a third say they use it “almost constantly.” Nearly 40% of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though most platforms set 13 as the minimum age. Eighth and tenth graders averaged about 3.5 hours a day on social media, and roughly a quarter spent five hours or more. U.S. Surgeon General, Social Media and Youth Mental Health advisory, 2023.

Now the risk. The advisory cites research finding that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. Its bluntest line: “We do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”

The CDC’s own analysis of the 2023 survey adds more. Seventy-seven percent of high school students reported using social media at least several times a day, and nearly 30% used it more than once an hour. Frequent users were significantly more likely to report being bullied at school and electronically, persistent sadness, and seriously considering or planning suicide. CDC, MMWR Supplement, October 2024.

But read the caveat the CDC printed in the same report: the data are cross-sectional, so “causality and directionality of associations” cannot be established. In plain English, heavy social media use and depression travel together, but this survey cannot prove which one causes the other. A kid who is already miserable may scroll more. A kid who scrolls more may become miserable. Probably both are happening.

The same CDC analysis found that the associations were not uniform. Female students and LGBQ+ students showed elevated risk on certain outcomes when they used social media frequently. Those are the same groups carrying the heaviest burden of sadness in the overall survey. That overlap does not prove the platforms caused it, but it tells you where to look first. If a product is most strongly linked to harm among the kids who are already most vulnerable, the burden of proof should shift to the people selling it. It should not stay on parents trying to decode research papers at the kitchen table.

Uncertainty is not an excuse

Here is where the Moral Decay Index takes a position. “We cannot prove causation yet” is a reason to keep studying. It is not a reason to do nothing.

We would never accept that standard for a physical product. If a toy were strongly associated with injuries in children and the manufacturer said “correlation is not causation,” no parent would hand it to their kid while waiting for a definitive study. Yet we hand children devices engineered by some of the best-paid designers in the world to maximize time on screen, and we ask them to self-regulate better than most adults can.

That is not a youth problem. It is an adult problem. Companies designed products for engagement, not wellbeing. Schools allowed the devices into every hour of the day. Parents, often exhausted and outmatched, gave in. Lawmakers argued for years while children ran the experiment on themselves.

What adults actually owe these kids

Blaming teenagers for a crisis built around them is both useless and cruel. The obligation runs the other way.

Parents: Delay the smartphone and social media accounts as long as practical. Keep devices out of bedrooms at night. Know which apps your child uses and who they talk to. Model the habits you want to see.
Schools: Treat phone-free class time as a basic learning condition. Take bullying reports seriously, because the numbers say more kids are experiencing it.
Platforms: Enforce your own age limits. Turn off engagement features for minors by default. Share data with independent researchers so the causation question can finally be answered.
Communities: Rebuild the places where teenagers can be together in person without a screen mediating every interaction. Sports, clubs, jobs, youth groups, volunteering.
Everyone: Learn the warning signs. Ask directly. Listen without lecturing.

If you or a young person you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. You do not have to be in immediate danger to reach out.

The verdict

The data is clear on the size of the problem and honest about its limits. Four in ten high schoolers are carrying persistent sadness. More than half of teenage girls are. The decade-long trend is bad, the most recent reading is slightly better, and the role of social media is serious but not fully proven.

None of that uncertainty changes the moral question. These children did not build the world they are struggling in. We did. The only question left is whether we will change it before the next survey tells us the same thing again.

Sources

If this made you angry, good. Now turn it inward. The Moral Consistency Journal is a 30-day audit of the places where your own standards bend. More Case Files and data breakdowns live at themoraldecayindex.com. Books that go deeper are in our Bookshop.org store, which supports independent bookstores.

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