The most common mental health diagnoses among teens in the US

By Ali Hickerson In January 2024, thousands of people earnestly responded to Elmo when the “Sesame Street” puppet prompted a mental health check-in on social media, asking, “How is everybody doing?” The same week, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the harms of social media to children, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—and CEOs of other social media sites—of having “blood on [their] hands” for a “product that’s killing people.” Zuckerberg said directly to parents whose children died due to nefarious activity on social media: “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.” Internal research the company presented in March 2020 showed that Instagram use increased the rates of anxiety and depression in some teens, with 32% of teen girls saying that Instagram made them feel worse about their body image. A similar share of teens (35%) said they use social media “almost constantly,” according to Pew data collected in late 2023. University of California-San Francisco researchers found that the prevalence of conduct disorder among children rose 62% higher for each hour of social media use. As of November 2021, Forrester Research reported a staggering 63% of...