Teenagers and Adolescence

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      U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says

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      The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      TikTok Faces Lawsuits From 13 States Around Teens and Mental Health

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      More than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an app designed to be addictive to children and teens.Thirteen states and the District of Columbia sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an intentionally addictive app that harmed children and teens while making false claims to the public about its commitment to safety.In separate lawsuits, a bipartisan group of attorneys general cited internal company documents to paint a picture of a multibillion dollar company that knowingly contributed to a mental health crisis among American teenagers to maximize its advertising revenue. They said that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has relentlessly designed features to prompt heavy, compulsive use of TikTok and that many children were using the app late at night when they would otherwise have been asleep.TikTok “knew the harms to children,” Rob Bonta, the Democratic attorney general of California, said in an interview. “They chose addiction and more use and more eyeballs and more mental and physical harm for our young people in order to get profits — it’s really that simple.”The lawsuits add to a rapidly expanding list of challenges for TikTok in the United States, which now counts 170 million monthly U.S. users. A federal law passed in April calls for the app to be banned in the United States as of January unless it is sold. A federal lawsuit against the company in August also claimed that TikTok allowed children to open accounts, gathered information about them and made it difficult for their parents to delete the accounts.TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The states, many of which started investigating the company’s harms to minors in early 2022, are generally claiming that TikTok’s conduct violates their consumer protection laws. The states say that TikTok plays videos in a manner that aims to make young users lose track of time and sends them round-the-clock notifications and ephemeral content like livestreams to compel them to keep checking in. The longer users stay on the app, the more targeted ads TikTok is able to show them.The attorneys general say that TikTok has misled users about its so-called 60-minute screen time limits for young people and other features that promise to curate the videos that they see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

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      The California legislation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of cellphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Friday aimed at protecting minors from social media addiction amid growing concerns about the impact of technology on adolescents’ mental health.The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said in a statement on Friday.The move, targeting powerful tech interests in the nation’s most populous state, is part of a nationwide effort to address concern over cellphone and social media use among adolescents. Amid reports of cyberbullying and distraction in classrooms, at least eight states, including Florida and Indiana, have already enacted restrictions on the use of cellphones in school settings. New York put in place a similar law aimed at social media addiction this year.In June, Governor Newsom also called for a ban on smartphone use in all public schools in California. Legislation now before him includes a requirement that the schools devise a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit smartphones during the school day, though most school districts already have cellphone policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Teen Voices Matter in the 2024 Election

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      For most teenagers, a presidential election year offers a dilemma. Elections have consequences, as the saying goes, and this is especially true for young people, who are at the center of any number of issues dividing the U.S. electorate. Yet most teens can’t vote.All spring and summer, the Headway team has been talking with high school students about this year’s election. Headway is an initiative at The New York Times that covers the world’s challenges through the lens of progress. Since the march of progress will have its longest effects on the youngest of us, that lens has made Headway especially interested in the experiences of the world’s youth.We have been especially curious about youth voter turnout this year, given how youth engagement in presidential elections has changed over the past few cycles. The 2020 election was particularly striking. The spread of the coronavirus meant that going to the voting booth was particularly fraught. The two contenders for the presidency were the oldest in American history. The 2016 election had notably low youth participation. On the eve of the 2020 election, The Times posed the question, “Why don’t young people vote, and what can be done about it?”But then young people defied expectations. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University, Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted at higher rates in 2020 than they had in any elections except 1992 and 1972 (which was right after the voting age was lowered to 18). Their votes last election far outstripped the margin of victory in swing states, making them critical to the outcome.In collaboration with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education in several American communities, the Headway team has been posing questions about the election to high school students, and asking them what questions they have for their peers about the race. We’ve heard from nearly 1,000 students from red, blue and purple states, all representing diverse backgrounds and schools. Their responses have been illuminating. While some high schoolers don’t consider the election particularly relevant to their interests, many do. Even when they can’t vote, many teenagers in every part of the country are highly interested in the election. They are eager to inform themselves about it, craving more forums to discuss it with peers and others, and yearning to see their voices represented in the outcome.So for the next two months, if you’re a teenager in the United States, we want to ask you all about your experience of the election. Consider this your formal invitation to participate in what we’re calling the Headway Election Challenge.

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      Georgia Suspect’s Family Faced Eviction and Other Turmoil Before Shooting

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      Court and law enforcement records lay out the turbulence in the teenager’s family in recent years.The 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school this week had switched middle schools and drawn the attention of authorities who suspected he had posted school shooting threats online.His mother had repeated encounters with law enforcement and had been ordered to stay away from drugs and alcohol. His family had been evicted from their home because of unpaid rent, and his parents had split.Interviews with relatives and others who knew the teenager, and a review of court documents and law enforcement records, reflected a family in constant turmoil in the years before the shooting this week at Apalachee High School in Winder.The suspect, Colt Gray, has been charged with four counts of murder for the Wednesday morning attack in which two students and two math teachers were killed and eight other students were injured. During his first court appearance on Friday, a judge informed him that he could face a maximum penalty of life in prison.His father, Colin Gray, is facing second-degree murder and other charges, as officials argue that he shoulders considerable blame for giving his son the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle used in the attack. The weapon was a Christmas gift last year, according to three law enforcement officials. Mr. Gray, 54, faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison, if convicted.During the brief hearing on Friday, relatives of the people who were killed sat directly behind the defendants, only a few feet away. The grief that the community in Winder is now wrestling with was palpable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Cass Report: Biased or Balanced?

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      More from our inbox:Child Tax Credits Can Save Women’s LivesWake Up, RepublicansRicardo TomásTo the Editor:Re “The Strange Report Fueling the War on Trans Kids,” by Lydia Polgreen (column, Aug. 18):Thank you to Lydia Polgreen for this thoughtful, well-researched piece. She clearly identified the faulty and dangerous unspoken premise of the Cass report and much of the reporting on this topic: that being transgender is socially deviant and harmful, and we should do everything in our collective power to reserve gender-affirming care for those we deem virtuous enough to become “good” members of society.She also pointed out critics’ double standards. Our medical system routinely provides — without controversy — the same gender-affirming medications to cisgender children and adolescents that it provides to trans children and adolescents. The issue is clearly not “concern for children” but the deep-rooted transphobia that this “concern” masks.What if we didn’t think of being trans as being deviant or broken? What if we saw it for what it is: an identity as old as human existence that is as worthy of respect and celebration as any other, especially amid this climate of fear? What if we focused less on creating unnecessary barriers to care and more on protecting the right to self-determination and access to health care that respects each person’s unique needs?Libby Hartle-TyrrellBrooklynTo the Editor:Lydia Polgreen speculates on the legitimacy of the Cass report in what I see as an effort all too common among public figures: to burnish their liberal credentials at the expense of families like mine. They state that pediatric gender transition is too politicized, but blame only the Republicans. But I wish, I beg, that they talk to parents like me.Many of us are liberal, (formerly) Democratic professionals whose kids have been caught up in the left’s politicization of this issue. Our kids — who are smart, but struggle with mental health issues and anxiety — spent too much time online during Covid and self-diagnosed themselves as gender dysphoric. Meanwhile, activists have aggressively pushed an affirm-or-else, one-size-fits-all policy on educators, mental health providers and doctors.This confluence has created a dystopian nightmare for well-educated, thoughtful and compassionate parents who urge caution and question medicalization. People who we used to align with politically are telling our kids that we are transphobic and support their cutting us off. We grieve and watch in horror as our vulnerable kids permanently scar their bodies, reproductive organs and voices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sadness Among Teen Girls May Be Improving, C.D.C. Finds

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      A national survey found promising signs that key mental health measures for teens, especially girls, have improved since the depths of the pandemic.In 2021, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on teen mental health focused on a stark crisis: Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistent sadness, the highest rate in a decade.But the newest iteration of the survey, distributed in 2023 to more than 20,000 high school students across the country, suggests that some of the despair seen at the height of the pandemic may be lessening.Fifty-three percent of girls reported extreme depressive symptoms in 2023, down from 57 percent in 2021. For comparison, just 28 percent of teenage boys felt persistent sadness, about the same as in 2021.Suicide risk among girls stayed roughly the same as the last survey. But Black students, who reported troubling increases in suicide attempts in 2021, reported significantly fewer attempts in 2023.Still, the number of teens reporting persistent sadness in 2023 remained higher than at any point in the last decade aside from 2021. And around 65 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender high school students reported persistent hopelessness, compared with 31 percent of their cisgender or heterosexual peers. One in five L.G.B.T.Q. students reported attempting suicide in the past year.“For young people, there is still a crisis in mental health,” said Kathleen Ethier, head of the C.D.C.’s adolescent and school health program. “But we’re also seeing some really important glimmers of hope.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Kids Online Safety Act Was Dragged Into a Political War

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      The Senate was set to pass the Kids Online Safety Act on Tuesday, but the legislation faces an uphill battle in the House because of censorship concerns.Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sent 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to lobby against the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill meant to protect children online.The teenagers told the staffs of 85 lawmakers that the legislation could censor important conversations, particularly among marginalized groups like L.G.B.T.Q. communities.“We live on the internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” said Anjali Verma, a 17-year-old rising high school senior from Bucks County, Pa., who was part of the student lobbying campaign. “Regardless of your political perspective, this looks like a censorship bill.”The effort was one of many escalations in recent months by those who oppose the bill. In June, a progressive nonprofit, Fight for the Future, organized students to write hundreds of letters to urge lawmakers to scrap it. Conservative groups like Patriot Voices, founded by the former Republican senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, are also protesting with an online petition.What was supposed to be a simple piece of legislation to protect children online has been dragged into a heated political war. At the heart of the battle are concerns about how the bill could affect free speech on culturally divisive issues, which both sides of the spectrum worry could be weaponized under the guise of child safety. Liberals worry about censorship of transgender care, while conservatives are concerned about the same with anti-abortion efforts. The tech industry has also latched onto the same First Amendment arguments to oppose the bill.The controversy stems from the specific terms of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. The legislation would require social media platforms and other sites to limit features that can heighten cyberbullying, harassment and the glorification of self-harm. The bill would also require tech companies to turn on the highest privacy and safety settings for users under 17 and let them opt out of some features that have been shown to lead to compulsive use.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More