Teens today are more likley to say they feel persistently sad or hopeless and think about suicide.

Question

Forty percent of highschool students reported to experiance, persistent feelings such being sad and hopeless in 2023, according Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Which focus on many studies on teen bahavior such as meltal health, sexual behavior and other important issues. lots of theses reports came in during the convid19 pandemic (about 42% two years earlier).

CNN spoke with Matt Richtel who wrote a book “How we grow up”, focusing on the transition towrds teen behavoir of idenity, and the challenges that come with that, and why has the been so effective for the past decades. in his interveiw with CNN he mentions those challgenes such as, the teen tends to move quickly cuaing them to feel overwelmed or anxiety, for newer generations are surronded by social media making them feel insheltered. teens not knwing why there upset, translating them to have bad days. Not understanding or even having the motivatiin of adolescence wanting to explore, exmaple not wanitng to read.

Methods from Richtel, he metioned for teens to deal with situations like these. Is to find the skills of coping, also going to therapy that focus more congnitive behavior and dialectical therapy.

Answer 1

This claim is true. As reported by the CDC under the topic of “Adolescent and School Health” in November 2024, “4 in 10 (40%) students had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” This statistic comes from the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report” that spanned from 2013-2023 and was carried out by the CDC. In regard to suicide, the same report highlights that “2 in 10 (20%) students seriously considered attempting suicide and nearly 1 in 10 (9%) attempted suicide.” These statistics regarding depression and suicide come directly from the Center for Disease Control, the national public health agency of the U.S. While these statistics do come directly from the CDC, we also see several other reputable organizations reporting on the same statistics. The National Public Radio, The Jed Foundation, and New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services are all either non-profit organizations, or government organizations who have used the same data to support this claim. While these statistics are from 2023, the same statistics have also been outlined in a 2025 report by the CDC regarding Children’s Mental Health, working to uphold the claim that “teens today are more likely to say they feel persistently sad or hopeless and think about suicide” despite this data being nearly two years old.

Comments

I really like how you used one extremely reliable source, the CDC, to support your statement, but also managed to correlate other extremely reliable sources and connect and build off them in order to give an effective, reliable answer.

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Nice work identifying multiple sources and listing them clearly within your fact-check.

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I liked how you used trusted sources and they were linked for easy access for people looking for answers. The statistics you used also added a lot of credibility to your fact check.

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using the CDC as your source really helps this fact check as they are a very reliable source and this fact check clearly shows where all the data/stats come from as well as having the links which further helps the validity of this check.

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I admire the way you inserted your resource links into your fact-check, and also how you included the 2025 CDC report in the end stating that the same statistics that were in the 2023 version was outline in the newly 2025 version which makes this fact-check really good.

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Nice answer, this makes me rethink my stance. I liked how you cited multiple reputable sources, as well as your attention to the year each statistic was published, as It's important to take note of how things change over time.

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I really like the use of many sources to get information and form your final opinion on the topic and you made all of them easily accessible incase other people wanted to look into them for their own research. I also like that you used information that spanned over the past ten years or so, paired with research within the last year. It gives good insight on how this problem has culminated for a long time and isn't a sudden epidemic.

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I really appreciate the use of multiple sources to corroborate your evidence. Your factcheck is well-written and easy to understand. However, it is also important to factcheck a claim from the original CNN source: "That figure [40%] was down from a high of 42% two years earlier, during the Covid-19 pandemic, but is about 10 percentage points higher than a decade earlier." This claim is true. According to the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance in 2013, ten years before the 2023 survey, "29.9% of students nationwide had felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for 2 or more weeks in a row that they stopped doing some usual activities."

Furthermore, "17.0% of students had seriously considered attempting suicide," while "8.0% of students had attempted suicide." Both of these figures saw measurable increases between 2013 and 2023, which provides additional support to the claim.

Source:
CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss6304.pdf

Answer 2

This is true; the teens today are more likely to be sad and suicidal. According to CNN (the article linked above), since the COVID-19 pandemic, the results of multiple surveys administered to students have shown a significant increase in the unhappiness of these students. Also, according to the CDC, ever since 2023, the risk of these students' mental health has increased substantially. Lastly, according to CPC, 42% of teens feel a "persistent feeling of sadness or hopelessness", confirming the claim made by CNN.

This is a true claim made with no bias, all facts.

Comments

I enjoyed reading your comment. Your conclusion makes sense, but I am curious as to know about how you verified that the claim has no bias. Even if the numbers are correct, CNN and CDC might present the data differently like one might speak about the pandemics effect while the other highlights social media or school stress. Acknowledging that perspective could make your fact check be more accurate and strengthen your conclusion.

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As CNN is a news source, the article is most likely derived from several other sources. The information may have been changed or condensed by CNN in order to deliver the news in a more accessible way, but it's possible that the whole story isn't being told in the article.

Answer 3

After fact-checking this claim, I decided that it is an accurate statement. The author, Giselle Paloma Toled, used credible sources, including CNN and the CDC. Although I was unable to find any background information on her by googling her and searching for her account on LinkedIn, her sources really strengthened her piece. 

She used different statistics to help show the change in teens who have been feeling sad, hopeless, or suicidal in the last few years. The information from the CDC shows that students who felt like this in 2013 was around thirty percent, but it has grown drastically; in 2021, it was around forty-two percent. However, it is important to note that in the last few years, the numbers have closely fluctuated; in 2023, it was forty percent. It also may suggest that the numbers have not risen as much as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The author also went on and used a CNN story to help explain why some teenagers are feeling like this, partially linked to pressures on social media and anxiety. 

Finally, with information from Clarify Health, there was a statistic that again proved the author's claim, "Youth mental health hospitalizations increased by 124% from 2016 to 2022"  (Clarify Health). This shows the large jump in numbers over the last decade.

Comments

I appreciate how you included numerous statistics from the CDC that help back up the original claim. But, I'd be curious to know more about the "CNN story" you mentioned and more about their explanations on why teenagers are feeling like this, and how that information can assist your fact-check.

Answer 4

This claim is true. The Youth Risk Behavior survey was a key source in this CNN article to find data about the health behaviors and experiences of high schoolers from 2021-2023. Another CNN article that was linked within this article, also used the Youth Risk Behavior survey for their findings and received very similar data. In 2023, 40% of students who answered the survey said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. That metric was down from a high of 42% in 2021 but is still about 10 percentage points higher than it was a decade ago. Furthermore, the survey comes from the CDC, a highly reliable and official government website. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) report consistent answers from this survey and there are minimal prevalence changes within the surveys data, meaning that when they re-recorded the same students they received similar answers to the first study they conducted. 

Additionally, Kara Alaimo, the writer for the CNN article in this claim, writes frequently for CNN about the impact of social media and general issues affecting women. Other news outlets and articles, such as NPR,  have reported on similar topics and recorded similar data to the others. Those are among the findings of a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which features results from the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted every two years. NPR also used the Youth Risk Behavior survey as a main source, confirming the relevance and accuracy of the data. All of these articles were written in August of 2025 so the content is fresh and relevant from all sources. 

Comments

I really like how you used many sources to back up your claim but I wish you included more links to the specific articles you were viewing or mentioned in your claim. I am intrigued by the studies and the claims you were reading about.

Answer 5

This claim is partially true, and partially false. A Yale Medicine article (https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/teen-suicide, published in April 14, 2023 by Kathy Katella) speaks on the topic of poor mental health in young people. Yale Medicine specialist Kirsten A. Bechtel, MD working in the YNHCH (Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital) reports that “900 of the 40,000 patient visits a year come in for care for anxiety, depression, and other mental health and behavioral problems, and about half of those have suicidal thinking or behavior.” This is an alarming statistic, as it means the hospital receives 1-2 young patients with suicidal ideation daily. 

However, findings from the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results (https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/results/2023-yrbs-results.html#cdc_data_surveillance_section_2-youth-mental-health, published in 2023 with data spanning from 2021-2023) seem to have a more positive conclusion, as the percentage of students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness dropped from 42% to 40% over a two year period. While worrying mental health trends have been seen amongst youth in recent years, there is some evidence that shows that the mental health of youth today is slowly trending in a positive direction.