M enrolled in kindergarten as one of the younger class members.Īt 10, M got a smartphone. When M was 4, a psychologist the family consulted to assess M’s school readiness concluded that their “intellectual ability is in the very superior range,” according to the report. “I think we’re similar in that she’s, like, quiet and smart and plays electric bass, and I really like bass and guitars,” M said. By turns shy and outspoken, M has thought extensively about pronouns and currently prefers “they.” At the beginning of seventh grade, M also asked to be called by the name of a popular Japanese anime character, whose first name starts with M. M, now 14, is tall, with red hair and blue eyes, and has a younger sister and older half brother. “This is a typical outpatient,” said Emily Pluhar, a child and adolescent psychologist at Harvard University, describing M as “an internalizer.” “I just want to tell people what can happen.” ‘A typical outpatient’ “You have no control over what they’re thinking,” Linda said. Linda talked with parents of other struggling teenagers not long before the night M fled into the forest, Linda was jolted by the news that a local girl had died by suicide. But the rising rates of emergency-room visits for suicide and self-harm leave little doubt that the physical nature of the threat has changed significantly.Īs M descended, Linda and her husband realized they were part of an unenviable club: bewildered parents of an adolescent in profound distress. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before - or are they being overdiagnosed now? Historical comparisons are difficult, as some data around certain issues, like teen anxiety and depression, began to be collected relatively recently. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide. Federal research shows that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends - all crucial for healthy development - at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time. Read about how Matt Richtel reported this series. “Because it’s life or death for these kids.” Now, she followed M into the woods, frantic. In the preceding two years, Linda had watched M spiral downward: severe depression, self-harm, a suicide attempt. Others were close-ups of M’s romantic obsession, the anime character Genocide Jack - a brunette girl with a long red tongue who, in a video series, kills high school classmates with scissors. Some showed blood on M’s ankles from intentional self-harm. Linda was alarmed by photos she had seen on the phone. (The adolescent is being identified by an initial, M, and the parents by first name only, to protect the family’s privacy.) The teenager, incensed by the intrusion, had grabbed the phone and fled. Moments earlier, the girl’s mother, Linda, had stolen a look at her daughter’s smartphone.
One evening last April, an anxious and free-spirited 13-year-old girl in suburban Minneapolis sprang furious from a chair in the living room and ran from the house - out a sliding door, across the patio, through the backyard and into the woods.