Fewer high school students reported suicidal thoughts in 2025 than at any point in the last decade, according to CDC survey data — and neither the public health establishment nor the press can tell you why.
The CDC's National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, tracking adolescent health for 35 years, found that suicidal ideation among high schoolers fell to 14 percent in 2025 — a ten-year low — down from a peak of 21 percent in 2021. Five key mental health indicators improved over the last two years: persistent sadness, poor mental health, seriously considering suicide, making a suicide plan, and attempting suicide. Persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness dropped to 33 percent, the lowest since 2015, down from 42 percent at the 2021 peak.
The International Business Times reported the numbers straight. The CDC's explanation was less clear. Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the agency's deputy director and chief medical officer, credited the improvement to "schools, families, and communities working together to support young people." That is the kind of sentence that sounds responsive and explains nothing.
What the CDC's own data shows is that social media use among high schoolers barely budged. Thirty-six percent reported using social media every hour in 2025, down from 37 percent in 2023 — essentially flat. Sleep was flat too: only 24 percent got eight hours on a school night, unchanged from 2023. So the easy narratives don't hold. If kids aren't logging off in meaningful numbers, and sleep hasn't improved, what drove the reversal?
The CDC report acknowledged that "digital behaviors can influence many aspects of health, including sleep, physical activity, nutrition, safety, and mental well-being" — but stopped there. No analysis of what actually changed between 2021 and 2025 to produce the sharpest improvement in a decade.
USA Today didn't cover the CDC data at all. Instead, the paper ran a feature on an "October canon event" TikTok trend — where users post about stressful October experiences — quoting grief therapist and author Gina Moffa about the "loneliness epidemic" and the need for human connection. Moffa's book, "Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss," got a mention in the piece. She encouraged readers to "bring the real version of the story to a trusted friend, a family member or a therapist."
The contrast tells you something about press priorities. One outlet reported hard federal data showing a real decline in youth despair. The other promoted a social media trend about mental health struggles and steered readers toward the therapy industry — the same industry that expanded massively over the last decade while youth mental health worsened. USA Today framed adolescent mental health as a matter of individual coping and professional intervention. The CDC data, which suggests something structural shifted, got no attention.
Not all the CDC findings were rosy. Ninth graders were more likely than 12th graders to make a suicide plan or attempt suicide — a detail that deserves more scrutiny than a TikTok trend. Forty-six percent of high schoolers reported texting or emailing while driving in the last month.
Something improved between 2021 and 2025. The institutions claiming credit can't or won't say what. The press that should be pressing the question is busy selling therapy books and celebrating social media trends. The data is sitting right there. Nobody wants to dig into it — maybe because the answers might implicate the platforms that fund their ad slots.
