How Are Teens And Parents Doing? A New Poll Sheds Light On The State Of American Teenagers

In the last month, multiple major outlets have published articles that paint a troubling picture of American teenagers.

The New York Times: “‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens”

The Atlantic: “Why Teens are So Sad”

Psychology Today: “Post Pandemic: Why the Kids May Not Be OK”

In March of this year, and in partnership with the data intelligence company Morning Consult, we at EdChoice polled nationally representative samples of American teens and high school parents. We asked them a battery of questions about their attitudes, beliefs, and schooling experiences. The full results are here, but there were several findings that stood out to me. (My colleague Colyn Ritter has a writeup of his reactions as well.)

Let’s start with the good news.

Parents and teens believe their relationships with their children have grown stronger over the pandemic. When asked if their relationship with their child has become stronger, weaker, or stayed the same over the course of the pandemic, 60 percent of parents said that it had become stronger and only seven percent said that it had become weaker. When you subtract the percentage of parents saying that it has gotten worse from those saying that it has gotten better, that makes a “net better” score of +53 points. When teens were asked the same, they were also positive, with more teens (+27 points) saying that their relationships with their family had gotten better than had gotten worse.

Teens are feeling better. This is the fourth iteration of our teen poll, with previous administrations in August of 2020 and March and September of 2021. When asked whether things like stress, anxiety, personal mental health, motivation, and happiness have gotten better or worse during the pandemic, more teens have said that they are feeling better and fewer teens are saying that they are feeling worse. The “net better” has improved by +30 points for stress, +20 points for anxiety, and +23 points for personal mental health. Now, it should be noted, that some of these indicators are still underwater, with more teens saying that stress has gotten worse than has gotten better, but the trend is in a positive direction.

Interestingly, when broken down by race, both black teens and black parents were much more likely than Hispanic or white teens or parents to say that things have gotten better. While Hispanic and white teens had “net better” scores of -3 and -2 (meaning more students said things were getting worse than getting better), black teens scored a +17. It was more striking with parents. While Hispanic and white parents both had “net better” scores of -3, black parents had a net better score of +31!

Teens and parents think that schools are welcoming places for children from different backgrounds. Both teens and parents were asked how much they agreed to a series of statements about diversity in their schools. They were asked whether their school “treats all students equally regardless of their race or background,” “encourages all students to take challenging classes regardless of race or background,” and “emphasizes showing respect for all students’ cultural beliefs and practices.” For all of the questions we asked more than 70 percent of teens and 70 percent of parents either strongly or somewhat agreed with them. For example, 82 percent of high school parents and 73 percent of teens agreed that their school treats all students equally regardless of their race or background.

And now, for some numbers that might be a bit more troubling.

Parents are optimistic about their children’s future. Teens are more ambivalent. We gave both teens and parents a set of word pairs for comparison to describe how they feel about their children’s future or their own future. They had the option to, for example, say whether they agreed more with the term “happy” or “unhappy.” They also chose between “optimistic” and “pessimistic” and “hopeful” and “fearful.” Across all three of these, parents were more likely to pick the positive description. Seventy percent of parents said that they were optimistic about their child’s future while only 45 percent of teens said that they were optimistic about theirs. The same pattern held for hope, with 79 percent of parents hopeful for their child’s future and only 61 percent of teens hopeful for theirs. Happiness was the same, with 68 percent of parents saying that their child was happy while only 53 percent of teens saying that they were happy.

Teens are more aware of teachers sharing opinions than their parents are. Given all of the debate and discussion right now about how various hot button topics are treated in the classroom, we asked both teens and parents if their teachers had ever shared their personal opinions with their students. In every case, teens were more likely to say that their teacher had given their personal opinions than parents were. For example, 58 percent of teens said that their teacher had shared their opinions on masking, while only 38 percent of parents thought their child’s teacher had. Thirty-eight percent of teens said that they had a teacher share political opinions in class, while only 23 percent of parents thought that their teen’s teacher had. The percentages of teens saying that their teachers had shared opinions on LGBTQ issues (36 percent), religions (32 percent), and race (30 percent), were all higher than their parents’ perceptions (which were 16 percent, 18 percent, and 19 percent, respectively).

While it is great to see family relationships getting stronger and teens feeling better, the disjuncture between teen and parent opinions are certainly concerning. One would hope that teens would be more optimistic than their parents, the folly of youth and all, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. It is also worrying that parents don’t know the extent to which teachers are sharing personal opinions in the classroom. Whether or not you agree that teachers should share their opinions, parents being blindsided by it is suboptimal.

All in all, it was incredibly enlightening to hear from both of these groups. There are many assumptions made about teens, and it is always great to hear what they think straight from the source.