Everyone Else Is Doing It

The Teen Habit Crisis – Why ‘Normal’ Isn’t Safe

By Samantha Shrock

We associate teenage risk with the obvious culprits: weed, booze, porn.

Getting high? Getting drunk? Hooking up?

Everyone else is doing it.

We monitor the extremes. The vices that community condemns.

But desensitization doesn’t stop there.

Doom scrolling for hours. Energy drinks for breakfast. AI for advice.

Somewhere along the way, we mistook “common” for “safe.”

Because everyone else is doing it.

Teen mental illness has skyrocketed over the past decade. Persistent hopelessness and suicidality in U.S. high school students have surged at alarming rates. The prevalence of depression climbed from 28% in 2011 to 42% in 2021,¹ and the pandemic introduced a staggering 50% increase in suicide attempts among adolescent girls.²

Currently, teens are averaging eight hours of daily screen time outside of schoolwork.³ 60% report chronic sleep deprivation.⁴ Meanwhile, caloric intake is deteriorating in quality. The diet of an average American teen is ultra-processed.⁵

These are not fringe behaviors—they are mainstream. Normalized. Collectively, they form a model of upbringing that is historically unprecedented.

This is not a crisis of weak teenagers. This is a pattern of culturally integrated habit that is reshaping life trajectory in real time.

In many ways, social media has replaced a social life. As of 2022, 95% of U.S. teens report using a social media platform, and nearly half say they are online “almost constantly.”⁶ The concern is not only time, but condition: sleep deprivation, constant comparison, cyberbullying, and an algorithm that amplifies the echo chamber of a curated feed. Ongoing analyses have linked excessive social media use to depression—especially among teen girls.⁷ Association alone does not pinpoint a culprit, but the escalation is undeniable: adolescence now lives in a vacuum where social optics are quantifiable, continuous, and public. We did not vote on this technological experiment. We simply inhabited it.

Because everyone else is using it.

Screen time plays a critical role in the mental health space, but nutrition is rarely credited for its contribution.

Roughly 67% of the calories consumed by U.S. youth are ultra-processed.⁹ These foods are engineered for palatability and convenience—high in refined carbohydrates, industrial seed oils, additives, sodium—and low in fiber and micronutrient density. While no single ingredient or statistic quantifies mental illness, ongoing research points to a consistent relationship between ultra-processed food and depression in adolescents.¹⁰ ¹¹

The science is sound. Diet drives blood sugar stability, inflammation levels, and gut microbiome—all of which vitalize the neural pathways responsible for mood regulation.¹² ¹³ Meanwhile, schools prioritize shelf life over nutrition to preserve cost effectiveness and infrastructure. When dual-income families face time constraints and low-income families face budget constraints, convenience and affordability become priorities.

Not fringe behavior. Not reckless neglect. Just normalized patterns.

Because everyone else is eating it.

If the teenage world has hopped into a screen, parenting has followed.

In 2014, researchers coined the term “technoference”—the reality of devices compromising lines of communication between parents and children.¹⁴ 85% of U.S. adults rely on a smartphone.¹⁵ Surveys indicate that many parents report feeling preoccupied with their devices during family time.¹⁶

Attachment research affirms that relational presence with consistency and attunement combats the effects of stress.¹⁷ Though teens require minimal physical caregiving compared to toddlers, they require the same level of relational stability to thrive. Yet, despite the necessity of intentional presence, the modern home normalizes parallel scrolling: teens in their rooms, parents on their phones. Passive cohabitation.

This is not a story of negligent parents, but of cultural drift. Work migrated to the living room. Connection hopped into the screen. Notifications dissolved boundaries between presence and absence.

Because everyone else is on their phone.

Social media can be corrosive, but it can also cultivate connection.

Processed foods provide affordability and access.

Technology permits flexible, connective work.

In isolation, these variables are negotiable.

For teens, they are bleeding together.

Thirty years ago, the internet did not exist. Today, teenage brains are developing in a digital pressure cooker. A comparison engine that never powers off. They sleep fewer hours than prior generations,⁴ consume copious amounts of ultra-processed food,⁹ and share attention with whatever digital content engrosses their parents around the clock.¹⁴

Simultaneously, prolonged sadness and hopelessness have soared,¹ school absenteeism has surged,¹⁸ and pediatric mental health services are waitlisted across the nation.¹⁹

Correlation is not causation. But convergence is the key.

As developmental structure shifts, cumulative impact becomes harder to ignore.

Blame is easy, but culture is not easily reprogrammed. Habit reversal feels unattainable—but habits are not fate.

If groupthink has become our baseline, we need a new consensus. A stronger conviction. Not perfection, but realistic margin.

Margin for sleep, boredom, nutrition, and real-life presence.

We struggle to tolerate this healthy friction. It feels unnatural because it clashes with our culture. We qualify time with productivity and efficiency. Regulating that intensity feels counterintuitive. Inconvenient. Even if our systems crave regulation, pausing registers as regression. When we postpone a response or task, we feel like we are falling behind.

Habits are not sustained through intensity, but through consistency. We do not need drastic revamps or moral spirals—just small actions to incorporate presence into routine.

Move the charger out of the bedroom.

Protect one device-free hour in the evening.

Reclaim one shared meal without parallel scrolling.

Turn off the cruise control of digital consumption when possible.

We retain the choice to reject habits that actively threaten the health and future of our youth.

Teens deserve better than regressing standards.

This is the experiment we never meant to conduct. But it is an experiment that we can reclaim. What has been desensitized can be resensitized. Resisting the flow will be clumsy and imperfect because it defies instinct—but persistence will pay off. Inconvenience now could transform into discipline and success later. Teenagers become adults who carry patterns and practices into their own lives.

What habits are you tolerating? What habits are you modeling?

Everyone else may be doing it…

But the cycle of complacency can end with you.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011–2021. CDC; 2023.
Yard E, Radhakrishnan L, Ballesteros MF, et al. Emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts among persons aged 12–25 years before and during the COVID-19 pandemic—United States, January 2019–May 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021;70(24):888–894.
Rideout V, Robb MB. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021. Common Sense Media; 2021.
Wheaton AG, Jones SE, Cooper AC, Croft JB. Short sleep duration among middle school and high school students—United States, 2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2018;67(3):85–90.
Wang L, Martínez Steele E, Du M, et al. Trends in consumption of ultra-processed foods among US youths aged 2–19 years, 1999–2018. JAMA. 2021;326(6):519–530.
Pew Research Center. Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022. Pew; 2022.
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Wang L, Martínez Steele E, Du M, et al. Trends in consumption of ultra-processed foods among US youths aged 2–19 years, 1999–2018. JAMA. 2021;326(6):519–530.
Rauber F, Chang K, Vamos EP, et al. Ultra-processed food consumption and risk of depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutr Neurosci. 2022.
Adjibade M, Assmann KE, Andreeva VA, et al. Prospective association between ultra-processed food consumption and incident depressive symptoms. BMC Med. 2019;17:78.
Marx W, Moseley G, Berk M, Jacka F. Nutritional psychiatry: The present state of the evidence. Proc Nutr Soc. 2017;76(4):427–436.
Cryan JF, O’Riordan KJ, Sandhu K, et al. The gut microbiome in neurological disorders. Lancet Neurol. 2020;19(2):179–194.
McDaniel BT, Radesky JS. Technoference: Parent distraction with technology and associations with child behavior problems. Child Dev. 2018;89(1):100–109.
Pew Research Center. Mobile Fact Sheet. Pew; 2023.
Radesky JS, Kistin C, Eisenberg S, et al. Parent perspectives on their mobile technology use: The excitement and exhaustion of constant connectivity. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2016;37(9):694–701.
Siegel DJ, Bryson TP. The Power of Showing Up. Random House; 2020.
U.S. Department of Education. Chronic Absenteeism in the Nation’s Schools. 2022.
American Academy of Pediatrics. Pediatric mental health emergency declaration. 2021.