We are failing our young men, argues podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. That’s the one commonality in the vast majority of mass shootings. It’s not race or ideology. They’re young males. We are doing absolutely everything wrong when it comes to promoting healthy masculinity, purpose, & goodness for these boys and men. If we really cared, we would be doing EVERYTHING we can to promote fatherhood, hard work, & honor. We’d be getting these boys off the internet and into hobbies and j

Half of female-to-male transgender teens have attempted suicide, according to a study published in Pediatrics. Suicide attempts also are much higher for adolescents who don’t identify exclusively as male or female (42 percent), trans female teens (30 percent) and those questioning their gender identity (28 percent.) Skylar Marcus Lee, a transmale 16-year-old in Madison, Wisconsin, died by suicide in 2015 after struggling with depression. Of cisgender teens, 18 percent of fema

Here’s more on the fragility theme: A quarter of college students were diagnosed with mental health conditions within the past year,” concludes a study published in Depression Anxiety. One in five students reported suicidal thoughts; nine percent had attempted suicide. Researchers surveyed 67,300 students at 108 colleges in the U.S. during the spring semester of 2015. The study found transgender and bisexual students in particular were more vulnerable to suffering from mental

Lilia Martinez, 15, a student in Michigan “estimates that of the 28 books she read over the last school year, both for pleasure and schoolwork, as many as 20 of them had themes of school violence,” write Walsh. In addition to books, “movies, TV shows, and other popular entertainment” have featured school shootings, writes Walsh. Here’s Ed Week‘s gallery movies, TV and fiction with school violence themes. Teachers believe the genre motivates teens to read. “The biggest way to

Thousands of Bay Area teenagers have attended four-day camps that claim to teach empathy and leadership by screaming insults and enacting bigotry, reports Karen de Sa in the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s Camp Diversity, which follows what’s known as the “Anytown” model: In a campground hall deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, 55 teenagers have been ordered to separate by race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. By groups, the children of Silicon Valley engineers and attorneys,

NBC News reports on integrating gay, lesbian and transgender issues into classrooms in Colorado. Seven states have “no promo homo” laws that forbid positive portrayal of homosexuality in public schools. Brett Bigham, Oregon’s Teacher of the Year in 2014, was fired for revealing he was gay, but won his job back. Teachers can make a difference for kids who are struggling with their sexuality, he writes on Education Post in Maybe My Friend Mark Wouldn’t Have Committed Suicide If

The number of teens “hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide doubled in less than a decade,” according to a recent study. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are way up for teenagers. Suicide rates are rising for all age groups, reports the Centers for Disease Control. The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have put suicide in the spotlight. What’s going on? For unhappy teens thinking about death as a solution, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why could be glamorizing s

Students and parents disrespect teachers, complained Julie Marburger in a Facebook post that went viral. She teaches sixth grade in a suburb of Dallas. Administration always seems to err on the side of keeping the parent happy, which leaves me with no way to do the job I was hired to do … teach kids. . . . People absolutely HAVE to stop coddling and enabling their children. It’s a problem that’s going to spread through our society like wildfire. It’s not fair to society, and

Don’t blame technology for teen suicides, writes Mike Males in the Washington Monthly. Rates are much higher for rural and small-town whites — teens and adults — than for urban dwellers. Smartphones and social media addiction have “destroyed a generation,” argues Jean Twenge, a San Diego State psychology professor, in the Atlantic. She cites several surveys indicating teens who use more social media also report being more depressed; depression among teens is rising, as is sui

Twenty-seven percent of 12- to 17-year-olds in California identify as “nongender conforming,” according to a new UCLA survey. Take a breath. That doesn’t mean they’re transgender or gay. Most are heterosexual kids who don’t conform to gender stereotypes. Here’s the question: A person’s appearance, style, dress, or the way they walk or talk may affect how people describe them. How do you think other people at school would describe you?Very feminineMostly feminineEqually femini

At a Bronx school where a bullied student killed a classmate, a bullied sixth grader tried to hang himself with his sweater, reports Elizabeth A. Harris in the New York Times. Classmates yanked his long hair and tried to drag him around by his ponytail. They tripped him in the halls and stole from his backpack. They called him names and told a new girl he was gay, which he denies, so she would not befriend him. The 12-year-old boy and his grandmother, who is raising him, comp

Severe anxiety afflicts more U.S. teens than ever, writes Benoit Denizet-Lewis in the New York Times Magazine. What’s going on? Over the last decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services. In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year. Su

The “super-connected,” smartphone-addicted teens of “iGen” are lonely and unhappy, writes Jean M. Twenge in The Atlantic. “Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011,” tracking the spread of smartphones and social media. The kids are not alright. Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State, has studied generational differences for 25 years, she writes. Around 2012, she noticed stark changes between Millennials and what she calls iGen. Today’s te

In 13 Reasons Why, a Netflix series based on Jay Asher’s popular book,a 17-year-old girl sends tapes to all the people she blames for her pain, then kills herself. There are plenty of reasons to discourage teens from watching this “suicide revenge fantasy,” writes Brooke Fox, a psychotherapist and mother of teenage girls. It “glamorizes suicide.” Hannah received everything in death that she was hoping for: sympathy, deep regret, guilt, and ultimately — love.  However, what th