Suicide rates among young girls have climbed faster than among boys over the past decade and a half, according to a new study published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics.
The report, released in the American Medical Association-published medical journal, found that between 2007 and 2021, suicide became the second leading cause of death for children aged 10 to 14 in the United States. Historically, males have died by suicide at higher rates across all age groups, but from 2007 to 2017, the rate for girls aged 10 to 19 surged far more dramatically than the rate for males.
Dr. Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” served as the report’s author. She told The Post that the timeline points toward a clear culprit.
“From roughly 2010 to 2019, I think it’s pretty clear that social media and smartphones were behind a lot of that increase in suicides, especially for girls,” Twenge said.
Twenge, who testified as an expert witness for the prosecution in August’s landmark federal trial against Meta, noted that the gender disparity in harm is well-documented. “Social media use is more strongly linked to depression and other mental health issues among girls than it is among boys,” she said.
The pandemic years widened this gap further. “And this age group really saw an increase in social media use post-2020,” Twenge added. Teens began spending “a lot more time online and a lot less time with friends in person, and a lot less time sleeping,” she said.
While peer pressure and bullying have always affected young people, Twenge argues that social media transformed these dynamics by quantifying social standing. “Popularity has become a number,” she said. “It used to be, ‘This girl or that girl is more popular,’ but now, it’s ‘How many followers do you have? How many likes did you get on this post?'”
For girls specifically, “those likes are often based on sexualized appearance, which is a lot of pressure, especially for girls in that 10 to 14 age group,” Twenge said. As social approval became tied to “how much skin you show,” she blames apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat for creating a “perfect storm.”
Meta’s own internal research has acknowledged that girls experience what Twenge described as a “grief spiral” from constant exposure to influencers with “perfect” bodies, making them feel bad about themselves.
The report also examined why boys’ rates moved in the opposite direction after 2020. Since the COVID pandemic began, suicide rates among boys aged 10 to 14, which had been rising previously, actually decreased, while girls’ rates in the same bracket kept climbing. Twenge attributes the male decline to the easing of pandemic restrictions, increased public attention on male suicide, and more effective prevention programs targeting boys.
Twenge pointed to fundamental differences in how social comparison operates by gender. Male comparisons tend to be “agentic,” she explained, centered on achievable actions like working out, getting a job, or making money. For girls, comparisons focus primarily on physical appearance, which is far less changeable.
The exposure of ever-younger children to these platforms compounds the damage, with girls as young as 10 now encountering toxic social dynamics at earlier developmental stages.
Twenge called for stricter enforcement of existing age limits to keep children 12 and under off social media entirely. “The existing age restriction of 13 was not settled on for any developmental reason. It was a compromise made with the tech companies in 1998, and it hasn’t been updated since,” she said.
She suggested the United States could follow Australia’s model by requiring users to be 16 or older to hold social media accounts, or implement stricter age verification controls similar to what Meta agreed to in a recent legal court settlement. Twenge also proposed automatically blocking platform access for minors between midnight and 6 a.m. To combat sleep deprivation, which she identified as a primary risk factor for depression, self-harm, and suicide.
The findings arrive alongside another recent peer-reviewed article published last week in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, which found that children’s suicide-related emergency visits in the US spiked by 74% between 2016 and 2022.
Representatives for Snapchat, TikTok, and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, did not respond to requests for comment.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
