Youth mental health crisis: New reports shed light on what’s driving it and why social media is an ‘amplifier’

The second report – Addressing Youth Mental Distress – builds on this by reviewing what works to improve youth mental health, including tackling systemic issues such as family violence and child poverty.

The reports also considered the influence of social media, finding it was “an amplifier on both negative and positive influences playing a role in mental health”.

“Declining youth mental health has implications for lifelong wellbeing, education and workforce outcomes, and the future prosperity of our country,” Gluckman, the former chief science advisor to the Prime Minister (2009-2018), said.

“Supporting youth mental health is not just a moral necessity – it’s a public health priority.”

The reports are timely. They follow a report in June from the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, which found the system under “immense pressure” as mental wellbeing worsened, including among young people.

The commission is due to release a report next week into the state of our crisis responses.

Meanwhile, youth unemployment is four times higher than the national average, child poverty forecasts show no improvement in coming years, and frontline organisations say it has become much harder to find emergency housing for the young and the homeless.

The Government has set several mental health targets and the latest results show improving access to mental health and addiction services, though this varies region to region.

The Government is also looking into banning social media for under-16s and the House will soon consider National MP Catherine Wedd’s Member’s Bill proposing such a ban, after it was pulled from the ballot last week.

A new report identifies four key issues that impact young people’s mental health, which are ‘amplified’ by social media. Image / Pathways to wellbeing: A youth-led exploration of mental health in Aotearoa New Zealand

What young people say distresses them

The first report attempts to fill the void around a lack of understanding of “which issues matter most to young people” and how they interact.

What sets the research apart is the richness of the data from 19 workshops. Instead of standard interviews, survey questions or focus group sessions, the workshops included group activities to engage and encourage participants.

The report finds four main sources of mental distress:

The world young people live in, including the economy, climate change and a polarised and unequal society; feeling “hopeless about the future and helpless about the possibility of change”.The pressures they experience; feeling “overwhelmed and exhausted” by expectations to succeed academically, support their families financially, or take care of siblings.The connections they need; from friends to family to community and the risks of isolation.Finding their path: navigating identity – stressful, complicated and sometimes feeling contrived – and independence in a complex and uncertain world.

“They’re all interconnected,” lead author and clinical psychologist Dr Jessica Stubbing told the Herald.

“But foundationally, it’s that feeling of: ‘The world we live in is stressing me out. The world we live in is overwhelming.’ That was the key issue that was really coming through strongly.”

That feeling wasn’t just about their local community, Stubbing said.

“A lot of the young people spoke about their immediate community; do I feel like there are jobs in the town that I live in? Do I feel like there are educational opportunities where I’m based?

“And then we had some young people talking about things like climate change, like the flooding [in 2023], but also about events in the Pacific.”

The participants were from Auckland and Northland, but Stubbing suggested some of the themes would apply nationwide.

“In our rural sessions, we talked a lot about access to infrastructure and services, which I suspect will be very true for other rural areas outside of Auckland and Northland.

“We also talked about feeling like there might not be enough resource in some areas and the impact of some of the climate events like the flooding, which I also suspect would have been felt outside of that region too.”

Professor Sir Peter Gluckman is a former chief science advisor to the Prime Minister (2009-2018). Photo / Brett Phibbs

No silver bullet

The second report, Addressing Youth Mental Distress, outlined six areas for action:

Tackling sources of distress such as poverty, discrimination, and family instability.Equipping young people with resilience to help manage uncertainty.Providing opportunities to connect in whānau and schools, and with cultural identity.Improving experiences at school, where achievement pressure and negative environments weigh heavily.Expanding access to mental health support.Addressing the impact of social media as both a risk and an opportunity.

The report highlighted the strong correlation between adverse childhood experiences and depression and anxiety later in life.

“Targeting child poverty and family violence with early intervention approaches will have a significant impact on the mental health of children as they grow into adolescence and beyond.”

Lead author and mental health researcher Dr Madeline Hayward said the systemic issues underpinned some of the issues “at the more acute end”.

“But they’re all important, and honing in on one solution to youth mental health is never going to work.

“A theme across all six areas was the impact that adversity can have in undercutting mental wellbeing. If we want to help young people build resilience, really key to that are positive experiences in early childhood, and bonding with families and high-quality early childhood education.

Dr Jessica Stubbing (left) and Dr Madeline Hayward are the lead authors for two new reports about youth mental health in New Zealand, published by Koi Tū Centre for Informed Futures. Photo / Chris Loufte

“That can all be undercut by socioeconomic adversity. Equally, the extent to which someone might be able to find connection and belonging in school can be undercut, if young people and their families are contending with a host of adverse circumstances.”

A key challenge was the lack of New Zealand data on the effectiveness of interventions, including those modelled on what’s worked well overseas.

“It’s incredibly hard to say for sure that those things are happening in such a way that are making a positive difference,” she said.

“It’s something we need to address, and that would require quite a large rethinking of our infrastructure and culture around evaluation [so] funding decisions can be made on data, rather than being based on assumptions.”

The Government is attempting to address this, in part through a data-based approach to Social Investment 2.0.

“There’s a lot of promise in that approach,” Hayward said, “but a message from this report is that we don’t want to be overemphasising the role of one agency or one service. It needs to be something that’s happening across national government, local government, across communities.”

Effective policies would require significant funding, the report said: wraparound support for vulnerable families, better access to mental health services, adequate mentoring, including at schools.

“But the cost of inadequate action is obvious. No society can cope with 25% or more of its human capital being poorly equipped psychologically for their future.”

Social media is an amplifier, the reports say, which can be a force for both good and bad. Photo / 123rf

The good and the bad of social media

Both reports looked at social media, including how it can be a force for good in terms of young people finding connection.

This was particularly prominent for marginalised groups, such as those in the rainbow or disability communities, but also for those in rural areas with niche interests.

“Classical music is the one that I remember really vividly, this young person speaking about a love of classical music,” Stubbing said.

“In a small rural town, it’s pretty hard to find people in your local area with an interest in classical music, but online there are spaces to find those communities.”

Social media also presented opportunities to feel seen and heard, she said.

“This benefit speaks to this idea of the world we live in, and the helplessness and the hopelessness a lot of young people feel,” she said.

“Social media can create a space where young people feel like they’re contributing, like they’re a part of the world, whether that be participating in a petition or learning about an issue that matters to them.

“In an offline world, a lot of young people are really alienated civically and don’t feel like they have that engagement and that voice.”

Hayward said there was no conclusive evidence that social media, in and of itself, was harmful.

“Some evidence tells us that there may be patterns of usage that are harmful, but as a standalone thing, social media often gets overinflated as the root cause of all evils and all youth mental distress.

“That’s not what the evidence tells us.”

She pointed to the need for young people’s perspectives in any debate about banning social media.

“When we’re talking about risk and benefits, we need to make sure young people’s views are platformed as loudly as those of adults, who also have very valid concerns. But we shouldn’t be considering one without the other.”

Stubbing said the workshops showed a range of opinions about social media, with the majority somewhere in the middle of the good-bad spectrum.

“If we were to take social media away today, the underlying issues that social media is exacerbating aren’t going anywhere,” she said.

“The discrimination young people are experiencing, they’re experiencing offline as well as online. The hate speech they’re exposed to is offline as well as online. The highly sexualised content is offline as well as online.

“There are positives with social media that we don’t get if social media is taken away. And there are negatives with social media that will still be there if it’s gone.”

A monitoring report in June said that population mental health was worsening, particularly among certain groups including young people. Photo / 123rf

Is the crisis worsening?

The release of the reports follows the 2018 He Ara Oranga report into mental health and addiction, which included a survey of 1000 young people.

Those results highlighted a similar plethora of issues including economic insecurity, unaffordable housing, loss of community and concern over body image, the environment and being well-equipped for the future.

The He Ara Oranga recommendations have become a benchmark for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission’s monitoring report, in June this year, which had four key findings:

The percentage of people experiencing high or very high levels of mental distress has considerably increased since 2019/20, and remains higher among Māori, women and young people.The mental health and addiction system is under immense pressure; Māori, Pacific peoples, young people and disabled people are experiencing much higher unmet need, while workforce shortages continue.There are promising signs, such as increased access to services with peer support, and improvements to primary prevention and early intervention.These improvements are not yet enough to drive population-level improvements.

Meanwhile, following a recessionary period and record-high inflation, youth unemployment (15 to 19) hit 23% earlier this year – the highest in more than a decade.

Child poverty is worsening, according to the material hardship measure in the Budget 2025 update, with the forecast showing no statistically significant change for the coming years.

Homelessness is also on the rise, following the tightening of criteria for emergency housing. The Government has celebrated this as getting 2100 kids out of motels and into stable homes, but officials don’t know what happened to 14% of those leaving emergency housing.

Auckland-based service Kick Back, which helps young people access emergency housing, said its work has become dramatically harder after the tighter restrictions came into effect last year.

The Government recently announced it would encourage greater discretion for emergency housing applications and expand the Housing First programme, which supports the homeless into permanent housing.

These challenges came through in the workshops, Stubbing said.

“These indicators are consistent with what’s important to young people’s wellbeing, particularly in that ‘world we live in’ space: economic prospects, the difficulties of housing, of unemployment.

“I suspect that if we’re going to see downstream progress in mental health, we would need to see upstream impacts on things like employment rates improving, particularly in our regions.”

The Government’s targets

Earlier this year, Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey announced a $3.5 million annual funding boost to increase access and expand specialist mental health services for infants, children and adolescents in Tairāwhiti, Counties Manukau and Waitematā.

He has five targets for mental health services:

80% of people accessing specialist Mental Health and Addiction (MH&A) services within three weeks of referral 80% of people accessing primary MH&A services through the Access and Choice programme within one week 95% of mental health-related emergency department attendances admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours500 more mental health and addiction workers trained yearly by 203025% of mental health and addiction ringfenced investment allocated to prevention and early intervention by 2030

The latest data, for the April-June quarter this year, showed that the MH&A access targets are being met nationally, but with variations from region to region.

Shorter emergency department stays was another improving stat, but the regional variation was much more pronounced, from South Canterbury at 96.3% to Capital and Coast at 37.2%.

Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Government is also hoping its Social Investment Fund, which has $190m over four years, will make a dent in intergenerational cycles of social disadvantage.

Priority groups for the first round of the fund are:

Children with parents who are or have recently been in jailChildren of parents who experienced the care systemChildren who have been stood down or suspended from school before age 13

Where to get help:

•Lifeline: Call 0800 543 354 or text 4357 (HELP) (available 24/7)

•Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)

• Youth services: (06) 3555 906

•Youthline: Call 0800 376 633 or text 234

•What’s Up: Call 0800 942 8787 (11am to 11pm) or webchat (11am to 10.30pm)

•Depression helpline: Call 0800 111 757 or text 4202 (available 24/7)• Helpline: Need to talk? Call or text 1737

•Aoake te Rā (Bereaved by Suicide Service): Call 0800 000053 or referrals@aoake-te-ra.org.nz

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.