Candice Odgers

Importantly, we listen to them about what upsets them and what they need to be well.

It has been a really incredible and at times wild ride.

It's also been an illuminating one.

Because one of the most consistent things we have found is that the stories that you and I are told repeatedly every day about teenagers today, that they are lost, that they are worse off than ever, that somehow smartphones and social media have destroyed them and their brains, it doesn't match the data.

And it doesn't match what they tell us.

There is a massive gap.

And as I've tried to make sense of this gap, I keep coming back to a simple truth that we all know.

Scary stories sell.

They always have.

And the more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true.

I'm going to say it again.

The more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true.

Right?

And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents.

We are an anxious lot.

The hypervigilance, it hits us.

When we hold that tiny baby in our arms, our entire world changes.

It hits again when they hit puberty, and they begin to change in these dramatic and rapid ways, when our sense of control over them and what comes next begins to feel less certain.

I get this.

My 15-year-old is six foot four.