Answer extracted from The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast — listen to the full episode below.
What major health and mental health crisis is affecting the current generation of teenagers in the United States?
We have the sickest young generation in history: 58% of teenage girls report being persistently sad, 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned suicide, and 13% have attempted it. These figures come from CDC studies and reflect a mental health crisis unprecedented in scope.
The root cause is both clear and troubling. We have unleashed cell phones and social media on this generation without any neuroscience research to understand the long-term consequences—and now AI compounds the problem exponentially.
As discussed in this episode of The Diary Of A CEO, the pace of technological deployment far outstrips our ability to measure its impact on developing brains. Electronic calculators took 30 to 40 years before researchers could fully understand their cognitive effects—yet we're rolling out far more sophisticated technologies to teenagers today with almost no safeguards or longitudinal studies in place.
Technology adoption without neuroscience foundation
The crisis isn't that technology itself is inherently evil; it's that we've abandoned the scientific method in favor of rapid deployment. When cell phones and social media first arrived, no one asked neuroscientists what effect constant dopamine hits from notifications might have on adolescent brain development—particularly in regions responsible for impulse control, self-worth, and emotional regulation.
What we're seeing now is measurable damage. Brain imaging studies show nearly two times less activity in the parts of the brain linked to memory among ChatGPT users compared to non-users. In one MIT study, 83% of ChatGPT users couldn't even remember what they had just written and failed to correctly quote their own finished essay—suggesting that outsourcing thinking to AI literally rewires the neural pathways we use for retention and recall.
The danger deepens when you realize that according to the neuroscientist on this podcast, teenagers are already deferring their thinking entirely to AI. They're not using these tools as assistants—they're using them as replacements for cognition itself. The pattern is visible on social media: people post AI-generated essays daily, receiving more engagement than ever before, which reinforces the behavior and trains their brains to expect external validation rather than internal thought.
"You have to have a relationship with it or it's going to turn toxic. It's going to hurt you. But if you have a good relationship with it, it can make your life better."
Unknown Unknown — Neuroscientist and child psychiatrist; president of the foundation running the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) meeting, which attracted 16,000 attendees in Vancouver. He studies brain development, memory formation, and the neurological impacts of technology on young people, and has uploaded his own research library into an AI clone to maintain active cognitive engagement with the technology.
Why this generation bears the full weight
Teenage girls are hit hardest. The CDC data showing 58% experiencing persistent sadness and one-third contemplating suicide suggests that social media's particular architecture—built around curated image, comparison, and continuous judgment—maps directly onto female adolescent psychology in ways we're only beginning to understand.
The problem compounds: earlier generations had smartphones in adulthood, when prefrontal cortex development was complete. This generation has never known life without them, meaning their entire personality formation and identity development has occurred under constant digital surveillance and algorithmic curation. Their sense of self is not being forged through real struggle, real relationships, and real feedback—it's being shaped by engagement metrics and AI-recommended content designed to maximize addictive engagement.
A detail worth exploring further in the full episode is how sexualized AI companions (like those created by AI companies) are being positioned as solutions to loneliness, which represents an entirely new category of risk that previous generations never faced.
Key takeaways
- 58% of teenage girls report persistent sadness; 32% have contemplated suicide (CDC data)—marking the sickest young generation in recorded history.
- Cell phones and social media were deployed without neuroscience research on long-term brain impacts; we won't have full data for another 20 years.
- Brain imaging shows ChatGPT users have twice less activity in memory-related brain regions, and 83% can't recall their own AI-written essays.
- Teenagers are deferring thinking to AI rather than using it as a tool—a behavioral pattern already visible on social media and rewarded by engagement algorithms.
- This generation's identity formation and personality development have occurred entirely under digital surveillance, unlike previous generations.
See also
What is the relationship between struggling and adversity in developing grit and cognitive resilience in the brain?
You develop grit through struggle. The way that the brain matures is through struggling. You have to learn from your mistakes—a process that cannot be outsourced to AI without cost.
How might sexualized AI characters like those released by Elon Musk's Grok impact vulnerable young people's brain development and social connections?
Imagine a lonely 12-year-old gaining access to an AI companion designed for emotional intimacy. That child will be deeply distracted from real peer relationships at a critical developmental moment.
What concerns exist regarding AI use in early childhood brain development, particularly for children ages 0 to 8?
The best way to teach a child is one-on-one interaction with an adult who is a good teacher and knows the child. AI cannot replicate this critical human connection during the most formative years.