As students begin a new school year, there continue to be critical gaps between how parents think their teens are doing and how kids themselves report they are actually doing. As a research team that includes several parents of teens navigating these issues ourselves, we wanted to highlight three areas where parents should pay close attention:
1. Kids are struggling with their mental health more than parents realize.
Mental health, especially among today’s teens, is a continuing and serious challenge that demands our attention. Twenty percent of high school students reported having seriously considered suicide in the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
The Understanding America Study (UAS)
The UAS is an online survey panel of over 14,000 American households recruited across the entire United States using probability-based sampling methods. UAS respondents answer survey questions once or twice a month via an online interface. UAS survey results are weighted to be nationally representative and can be interpreted as population estimates.
See the UAS documentation files for more technical details.
But rates of concern among parents don’t align to the observed prevalence of teens’ struggles. In our most recent nationally representative Understanding America Study survey, 30% of teens reported they struggled “often” or “almost always” with their mental health this past year, while only 18% of parents reported being “concerned” or “very concerned” about their child’s mental health.
And while 27% of teens reported that mental health issues caused them to miss an average of eight days of school, only 18% of parents reported that their teen missed school this past year for mental health reasons (missing an average of five days).
Parents can close this gap by checking in with their kids, communicating about mental health and letting your child know it’s OK to have struggles and to seek help. Familiarize yourself with your schools’ counseling and other mental health supports, and encourage your children to seek those services — with or without your involvement. One particularly tangible thing you can do is encourage your child’s participation in school extracurricular activities, whether it be arts, sports or chess club, since a wealth of research demonstrates the protective nature of school connections, social relationships and school engagement on student mental health and well-being.
2. Students are missing more school than parents think. Absences, even legitimate ones, add up.
Decades of research show that students who miss more school have lower achievement, higher dropout rates, and poorer mental health. Attending school enhances belonging and leads to better academic achievement.
But parents not only underestimate how much school their teens are missing, they also tend not to be particularly concerned about their children’s attendance.
Over 80% of parents reported they don’t think their child misses too much school, despite 1 in 4 students nationwide being “chronically absent” (a statistic that does not include the many students with a high number of absences that don’t cross the threshold into the “chronic” category). Even among parents of chronically absent students, 32% did not think their child misses too much school. And while parents said they are comfortable with an average of nine absences per school per year, teens reported missing an average of 13 days.
In conversations with parents and teens, we often hear that parents don’t worry about absences when the child is earning good grades or because the work missed is universally available online in a student portal. But research has shown that grades are not the best signal of how a student is doing, and have become less reliable as a signal since the pandemic. In addition, staying home can deprive a student of the social and mental health benefits of in-person attendance even if schoolwork is available online.
We also hear from parents that school just isn’t engaging or relevant, contributing to absenteeism. As we urge parents to impress upon students the importance of attending, we urge schools to consider our findings that both teens and parents point to improvements in school culture, relationships, safety and rigor/relevance of instruction as the most promising changes schools can make to improve student attendance.
3. Your kids are using artificial intelligence more than you think.
Our polling has shown that about two-thirds of teens use artificial intelligence for schoolwork, and the level of use is growing. Yet, only one-third of parents report that their teens ever use AI. In order to have meaningful conversations with children and teens about AI use, parents must first understand what it is and how it works.
If you are unfamiliar with AI — and research has shown that most adults are — there are helpful and free podcasts, YouTube videos and tutorials. If you haven’t yet, go to ChatGPT.com and ask for a poem about your favorite ice cream flavor, for example. Ask Claude.com to design a birthday invitation. Upload your child’s homework and watch what it produces. Once you understand its look and feel, learn its limitations (see this primer about AI’s dangers, including bias, misinformation, lack of transparency and more).
In order to have meaningful conversations with children and teens about AI use, parents must first understand what it is and how it works.
Parents should also have meaningful discussions with their children about their AI use, perhaps even establish a set of family guidelines. This shouldn’t be a black-and-white conversation — it might not be OK for your child to use AI to write a book report, but maybe it’s OK (beneficial, even?) to have AI show different approaches to answering a math question or to explain a concept from class that your child did not understand.
Our work has shown that most schools have not yet established clear AI guidelines, and even if they have, most students report not knowing what they are. Parents should push their schools to develop and broadly communicate sensible AI use policies. It takes time for school systems to identify, implement and cultivate norms around new technology — especially when they are still evolving. Don’t leave it entirely to your schools and teachers to figure out the best use of this critical emerging technology. Rather, partner with schools to help prepare students for an AI future while simultaneously protecting them from its numerous potential dangers.
As the new school year begins, ask questions, stay curious, and stay engaged. The better we understand what our children are experiencing, the better positioned we are to support their academic, social and emotional well-being.
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Amie Rapaport is the drector of UASTeen, the teen compliment to the Understanding America Study survey panel housed at the University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research. She is also co-director of the Center for Applied Research in Education.
Daniel Silver is a research scientist at the University of Southern California Center for Applied Research in Education. He works extensively with Understanding America.
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This story was originally published by EdSource.