The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an appeal from a group of Montgomery County parents challenging a school system policy that does not let them opt their lower elementary school children out of classes that use LGBTQ+ books.

LGBTQ youth advocacy organizations are reporting sharp increases in calls to suicide prevention hotlines, with the overwhelming majority of callers saying the election is the source of their fears. In addition to teens and children, the groups say that in recent days they have also been contacted by unprecedented numbers of families and teachers.

Starting Nov. 3, the number of crisis-service calls, texts and online chats received by The Trevor Project increased 125% over the week before, with an additional spike “beginning Nov. 5 approximately around midnight ET,” an organization spokesperson told ����Ӱ��. Trevor also reported a 200% rise in the number of callers who specifically mentioned the election. 

After former President Donald Trump’s re-election, Trevor posted an advisory note at the top of : “TrevorText and TrevorChat are currently experiencing long hold times due to the election. If you need immediate assistance, please call the TrevorLifeline at 1-866-488-7386.”

The organization has a number of online resources for youth, caregivers and educators, including guidance on , a and . 

“The Trevor Project wants LGBTQ+ young people to know that we are here for you, no matter the outcome of any election, and we will continue to fight for every LGBTQ+ young person to have access to safe, affirming spaces — especially during challenging times,” CEO Jaymes Black said in a statement to ����Ӱ��. “LGBTQ+ young people: Your life matters, and you were born to live it.”

The , which typically receives 3,700 calls a month, logged 2,146 between Nov. 3 and 6 alone. Young people generally make up the vast majority of contacts, but the rate of calls from parents, grandparents and teachers concerned about someone in their family or class jumped from less than 7% of all contacts to 28% during those three days. 

“Most of the time, we take calls from kids in crisis who don’t have supportive families, who are afraid of being evicted or afraid of being outed,” says Lance Preston, the organization’s executive director. “Parents are now calling us about, ‘What am I going to do? What if this turns into a situation like Texas, where if I support my child, I’m going to be investigated by CPS?’ Teachers reaching out and saying, ‘What if I am a supportive ally and my school decides that I [shouldn’t have a] license anymore? Is this election going to create a situation where I could lose my job?’ ” 

The weekend before the election, Rainbow’s hotline took a call from an Alabama 16-year-old who reported he was part of a four-teen suicide pact, Preston says. His colleagues were able to intervene to stop the plan.  

“They had decided that if Trump won the election, that they were going to kill themselves because that meant that the United States people did not want them here and did not want their existence to be accepted,” he says. 

“I’m so thankful that that young person reached out to report that, because we were able to get to the other kids, get their parents involved and do some mitigation and get them some help. But that would have been four kids that we would have lost. That is unacceptable.”

Last winter, the number of calls to Rainbow Youth from young Oklahomans more than tripled after transgender teen Nex Benedict died by suicide following months of in-school bullying. The suicide occurred in February, after a fight in a girls’ restroom that Nex had been forced to use under a new state law.

Nine in 10 callers reported bullying in their school, Preston said at the time. Since the start of this calendar year, the organization has heard reports of nine LGBTQ teen and nine adult suicides in the state. It now operates a crisis support center in Oklahoma City. 

The Southern Equality Project, which to families in the 25 states that have banned LGBTQ youth health care, also reports a “slight uptick” in requests from families of trans youth: “Many of the requests specifically mentioned fears about Trump, a national ban or needing to leave the country for care,” says Communications Director Adam Polaski. 

Because young people have no experience advocating for and securing LGBTQ rights, Preston says, they are particularly vulnerable to political rhetoric. “They didn’t fight for these rights,” he says. “They were born with them, and now they are seeing them taken away.”

He and other advocates say they expect the volume of calls to stay high through at least February, as a second Trump administration presumably begins acting on campaign promises to end gender-affirming care and curtail in-school LGBTQ protections throughout the country. 

“The best thing for us to do is to accept where we are, but also to send a positive message to these young people that we may be heartbroken, but we’re not broken,” he says. “We need to be putting that positive message out there that we need them to stay with us. They have an army of allies behind them, and we’re going to get through this.”

However, more than 80% of LGBTQ students feel , and nearly 58% have experienced discrimination. These numbers show that many LGBTQ students are not safe at the two places they spend most of their time. This lack of safety has a significant impact on students’ mental health, school performance, relationships and future plans. LGBTQ students are not getting the support they need, and it is resulting in systematic harm.

Teachers are in a perfect position to be the accepting adult LGBTQ students need and to advocate for them in their schools. Students spend thousands of hours in school over the course of their K-12 careers. In that time, they form trusting relationships with teachers, especially those who serve as coaches, club advisers and activity leaders. School is where many explore the names, pronouns and identities that feel right to them. How teachers react to this exploration directly impacts how students feel about themselves and their safety. Teachers also have the ability to push for improvements to policies to make schools safer for students when students can’t advocate for themselves. 

Without this support, queer students are more likely to .

Advocacy for queer students can take a variety of forms, depending on the school and district, as well as state laws and policies that might limit what educators can do.

Teachers can establish themselves as a safe person in a variety of ways, like including items in the classroom such as flags, posters and . This can also be done through clothing and accessory choices including rainbow earrings, lanyards, buttons, bracelets and other jewelry can help students know they are safe.

Teachers can also set up a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexuality Alliance). These groups have a variety of names (Rainbow Club, Come As You Are Club) and create a space for LGBTQ students to gather. There are huge when a school has a GSA, even if students don’t attend. These include feelings of safety and better psychological well-being and reduced likelihood of hearing homophobic remarks or negative comments about gender expression or transgender individuals. , meaning that if a school has any extracurricular clubs, it has to allow GSAs. Information about starting one can be .

It is important to know school and district policies about bullying and discrimination. Teachers should learn how students can report this type of behavior and what should happen after they make that report. They should understand the power structure in the school and district so they understand the chain of command. They should also find out who the Title IX coordinator is — — and learn how that system works. This will help them assist students in reporting instances of harassment and provide ground to stand on when they talk to administrators about policies that aren’t followed or students who aren’t being protected. 

Teachers can advocate for specific policies like creating gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms, improving anti-bullying policies and harassment reporting,and addressing dress codes that target LGBTQ students. They should go into these meetings prepared with research and statistics about the needs and experiences of queer students, school and/or district policies, state and/or federal laws, students’ personal observations or specific concerns. It’s also helpful to come prepared with possible solutions as a starting point for discussion, and to follow up to ensure that things change.

Advocating for LGBTQ students is, unfortunately, a long process in most schools — it takes work and it takes courage. Educators may feel alone at their schools, but they aren’t. Lots of teachers are advocating for students in schools across the country, and there are support systems in place. is one place to start. Teachers need to keep fighting the good fight and helping the kids who need it. 

Nearly one fourth of respondents reported being physically harmed or threatened during the previous year. Youth who were physically attacked or menaced were three times more likely to attempt suicide. 

A third of those surveyed were victimized in school because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. One-fifth were prevented from wearing clothes that align with their gender and 11% were disciplined for standing up to bullies. Seven percent said they left a school because of mistreatment.

“Our country is grappling with a youth mental health crisis, and it is particularly pronounced for LGBTQ youth,” says Ronita Nath, Trevor’s vice president of research.

Suicide rates among transgender and nonbinary youth are significantly higher than for their cisgender peers. 

More than 8 in 10 overall wanted mental health care, but half were unable to get it. More than 40% said they were afraid to talk to someone. Cost and transportation were frequently cited as barriers, says Nath. Young people also said they were afraid to ask their parents or caregivers for help.

Ninety percent said the political climate has had a negative impact on their well-being, while 45% reported they or their family have considered moving to another state because of LGBTQ-related politics or laws. 

Nath says, “It’s very important that this year we contextualize this in a political context.” 

According to Trevor’s tally, so far in 2024 lawmakers have considered 540 anti-LGBTQ bills nationwide. Nath says she expects headlines and political rhetoric to continue to spark anxiety and depression among queer youth in the runup to the presidential election.

Two-thirds of LGBTQ youth said they had recent symptoms of anxiety, a rate that rises to 71% among gender-nonconforming young people. More than half suffer from depression.  

Consistent with past surveys, the new poll found more youth get support at school than at home, work, church or in the community. A little more than half — 52% — of respondents said school is affirming, versus 40% who said they feel supported at home. Transgender and nonbinary youth  are slightly more likely to find school affirming but feel unsupported at home.

Reasons for feeling safe at school include the existence of a club such as a gay-straight alliance — also known as a GSA — zero-tolerance anti-bullying policies, and the ability to wear preferred clothing and use desired pronouns. 

Nine percent of students who were able to use a gender-neutral bathroom at school attempted suicide, versus 15% of those who were not. Young people who said their school is supportive were four points less likely to have tried to take their own life, 10% versus 14%. 

“There is a real critical need for schools to adopt protective policies,” says Nath. 

The annual survey, the organization’s sixth, was administered to 18,000 LGBTQ people ages 13 to 24 last fall. In response to virtually every question, gender-nonconforming youth reported more negative experiences than cisgender gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and young people of color more than their white peers.

Asked about ways people in their lives can show support, nearly 9 in 10 of those surveyed said they wanted to be trusted to understand their identity and 81% want others to stand up for them. 

Among transgender and nonbinary youth, 13% said they take gender-affirming hormones, while just 2% are on puberty blockers. Two-thirds of those who take hormones worry about losing access to care.

“Every time we look at one of these variables, across the board we saw higher rates of suicidality,” says Nath. “LGBTQ youth face hardships their cisgender, straight peers simply don’t.”

Maud Maron, subject of the April order and a member of Manhattan’s District 2 community education council, has received widespread criticism from lawmakers, city leaders and parents for anti-LGBTQ, specifically anti-trans, comments made in private texts first published by ����Ӱ��, including “there is no such thing as trans kids.” 

A few months later, in the , she called an anonymous Stuyvesant High School student journalist a “coward,” accusing them of “Jew hatred.” 

In the April 17 order, deputy chancellor Kenita Lloyd ordered that she “cease engaging in conduct involving derogatory or offensive comments about any New York City Public School student, and conduct that serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten, including but not limited to frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and cause others to have concern for their personal safety, which is prohibited by Chancellor’s Regulation D-210.” 

Lloyd went on to write that Maron could face “suspension or removal” if she did not comply with the order. The directive offered Maron a voluntary “conciliation” meeting with a schools equity officer.

In a statement Maron told ����Ӱ�� she “cannot possibly comply with a directive to cease doing something when that ‘something’ has never been communicated to me,” adding that DOE leadership have never provided her with any “dates, places, quotes, people or any information.” 

She also categorized the “procedure” as “Kafkaesque,” “bizarre,” “speech-chilling,” and an “embarrassment” to the city school system. 

But some critics said the department’s order is too little, too late, stopping short of Maron’s removal, which community members have demanded at education council meetings for months.

“I’m doubtful an order like that will really make a difference because [Maron] has shown she has no qualms whatsoever about targeting students with abuse and hateful rhetoric,” said fellow District 2 parent and council member Gavin Healy.

Schools Chancellor David Banks previously called Maron’s behavior “despicable,” promising to “take action” nearly four months ago. 

In the months since, Maron at a Moms for Liberty event and continued parent leadership duties,  including sponsoring a resolution to reassess the city’s gender guidelines for student sports. The resolution was swiftly condemned by lawmakers and advocates, fearful any change would limit trans students’ rights and open doors for anti-trans violence. 

Nearly 800 District 2 community members also signed a petition to have Maron removed from Stuyvesant High School’s leadership team after her February comments in the Post about the anonymous student, where she urged the writer to make their name public for their opinions about the Israel-Gaza war.

Parents called the rhetoric harassment and a danger to student safety and free speech. 

Due to the DOE’s memo’s vague language, it’s unclear which of Maron’s remarks were the subject of complaint and investigation that warranted the cease order. 

“I have never named any student or directly addressed any student in a manner other than polite, friendly and professional,” Maron said. She is now among several parents , alleging censorship and stifling of free speech.

Plans to discontinue the Iowa Youth Risk Behavior Survey and a new barrier for surveying Iowa students pose a threat to data collected on youth behaviors, advocates say, specifically young transgender Iowans.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has no plans to administer the Youth Risk Behavior Survey this academic year, the first time since the survey started in 1991.

In a letter sent to Youth Risk Behavior Survey advisory committee members, Robert Kruse, the state medical director for the Iowa Department of HHS, announced Iowa will not participate in the 2023 Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) youth risk behavior survey.

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“The Iowa Department of HHS will not be participating in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2023 in order to focus our efforts on maximizing the state administered Iowa Youth Survey (IYS) and improving survey participation,” Kruse’s Jan. 27 letter to YRBS advisory committee members said.

The nationwide survey overseen by the CDC is administered every two years and asks students about their behaviors and relationships with authority figures, drugs, alcohol, sexual activity and gambling, to name a few.

Although students in Iowa will still be offered the IYS, they can not take it unless a parent has seen the survey in advance and given permission for their student to take it.

Parental permission

, signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds on May 26, requires that students must receive permission from their parents before taking a survey at school. The law prevents students from taking surveys “designed to assess the student’s mental, emotional or physical health that is not required by state or federal law” without first acquiring the written consent of the student’s parent or guardian.

Parents must receive at least seven days notice of the survey, as well as a copy of the survey.

The law also containing written or visual sex acts, prohibits schools from teaching about “gender identity” or “sexual orientation” before sixth grade, prohibits a student from using a name or pronoun than they were given at birth and prevents teachers from knowingly providing “false or misleading” information on a child’s gender identity to their parents.

Jenn Turner, chapter chair for the Polk County Moms For Liberty, sees student surveys as a way for young people to get ideas about things they may not have thought about before.

“We have found that many parents are not aware of what questions are being asked,” Turner said. “It ranges from what vegetables you eat to how many sexual partners to if you have considered suicide for children as young as 11. Some parents may determine that these questions are too mature, or cover topics their children are not ready for or do not understand.”

Turner and Moms For Liberty support the recent law change, saying that it gives control to parents and allows for more transparency about what is going on in school.

“Parents are the number one advocates for their children,” Turner said. “They should ultimately be making these decisions for their children. This law provides another tool to help parents understand what is presented to their children in school.”

Advocates of the IYS say this law will limit participation and usable data. The extra step of taking home a permission slip and having it signed and returned to a classroom will keep some students from taking the survey, in addition to parents who do not permit their children to take the survey.

Anne Discher, executive director of Common Good Iowa and member of the Iowa YRBS advisory committee, acknowledges permission from parents during school registration as reasonable but believes useful data could be harder to collect with permission required for individual surveys throughout the year.

Parental permission could skew results in another way, according to Discher.

“Certainly one might assume that the types of parents who would opt out might have things in common,” Discher said. “It could skew the survey and I think generally speaking the concern would be that participation would be so low you might not get useful data anyway.”

In a Feb. 23 committee meeting for Senate File 496, State Sen. Herman Quirmbach raised a potential unintended consequence he sees with parental permission.

“The unintended consequence of that may be to protect child molesters,” Quirmbach, D-Ames, said. “If a survey to a student asking about that student’s mental state or their social state, if the parent can deny their student the ability to participate in that survey, then an abusive parent can use that denial to help shield them from any consequence of their child abuse.”

The surveys are anonymous, but survey data could skew if Quirmbach’s speculation is correct, ultimately affecting future legislation and policy decisions.

Data disaggregation

Surveys like the risk behavior survey and the IYS are used by health departments, educators, lawmakers, doctors and community organizations to make policy decisions, direct campaigns and give direction to research.

The most recent risk behavior survey asked students about their gender identity; the IYS did not.

According to Discher, one of the goals of the Department of HHS in the past was to increase participation in student surveys to allow for the disaggregation of data.

“It was a strong goal to be able to disaggregate it by race and ethnicity, for example, or by LGBTQ+ status,” Discher said. “The conversations we had always had were how can we get more schools to participate so we can have better data for subgroups.”

Eventually, there was a sense of pushback contrary to the former beliefs and goals of the department, Discher says.

“I find that this pushback which came from somewhere in the department or maybe not in the department,” Discher said. “I don’t know where the push for all of this came from, but it is very much counter to all of the work that we had seen the department do up to this point, which was try to get more data, better data, to disaggregate the data so they could really understand what was happening with youth in Iowa.”

According to Kruse’s letter to the committee, the Iowa Youth Survey will be revised, but the revisions are not currently public, if finished. It is unclear if the IYS will enable disaggregation of data for students who identify as transgender.

“In advance of IYS in the fall of 2023, HHS will conduct a comprehensive review of survey administration,” Kruse said. “Most importantly, we are reviewing the analysis-to-action strategy and how HHS can tailor the data collection to inform how we meet the needs of Iowa youth, families, schools and communities.”

Without the Iowa youth risk behavior survey, and if the IYS is not revised to include a question about gender identity, disaggregating data for trans youth will not be possible.

“I find it sad that that’s a piece of data that we are going to lose,” Discher said. “I find it kind of cynical that the state Legislature took all of these moves to make life worse, in particular for trans kids. To deny them gender-affirming care, to make them feel less like they’re an important member of their community and now we aren’t going to collect data on mental health for that group.”

Although the letter sent to YRBS committee members stated Iowa would not participate in the risk behavior survey to focus efforts on maximizing the IYS participation, the survey switch-up feels more intentional than maximizing efforts, according to Discher.

“It is very hard for me to look at it and not understand it as part of a larger anti-trans push in our state,” Discher said. “In the Legislature, we passed a lot of very punitive, harmful bills and now we’re going to stop collecting data on the well-being of the kids that they’re harming. Did anyone sit and think of it in that exact way? I don’t know, but it’s very hard to not interpret it that way.”

The 2021, IYS did include a , with answer options of straight, gay or lesbian, bisexual, another identity or not sure.

Explaining the examinations

The survey was first administered in 1991, with Survey participation peaked at 47 four times; 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015. 

Iowa will be one of seven states not participating in the survey in 2023, joining Colorado, Idaho, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

The reasoning for participation varies from state to state and many states have their own survey as a replacement or in addition to the CDC’s survey.

According to , the youth risk behavior data helps health departments, educators, lawmakers, doctors and community organizations to inform school and community programs, communications campaigns and other efforts. The survey measures health-related behaviors and experiences that may lead to death and disability among youth and adults.

Although the IYS asks similar questions as the risk behavior survey, IYS is only taken statewide, so results cannot be easily compared among other states. Data from the IYS, though, can be broken up into smaller regions of Iowa, compared to the risk behavior survey, which gives data for youth in the state as a whole.

“The national survey only reports state-level data which makes it impossible to identify areas of the state with the greatest needs,” Alex Carfrae, public information officer for the Iowa Department of HHS said in an email response to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

IYS data is reported and analyzed at multiple jurisdiction levels, allowing more specific, targeted decisions to be made for specific areas such as counties, judicial districts and Area Education Agencies.

The two surveys have a history in Iowa, with the youth risk behavior survey taken every other year since 1991 and the Iowa youth survey taken every other year since 1999.

The IYS is answered by students in grades 6, 8 and 11, where the youth risk behavior survey has only been offered to students in grades 9-12. The CDC does offer a middle school version of the youth risk behavior survey, but .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

Putting overworked, underpaid and imperiled teachers on yet another front line cannot be the solution. Instead, school communities need a collaborative solution that incorporates administrators, parents, coaches and other education professionals, and that is ultimately led by those most impacted by this crisis: girls, especially girls of color and LGBTQ+ youth.

This won’t be an easy task for most schools. In our role as co-CEOs of Girls Leadership, which works with public and private schools across the U.S., we know that fostering well-being specifically for girls is not a commonly accepted practice. This is because it means accepting that the barriers to safety, mental health and school connection are different for girls than for boys. When we speak to school leaders about bringing in a program designed to support the specific needs of girls and gender-expansive youth, the most common response we hear is, “We can’t do anything for the girls that we aren’t doing for the boys.” 

The shared assumption seems to be that if there is equality of support and opportunity for all students, regardless of gender, there will be equality of experiences and outcomes. That ideal doesn’t take into account how deeply the world is steeped in sexism, misogyny and toxic masculinity. The reports in grades 7 to 12 have experienced sexual harassment — which is the No. 1 reason that girls in our programs tell us that they don’t feel connected at school — and when they go to teachers and staff for help, they aren’t believed or supported. This is especially true for Black girls, who are confronted not only by the misogyny common in high school culture, but by racism and gender bias in a school system where the teaching force is 80% white. They are victims of peers and adults who see them as older than they actually are; experience adultification or what the girls describe as sexualization; are ignored, disbelieved, blamed, disproportionately suspended and punished for not coming forward in the right way at the right time, or for using the right tone of voice.

These are the girls who need protection the most. When they feel safe in school, all girls, and all other students, will benefit. 

Protection needs to begin with teachers and administrators. This is why our work focuses on teachers, guidance counselors, coaches and after-school program staff — the adults with the power to create a safe space. Teacher training programs almost never address the impact of gender norms on young people, nor do they teach building connections with students, 53% of whom are Black, Indigenous or students of color. Teachers need professional development that places gender and racial identity at the heart of social and emotional learning.

Educators also need standards and curriculum with objectives that are as clear for safety, belonging and well-being as they are for math and reading. Every aspect of social and emotional learning, from identity and belonging to healthy relationships and leadership, can be measured. Imagine being able to look up school scores on connectedness, including reported levels of sexual harrassment and sexual violence. That would allow school communities to truly understand their progress locally and stay accountable for how far they have to go. 

Parents and caregivers can provide support by calling on schools to include gender in social and emotional learning programs, by sharing the CDC study and by forming a gender equity committee to prioritize the needs of girls and gender-expansive youth in school policies and practices. They can also advocate for girls to participate in these committees and/or work in partnership with student-led committees. After all, girls and gender-expansive youth are experts in their own experience, and because they are the most impacted by the current mental health crisis, they should design the policies and practices that affect them. 

Lastly, there need to be accessible state and federal protections. Most of the girls and gender-expansive youth we engage in our programs haven’t even heard of Title IX sexual harassment protections and wouldn’t know how to find a Title IX sex equity officer to report their experiences. The person who fills this federally mandated role usually works out of the district office, making it almost impossible to build a trusting relationship with students who need ongoing emotional support and clear guidance through the reporting process for sexual harassment or violence. Educating students about resources and providing girls with clear access to support provides another layer of safety net.

This CDC report is an opportunity to create an inflection point for this generation, but this won’t happen if girls are treated as a problem needing to be fixed. Instead, schools, parents and policymakers must listen to the most marginalized girls and accept their input in creating systems and environments of belonging. Together, school communities and policymakers can create the foundation of safety girls need to start building the connections that will enable them to truly thrive.

Now, new national data unveil one factor that could be exacerbating the crisis: a record increase in sexual violence.

Nearly 1 in 5 teen girls experienced sexual violence in 2021, forced to kiss or touch someone in their life, according to the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s released Monday.

A startling 14%, more than 1 in 10, were forced to have sex against their will, according to the report which compiled responses from 17,000 young people surveyed in the fall of 2021. The violence is up 20% since 2017. 

The CDC conducts the survey every other year, though Monday’s report is the first to capture pandemic-era trends. And while there are bright spots — bullying and use of illicit drugs are down overall — the recent findings are grim.

In 2021, at least 18% of girls experienced some form of sexual violence — forced to touch or kiss someone in their life. And while the rate of girls forced to have sex in particular had remained pretty constant for the last 10 years, in the two year period from 2019 to 2021, it jumped from 11% to 14%. 

“This is truly alarming,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school health. “For every 10 teenage girls you know, at least one of them, and probably more, has been raped. This tragedy cannot continue.”

Nearly 1 in 3 girls also seriously considered suicide. One quarter of girls and 37% of lesbian, gay or queer youth made suicide plans. Thirteen percent of girls attempted it, the highest numbers in a decade, roughly double the rate for boys. 

While increases in suicidal ideation can be seen across many demographics, Black and Native or Indigenous students remain significantly more likely to attempt and are the students most impacted by housing insecurity.

“America’s teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma,” said Debra Houry, chief medical officer for the CDC, during a press briefing Monday. 

“These data are hard to hear and should result in action,” Houry said. “As a parent to a teenage girl, I am heartbroken.”

Research confirms adolescents who are forced to kiss, touch or have sex with people against their will are symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. In children, this can manifest in a number of ways, including withdrawal from friends or social activities, difficulty sleeping, poor , self-harm, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

Houry said while this report did not look at the connections between sexual violence and the increase in depression and suicidality, prior research has shown “sexual violence is associated with mental health issues, substance use and also long-term health consequences.” 

Girls are also 5% more likely than boys to misuse prescription opioids and more likely to have tried illicit drugs like cocaine, inhalants, heroin, methamphetamines, hallucinogens, or ecstasy, according to the report 

Nearly half of all high schoolers are “persistently sad or hopeless,” the report found, symptoms used as a proxy to measure depression. Numbers are notably higher for girls, queer youth and students of color. 

The feelings, particularly when they are the result of sexual violence, hold the power to have lifelong impacts: “young people who feel hopeless about their future are more likely to engage in behaviors that put them at risk for HIV, STDs, and unintended pregnancy,” the report states. 

Only about half of teens, according to the 2021 findings, used a condom the last time they had sex. And only 5% were screened for STIs within the last year.

Yet many of the challenges facing young people today, Houry added, are in fact “preventable.”

can revamp health curricula to educate young people about sexual consent and managing emotions; encourage school-based clubs like Gay Straight Alliances; and increase mental health training for teachers, peers and staff. 

Healthy relationship and bystander training programs like Green Dot can reduce harm and stigma in talking about sexual or romantic violence, CDC officials said. 

The CDC and advocates also encouraged families to look for warning associated with suicide and regularly ask young people about their feelings or concerns. 

“I wish my family knew these resources and what to look for earlier,” national PTA President Anna King tearfully said during the media briefing. King lost a niece to suicide nearly five years ago. 

“These conversations will help parents learn how to help their child and figure out what’s going on emotionally, building their ability to cope with life’s stressors and show them their feelings matter,” King said. “It also helps them to understand that they’re not alone.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Additional resources are available at . For LGBTQ mental health support, you can contact The Trevor Project’s toll-free support line at 866-488-7386.

In the , conducted in October and November by Morning Consult, 71% of 716 LGBTQ respondents ages 13 to 24 said rhetoric surrounding the legislation has had a negative or very negative affect on their mental health, as did 86% of transgender and nonbinary young people. Three-fourths of LGBTQ youth, and 82% of gender-nonconforming respondents, reported stress and anxiety over threats of violence at LGBTQ community centers or events. 

At the time the findings were released, three weeks into 2023, more than 150 anti-LGBTQ bills — most of them targeting transgender and nonbinary children and youth — had been filed in state legislatures. As in the last few years, youth reports of bullying and harassment remain very high.

The new report includes student responses to a number of questions about aspects of LGBTQ youth well-being that are less commonly discussed, including the emotions evoked by various controversies as well as the distress caused by current events such as racism and police brutality. Rates of anxiety were highest among Latino students.

In the last year, as a result of anti-LGBTQ policies and debate, one fourth of the young people surveyed stopped speaking to a family member, a figure that rises to 42% for trans and nonbinary respondents. One fifth of LGBTQ youth and 29% of gender-nonconforming youth say a friend stopped speaking to them. 

The survey also gauged students’ experiences in school over the last year, with 9% saying their schools removed pride flags and other LGBTQ symbols, 5% reporting their school outed them to their parents, and 4% of LGBTQ students and 7% of trans kids saying they were disciplined for expressing their identity.

Two percent said their family decided to change their school, while 2% of gender-nonconforming kids and 1% of LGBTQ youth overall reported their family moved to another state. Twenty-nine percent of trans and nonbinary youth said they do not feel safe going to a doctor or hospital, a rate more than seven times as high as for cisgender LGBQ young people.

While the youth reported experiencing a range of emotions, anger was the dominant response to current events in every category surveyed. Two-thirds reported being angry about school library book bans, a figure that rises to 80% among trans and nonbinary students.

Young people also report high levels of anger, sadness and feelings of hopelessness in response to bans on gender-affirming medical care and transgender sports bans, policies that require schools to out them to their parents and “Don’t Say Gay” laws that prohibit classroom discussion of LGBTQ topics. Four-fifths have heard of The Trevor Project. 

The pollsters asked what popular media young people turn to for affirmation. The top response was the Netflix series Heartstopper, followed by The Owl House, Euphoria, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Queer Eye.

Thomas and their peers watched videos during high school gym class that stressed the importance of abstinence — and the horrors that can come from sex before marriage. But for Thomas, who is bisexual and nonbinary, the lessons didn’t explain who they were as a person. 

“It was very confusing trying to navigate understanding who I am and my identity,” said Thomas, now a student at Arizona State University. It was on the internet that Thomas learned about a whole community of young people with similar experiences. Blog posts on Tumblr helped them make sense of their place in the world and what it meant to be bisexual. “I was able to find the words to understand who I am — words that I wouldn’t be able to piece together in a sentence if the internet wasn’t there.” 

But now, as states adopt anti-LGBTQ laws and abortion bans, the digital footprint that Thomas and other students leave may come back to harm them, privacy and civil rights advocates warn, and it could be their school-issued devices that end up exposing them to that legal peril.

For years, schools across the U.S. have used digital surveillance tools that collect a trove of information about youth sexuality — intimate details that are gleaned from students’ conversations with friends, diary entries and search histories. Meanwhile, student information collected by student surveillance companies are regularly shared with police, according to a recent survey conducted by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. These two realities are concerning to Elizabeth Laird, the center’s director of equity in civic technology. Following the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade in June, she said information about youth sexuality could be weaponized. 

 “Right now — without doing anything — schools may be getting alerts about students” who are searching the internet for resources related to reproductive health,” Laird said. “If you are in a state that has a law that criminalizes abortion, right now this tool could be used to enforce those laws.”

Teens across the country are already to fill the void for themselves and their peers in the current climate. Thomas, the ASU student and an outspoken reproductive justice activist, said that while students are generally aware that school devices and accounts are monitored, the repeal of Roe has led some to take extra privacy precautions. 

“I have switched to using Signal to talk to friends and colleagues in this space,” they said, referring to the . “The fear, even though it’s been common knowledge for basically my generation’s entire life that everything you do is being surveilled, it definitely has been amplified tenfold.”

Police have long used social media and other online platforms to investigate people for breaking abortion rules, including where police obtained a teen’s private Facebook messages through a search warrant before charging the then-17-year-old and her mother with violating the state’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. 

LGBTQ students face similar risks as lawmakers in Florida and elsewhere impose rules that prohibit classroom discussions about sexuality and gender. This year alone, lawmakers have proposed 300 anti-LGBTQ bills and about a dozen have . They so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws in Florida and Alabama that ban classroom discussions about gender and sexuality and require school officials to tell the parents of children who share that they may be gay or transgender. 

In a survey, a fifth of LGBTQ students told the Center for Democracy and Technology that they or another student they knew had their sexual orientation or gender identity disclosed without their consent due to online student monitoring. They were more likely than straight and cisgender students to report getting into trouble for their web browsing activity and to be contacted by the police about having committed a crime. 

LGBTQ youth are nearly twice as likely as their straight and cisgender classmates to search for health information online, according to . But as anti-LGBTQ laws proliferate, student surveillance tools should reconsider collecting data about youth sexuality, Christopher Wood, the group’s co-founder and executive director, told ����Ӱ��. 

“Right now, we are not in a landscape or an environment where that is safe for a company to be doing,” Wood said. “If there is a remote possibility that the information that they are trying to provide to help a student could potentially lead them into more harm, then they need to be looking at that very carefully and considering whether that is the appropriate direction for a company to be taking.”

‘Extraordinarily concerned’

For decades, has required school technology to block access to images that are obscene, child pornography or deemed “harmful to minors,” and schools have used web-filtering software to prevent students from accessing sexually explicit content. But in some cases, the filtering to block pro-LGBTQ websites that aren’t explicit, including those that offer crisis counseling.  

Many student monitoring tools, which saw significant growth during the pandemic, go far beyond web filtering and employ artificial intelligence to track students across the web to identify issues like depression and violent impulses. The tools can sift through students’ social media posts, follow their digital movements in real time and scan files on school-issued laptops — from classroom assignments to journal entries — in search of warning signs. 

They’ve also come under heightened scrutiny. In a report this year, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey warned that schools’ widespread adoption of the tools could trample students’ civil rights. By flagging words related to sexual orientation, the report notes, LGBTQ youth could be subjected to disproportionate disciplinary rates and be unintentionally outed to their parents. 

In in July, Warren and Markey cautioned that the tools could pose new risks following the repeal of Roe and asked four leading student surveillance companies — GoGuardian, Gaggle, Securly and Bark — whether they flag students for using keywords related to reproductive health, such as “pregnant” and “abortion.”

“We are extraordinarily concerned that your software could result in punishment or criminalization of students seeking contraception, abortion or other reproductive health care,” Markey and Warren wrote. “With reproductive rights under attack nationwide, it would represent a betrayal of your company’s mission to support students if you fail to provide appropriate protections for students’ privacy related to reproductive health information.”

The scrutiny is part of a larger concern over digital privacy in the post-Roe world. In August, the Federal Trade Commission and accused the company of selling the location data from hundreds of millions of cell phones that could be used to track peoples’ movements. Such precise location data, the , “may be used to track consumers to sensitive locations, including places of religious worship, places that may be used to infer an LGBTQ+ identification, domestic abuse shelters, medical facilities and welfare and homeless shelters.” 

School surveillance companies have acknowledged their tools track student references to sex but sought to downplay the risks they pose to students. Bark spokesperson Adina Kalish said the company began to immediately purge all data related to reproductive health after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggested Roe’s repeal was imminent – despite maintaining a 30-day retention period for most other data. 

“By immediately and permanently deleting data which contains a student’s reproductive health data or searches for reproductive health information, such data is not in our possession and therefore not produce-able under a court order, subpoena, etc.,” Bark CEO Brian Bason , which the company shared with ����Ӱ��. 

GoGuardian spokesperson Jeff Gordon said its tools “cannot be used by educators or schools to flag reproductive health-related search terms” and its web filter cannot “flag reproductive health-related searches.” Securly didn’t respond to requests for comment. Last year its web-filtering tool categorized health resources for LGBTQ teens as pornography. 

Gaggle founder and CEO Jeff Patterson to the senators that his company does not “collect health data of any kind including reproductive health information,” specifying that the monitoring tool does not flag students who use the terms “pregnant, abortion, birth control, contraception or Planned Parenthood. ” 

Yet tracking conversations about sex is a primary part of Gaggle’s business — more than references to suicide, violence or drug use, according to nearly 1,300 incident reports generated by the company for Minneapolis Public Schools during a six-month period in 2020. The reports, obtained by ����Ӱ��, showed that 38% were prompted by content that was pornographic or sexual in nature, including references to “sexual activity involving a student.” Students were regularly flagged for using keywords like “virginity,” “rape,” and, simply, “sex.” 

Patterson, the Gaggle CEO, has acknowledged that a student’s private diary entry about being raped wasn’t off limits. In touting the tool’s capabilities, he told ����Ӱ�� his company uncovered the girl’s diary entry, where she discussed how the assault led to self-esteem issues and guilt. Nobody knew she was struggling until Gaggle notified school officials about what they’d learned from her diary, Patterson said. 

“They were able to intervene and get this girl help for things that she couldn’t have dealt with on her own,” Patterson said.

Any information that surveillance companies collect about students’ sexual behaviors could be used against them by police during investigations, privacy experts warned. And it’s unclear, Laird said, how long the police can retain any data gleaned from the tools. 

‘Don’t Say Gay’

Internet search engines are “particularly potent” tools to track the behaviors of pregnant people, by the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. In 2017, for example, a with second-degree murder of her stillborn fetus after police scoured her browser history and identified a search for an abortion pill. 

While GoGuardian and other companies offer web filtering to schools, Gaggle has sought to differentiate itself. In his letter to the senators, Patterson said the company — which sifts through files and chat messages on students’ school-issued Microsoft and Google accounts — is not a web filter and therefore “does not track students’ online searches.” Yet Patterson’s assurance to lawmakers appears misleading. The company acknowledges on its website that it partners with several web-filtering companies, including Linewize, to analyze students’ online searches. By working in tandem, flags triggered by Linewize’s web filtering “can be sent straight to the Gaggle Safety Team,” if the material “should be forwarded to the school or district.” 

In an email, Gaggle spokesperson Paget Hetherington said that in “a very small number of school systems,” the company reviews alerts from web filters before they’re sent to school officials to “alleviate the large number of false positives” and ensure that “only the most critical and imminent issues are being seen by the district.” 

Gaggle has also faced scrutiny for including LGBTQ-specific keywords in its algorithm, including “gay” and “lesbian.” Patterson said the heightened surveillance of LGBTQ youth is necessary because they face a disproportionately high suicide rate, and Hetherington shared examples where the keywords were used to spot cyberbullying incidents. 

But critics have accused the company of discrimination. Wood of the nonprofit LGBT Tech said that anti-LGBT activists have used surveillance to target their opponents for generations. Prior to the seminal 1969 riots after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar, LGBTQ spaces and made arrests for “inferring sexual perversion” and “serving gay people.” From the colonial era and into the 19th century, anti-sodomy laws carried the death penalty and police used the rules to investigate and incarcerate people suspected of same-sex intimate behaviors. 

Now, in the era of “Don’t Say Gay” laws, digital surveillance tools could be used to out LGBTQ students and put them in danger, Wood said. Student surveillance companies can claim their decision to include LGBTQ terminology is designed to help students, but historically such data have “been used against us in very detrimental ways.” 

Companies, he said, are unable to control how officials use that information in an era “where teachers and administrators and other students are encouraged to out other students or blame them or somehow get them in trouble for their identity.” In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott calling on child protective services to investigate as child abuse any parents who provide gender-affirming health care to their transgender children. 

“They can’t control what’s going to happen in Florida or Texas and they can’t control what’s going to happen in an individual home,” where students could be subjected to abuse, Wood said. “Any person in their right mind would be horrified to learn that it was their technology that ended up harming a youth or driving a youth to the point of feeling so isolated that they felt the only way out was suicide.” 

When private thoughts become public

Susan, a 14-year-old from Cincinnati, knows firsthand how surveillance companies can target students for discussing their sexuality. In middle school, she was assigned to write a “time capsule” letter to her future self. 

Until Susan retrieved the letter after high school graduation, her teacher said that no one — not even him — would read it. So Susan, who is now a freshman and asked to remain anonymous, used the private space to question her gender identity. 

But her teacher’s assurance wasn’t quite true, she learned. Someone had been reading the letter — and would soon hold it against her. 

In an automated May 2021 email, Gaggle notified her that the letter to her future self was “identified as inappropriate” and urged her to “refrain from storing or sharing inappropriate content.” In a “second warning,” sent to her inbox, she was told a school administrator was given “access to this violation.” After a third alert, she said, access to her school email account was restricted. She said the experience left her with “a sense of betrayal from my school.” She said she had no idea words like “gay” or “sex” could get flagged by Gaggle’s algorithm.

“It’s frustrating to know that this program finds the need to have these as keywords, and quite depressing,” she said. “There’s always going to be oppression against the community somewhere, it seems, and it’s quite disheartening.” 

School administrators reviewed the time capsule letter and determined it didn’t contain anything inappropriate, her mother Margaret said. While Susan lives in an LGBTQ-affirming household, Thomas, who grew up in Mississippi, warned that’s not the case for everyone.

“That’s not just the surveillance of your activities, that’s the surveillance of your thoughts,” Thomas said of Susan’s experience. “I know that wouldn’t have gone very well for me and I know for a lot of young people that would place them in a lot of danger.”

Such harms could be exacerbated, Margaret said, if authorities use student data to enforce Ohio’s strict abortion ban, which has already become the subject of national debate after a 10-year-old girl traveled to Indiana for an abortion. A 27-year-old man and accused of raping the child. 

Cincinnati Public Schools spokesman Mark Sherwood said in an email that “law enforcement is immediately contacted” if the district receives an alert from Gaggle suggesting that a student poses “an imminent threat of harm to self or others.” 

Given the state of abortion rules in Ohio, Susan said she’s concerned that student conversations and classroom assignments that discuss gender and sexuality could wind up in the hands of the police. She lost faith in school-issued technology after her assignment got flagged by Gaggle. 

“I just flat out don’t trust adults in positions of power or authority,” Susan said. “You don’t really know for sure what their true motives are or what they could be doing with the tools they have at their disposal.”