10/05/2026
The CDC’s latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey offers some encouraging news about teen health.
From 2023 to 2025, several measures of mental health and su***de risk improved. More high school students also reported eating fruits and vegetables daily and playing on a sports team.
But the numbers also raise an important research question: What’s driving that progress?
Youth self-report gives us an essential view into how teens are feeling and behaving. But kids’ health and wellness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens within a broader household and ecosystem shaped by parents and caregivers, food and sleep routines, physical activity, digital life, social connection, access to care, growing independence—and sometimes conflict over what “healthy” even looks like.
Parents see parts of that picture. Teens see others. And quantitative movement alone can’t always tell us why perceptions and behaviors are changing or which factors at the household level may be contributing to that change.
We believe understanding kids’ health and wellness requires a more holistic view, one that matters enormously for brands, educators, and organizations building the products, programs, and policies that reach these families. That means considering multiple perspectives and combining what the numbers tell us with deeper exploration of the behaviors, tensions, and cultural forces behind them.
The numbers tell us what’s changing. The bigger question is why.
