Explore research-driven analyses of education issues affecting young people—from college affordability and student debt to school policies and youth achievement. YouthFacts cuts through myths and media narratives with evidence-based reporting that puts facts first.
Young people are redefining what it means to participate in democracy. Browse the research behind youth voting rights, civic engagement, and political participation, challenging outdated assumptions about young people's competence and commitment. YouthFacts explores how expanding youth voices can strengthen democratic decision-making.
The stereotype that young people are apathetic about global changes couldn't be more wrong. These articles examine the evidence showing how today's youth are organizing and speaking out. Rather than dismissing young voices, YouthFacts explores why listening to them leads to better decisions and stronger communities.
Politics shapes the lives of young people—but their voices and interests are too often ignored. YouthFacts examines the evidence behind public policies affecting youth, from poverty and wages to voting, political rhetoric, and generational equity.
YouthFacts is dedicated to providing factual information on youth issues –- crime, violence, sex, drugs, drinking, social behaviors, education, civic engagement, attitudes, media, whatever teen terror du jour arises. Since we emphasize demonstrable fact over teen-bashing emotionalism and interest-driven propaganda, the information you find here will be dramatically different than in the major media and political forums.
Sources: CDC (2022), World Population Review (2022).
Example: The truth about school shootings no one talks about
Here are the unvarnished facts about United States school shootings leaders, interest groups, and major media on all sides refuse to engage, because they demolish everyone’s arguments:
1. Even in the worst year for school shootings – even with the Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland, etc. school massacres – a student in an American primary or secondary (K-12) school is safer from being shot than a person in Germany.
2. One 64-year-old shot more people in Las Vegas in 15 minutes than are shot in all 131,000 American schools in four years.
3. A student would have to attend school every school day for 400 years to risk having any kind of shooting (homicide, accident, fatal, non-fatal) anywhere in their school, and for over 200,000 years before risking being fatally shot in or on the grounds of a school.
4. We should be far more frightened when a student leaves school, especially if they are going home, where they are many times more likely to be shot.
5. Why are schools so uniquely safe from gun violence? Because (a) they are heavily occupied by young populations singularly unlikely to shoot themselves or others, and (b) nearly all are gun-free.
6. Why do interest groups on all sides demonize schools as bullet-riddled places students should be terrified to enter? Because all sides choose exploit fears of youth to advance their agendas even at the expense of making schools more dangerous. The rampant hysteria gun-control lobbies create about schools fuels the crazed impetus by gun-rights groups to arm school personnel and officers -a reckless policy that has already caused more school shootings.
The YouthFacts study uses standard Centers for Disease Control, FBI, Education Department, and demographic data to compare the worst recent year for school shootings with gun violence risks elsewhere in American society and other nations, adjusted for the time youths and adults actually spend in those places. Its conclusions are straightforward and factual – and therefore startling and challenging to America’s grossly deceptive gun debate.
As teen crime plunges, “juvenile justice” interests resurrect crude 19th- century racism
The juvenile system’s crisis can be summed up in FBI tabulations of arrests of persons under age 18 for criminal offenses:
Today, far fewer youths than middle-agers in their 50s are being arrested – a mule-kick to the gut of fossilized notions of crime. Adjustments for FBI crime coverage and youth population growth enhance the astounding teenage crime plunge still more.
No one ever imagined that as America’s teenage population grew and went from heavily White to majority of Color (Latinx, Black, Asian, Native, and other Nonwhite), crime and violence would plummet as never before. In fact, experts had predicted the opposite: a generation of Clockwork-Orange-like “teenage super-predators” marauding cities and countryside alike.
Never have experts been so wrong. Now, the 25-year crash in teenage crime – down an astounding 87% in just one generation – is an existential threat to hordes of academics, officers, corporations, agencies, and advocates dependent on masses of youths shooting, robbing, and stealing.
Professor Anthony Bernier teaches youth services at the nation’s largest library school (San Jose State University’s School of Information) and is Project Director for and blogs at YouthFacts.org. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, and rides a Vespa P200E and a BMW C650GT.
Mike Males is senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, San Francisco; formerly taught sociology, psychology, and epidemiology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Irvine; and has authored four books and scores of journal articles and op-eds on youth and social topics. He lives in Auburn, California, and writes weird futuristic fiction.
Mike Males’ carefully documented Substack posts confront myths about teens and social media, including the shocking fact that Centers for Disease Control surveys show access to social media actually prevents suicide attempts and serious injury among both younger and older teens by connecting them to others. See recent posts here
Wendy Schaetzel Lesko‘s experiences as a community organizer and journalist are woven into several of her books including Youth! The 26% Solution. After two decades with the Youth Activism Project, now Wendy leadsYouth Infusion which focuses on adult-run nonprofits and government agencies that engage teens as co-strategists in many organizational operations.
Tori Puente is an MLIS student at San Jose State University, focusing on archives and digital curation. She is a current member of the American Library Association (ALA), Society of American Archivists (SAA), and Special Libraries & Information Professions (SLIP) student chapters. Tori lives in Los Angeles with her cat and dog.
New Blog Posts
“I Have Two Passions: Orchestra and Revolution”: The Youth Movement Connect the Dots Sightseeing during my recent two weeks in Paris included joining two huge protest marches – larger than anything I’ve ever seen in the US. These were loving, positive, humorous, creative and serious marches. And the movement began with the nation’s high school kids. By Anthony Bernier, November 2026
Generation Z – especially young women – enters uncharted radicalism The liberal-Left has enjoyed its seven days of post-Midterm gloating. We know what typically happens next, if history is any teacher. Democrats will follow their mammoth electoral sweep with timid corporatism that will fail dismally and return America to even worse right-wing rule. We’ll get clarification right away if Democrats re-up their endless-war, Big Money, no-health-care, don’t-rock-the-boat leadership. By Mike Males, November 2026
Astounding generation gaps drove crucial midterm races If Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners came before the November 3 midterms, new records for yelling and food-throwing would have been set. America has never seen average 50-60-point generational chasms like 2026’s, even during Vietnam. By Mike Males, November 2026
Midterm exit polls show not everyone surfed the Blue Tsunami We’re see lots of gloating by Democrats and the liberal/left after their astounding midterm electoral sweep. Maybe the hard campaigners are entitled to a moment of chest-thumping. But let’s remember former President Lyndon Johnson’s aside (in Texas Pedernales drawl) a short 39 months after his 22-point landslide November 1964 election victory over Republican Barry Goldwater: “It’s a short walk from the master bedroom to the outhouse.” By Mike Males, November 2026
Oregon school shooting has all the elements authorities hate. Violence by teenagers is much rarer these days than in their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, though you’d never guess that reality from the press and authorities’ relentless headlining of every case they can find – especially ones they think they can blame on “social media” or “cyberbullying.” By Mike Males, November 2026
The new “Carrie”: Boring and mean all at once . Novelist Stephen King’s first blockbuster was refreshingly medieval. Set in 1970s Maine, Carrie could just have easily been in 1690s witch-trial Salem or any other time. King deftly connected Carrie’s torture at home by her violent religiopathic mother to her bullying at school by elite peers. By Mike Males, October 2026
