In 1988, California enacted a mental health parity law which private insurers to provide equal coverage for mental health and substance use disorder treatments, including services for children. There was a resultant explosion of rehab centers for kids opening in CA. Kids (mostly mid-upper class white kids) got put into rehab centers en masse. Suddenly, every parent in a dysfunctional family could point their fingers at the ubiquitous use of drugs (mostly alcohol and cannabis) among teens and thus absolve themselves of their personal failings as a parent.

Of course I am not arguing that kegger parties and smoking weed were positive things for kids, and certainly some small % of these kids were doing worse drugs, but I am quite certain from my own (fairly broad) annecdata that the root cause of these kids' self destructive behavior was their fucked up families.

And now parents can point their fingers at social media. History repeats, but the difference this time is that kids aren't put into rehabs away from the family dysfunction and in an environment where some degree of self examination and self work is promoted.

When I was very young, I thought that my family dysfunction was an outlier, but my experiences in life lead me to believe that it is the norm and that healthy families are the outlier. Of course, that's my own experience, but I am a greybeard now and have interacted with a large number of individuals across the full spectrum of social strata so the assessment of my anecdata sure seems more poignant with each passing year...