Young people aren’t reckless. They’re confused — and we’ve left them that way.

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg AO

February 4, 2026

Child & Adolescent Psychologist, Author, Founding member CanTeen, Founding psychologist SchoolTV, Patron of Read the Play, Accredited Mental Health First Aid Trainer

February 4, 2026At first glance, the latest survey from the Burnet Institute looks reassuring. Young people are drinking less. They know vaping is harmful. They are, on paper at least, more health-literate than any generation before them. And yet the same young people are vaping in record numbers, using harder drugs more frequently, and remain dangerously misinformed about sexual health. The Burnet Institute’s Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll survey reveals something far more troubling than “risky youth behaviour”. It exposes a widening chasm between what young people know and what they are actually able to do in the real world.

Take vaping. Young people rated its harmfulness at a staggering 89 out of 100. Yet nearly two-thirds still use e-cigarettes. That’s not ignorance. That’s addiction meeting accessibility, peer pressure and stealth marketing — in an environment where anaemic regulation lags years behind reality. As Associate Professor Megan Lim rightly points out, knowledge alone isn’t enough. Expecting awareness to trump addiction is like handing someone a fire safety brochure and sending them into a burning building.

Then there’s sex education — or rather, the absence of it. Despite unprecedented access to information online, many young Australians lack basic, practical understanding of sexual health, consent and sexually transmitted infections. Porn has become the lead sex educator for young people. Social media fills the gaps. Silence does the rest. We should stop pretending that “they can Google it” is a public health strategy.

The drug data is equally worrying. Seven in ten respondents have used illicit drugs. Cocaine and ketamine use are rising, even as MDMA declines. The Alcohol and Drug Foundation reminds us that nationally, drug use is “stable” — but stable does not mean safe, especially for the developing brain. And here’s the irony: at the same time as drug use remains high, alcohol consumption is falling sharply. Research from Flinders University shows Gen Z are far more likely than Baby Boomers to abstain from alcohol altogether.

This matters. It tells us young people are capable of behaviour change when the environment supports it. We restricted alcohol advertising and promotion, (sporting events still have a loophole) but alcohol is harder to glamorise now. Drink-driving laws are clear. Social norms have shifted. Messaging has been consistent. We haven’t done the same for vaping, hard drugs or sexual health. Instead, we’ve relied on fear-based messaging, patchy education, and the comforting myth that young people will simply “make better choices” if we warn them loudly enough. They won’t — because no generation ever has.

Which is why the Victorian Premier’s reported consideration of abolishing the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation is not just short-sighted, it is insanity. VicHealth has arguably done more for adolescent health promotion than any other organisation in the state: driving shifts in attitudes to smoking and alcohol, funding school- and community-based programs, and building exactly the kind of long-term, evidence-based prevention infrastructure this survey says we need more of, not less. Dismantling that capacity at the very moment we are asking young people to navigate more complex risks than ever would widen the gap between knowledge and action even further.

If we genuinely care about youth wellbeing, we need to move beyond awareness campaigns and into structural action: tighter regulation of vaping products, modernised and mandatory sex education, honest harm-minimisation frameworks, and adults who are willing to talk — plainly and often — about risk, pleasure, consent and consequence.

Young people are not broken. The system around them is. And until we fix that, surveys like this won’t shock us — they’ll simply confirm what young people already know: they are navigating adult-level risks with child-level support. That is the real disconnect.

Celebrate the End of Exams – Not Just the ATAR

Every year, thousands of exhausted Year 12s stumble out of their final exam rooms, eyes glazed, brains fried and hearts pounding — only to be told: “Don’t celebrate yet. Wait for the results.”

What absolute nonsense.  We should be celebrating now — not because of a number that arrives in December, but because they’ve just completed one of the most demanding endurance events of their young lives. The exams are done. The pressure cooker is over. That deserves recognition, not another month of purgatory.

Let’s be clear. Year 12 exams have become absurdly over-hyped — inflated into a supposed measure of intelligence, worth and future success. In reality, they test how well you can recall and regurgitate information under artificial, time-pressured conditions. They measure memory, technique and exam temperament — not creativity, emotional intelligence, or resilience.

And let’s not forget the glaring inequities: access to tutors, calm home environments, supportive schools and mental health stability all play massive roles. The ATAR isn’t a measure of capability — it’s a snapshot of performance in a narrow window of time.

The truth? Year 12 exams measure how well you can play the game. They reward those who can decode marking rubrics, spot past-paper patterns, and manage their nerves. Those are useful skills, sure — but they’re hardly the full story of human potential.

Some of the brightest, most original thinkers I’ve met weren’t top-scoring students. Many didn’t peak at 17 or 18. They bloomed later — once they found a path that matched their strengths, passions and temperament.

In 2025, there are dozens of ways to get where you want to go.

Bridging programs, TAFE pathways, early-entry schemes, apprenticeships, micro-credentials — the traditional ATAR-to-uni pipeline is just one route among many. Employers are increasingly valuing character, creativity, collaboration and digital literacy over a number on a piece of paper.

The world has changed. Our young people know it. It’s time parents and educators caught up.  So, if you’ve got a Year 12 student in your life, celebrate them now. Book the dinner, bake the cake, give them a hug and tell them you’re proud — not because of what they scored, but because they showed up, persevered, and survived one of the most stressful rites of passage in Australia.

The results will come and go. But the grit, growth and self-knowledge they gained this year? That’s the real achievement.

Generation Under Pressure: Why 2026 Could Break Young Australians

If you think young Australians are doing it tough now, brace yourself. By 2026, they’ll be staring down a perfect storm of pressures that make today’s youth anxiety epidemic look like a warm-up act.

Let’s start with the mental health crisis. Waiting lists for psychologists are already obscene, and despite endless hand-wringing from politicians, they’ll still be there in 2026. That means thousands of young people will continue to fall through the cracks — untreated anxiety, depression, eating disorders and self-harm behaviours becoming a grim daily reality. It’s not just tragic; it’s policy failure on a national scale.

Next up: education and work. In the age of artificial intelligence and disappearing job security, Year 12 exams are more than just stressful — they feel like a matter of survival. Students know their futures hinge on a brutal contest for a shrinking pool of stable, well-paid jobs. The result? More sleepless nights, more pressure-cooker classrooms, more young Australians feeling trapped between old pathways like university and precarious gig work that promises little security.

Then there’s the economy. Housing insecurity will bite even harder in 2026. Forget the Aussie dream of owning a home — for many young people, even renting will be a nightmare. Sky-high prices, chronic shortages, and the reality of living with Mum and Dad well into their twenties will fray family relationships and delay milestones like independence and starting a family.

Of course, young Australians don’t get to log off from the digital world either. Social media is already a relentless engine of comparison, cyberbullying and toxic content. By 2026, immersive technologies like the so-called “metaverse” will make it even harder to draw a line between reality and online life. Governments can promise regulation all they like, but as long as Big Tech puts profit before children’s wellbeing, our young people will pay the price.

And let’s not forget the looming spectre of climate change. Bushfires, floods, and a steady drumbeat of doomsday headlines are fuelling eco-anxiety on an unprecedented scale. For this generation, climate change isn’t an abstract future threat — it’s an existential backdrop to their adolescence. That sense of helplessness and dread will only intensify if we keep dithering.

Finally, there’s social fragmentation. Fewer young people are volunteering, civic engagement is sliding, and family structures are shifting. Add the poison of political polarisation — amplified by online echo chambers — and you’ve got a generation caught between hope for collective action and despair at the noise and nastiness of public life.

Put bluntly, 2026 will test young Australians like never before. The stressors are relentless, overlapping, and in many cases, entirely foreseeable. What’s unforgivable is that so many of them are preventable.

We don’t need another glossy government strategy. We need urgent investment in mental health services that actually meet demand. We need schools that prioritise resilience and adaptability, not just ATARs. We need digital regulation with teeth, not platitudes. And we need a climate policy that treats eco-anxiety not as teenage melodrama but as a rational response to government inaction.

The choice is ours: equip young Australians to thrive in 2026, or abandon them to sink under pressures they didn’t create. To do the latter would not just be negligent — it would be an unforgivable betrayal.

TikTok and the Teenage Self-Diagnosis Epidemic

By Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

If you’re a parent, teacher, or policymaker and you’re not worried about TikTok’s role in adolescent mental health, you should be.

Right now, millions of young Australians are bypassing GPs, psychologists, and psychiatrists — and turning instead to influencers and algorithms for answers about their wellbeing. Google has been replaced by TikTok. Evidence has been replaced by anecdotes. And self-reflection has been replaced by self-diagnosis. The results? Confusion, contagion, and in some cases, catastrophe.

The research is damning. Less than 15% of mental health content on TikTok comes from professionals. Over half of ADHD videos are misleading. Autism, trauma, and DID content is riddled with errors. Algorithms push this material at teens even if they aren’t searching for it.

During COVID, we saw a wave of functional tic disorders linked directly to TikTok content. That’s not awareness — that’s algorithm-driven iatrogenesis. Iatrogenesis is the unintended causation of a disease, injury, infection, or other harmful complication as a direct result of medical intervention or treatment, including diagnosis, therapeutic procedures, drugs, errors, or negligence. It reflects any adverse effect on a patient that is not considered part of the natural course of their underlying condition but instead results from external activities. 

Adolescence is a perfect storm: identity confusion, peer pressure, and a brain wired for risk-taking. TikTok dangles easy answers: vague “symptom lists” that fit anyone (the Barnum effect), confirmation bias delivered on demand, and a culture where mental illness is normalised — even glamorised. Be clear, the platform doesn’t just reflect teen struggles, it shapes them.

To be fair, social media isn’t all bad. I am a big fan of the work of Dr Julie Smith a UK psychologist. Dr Smith began documenting her insights in short TikTok videos in 2019 after realizing that lasting therapeutic knowledge often feels inaccessible. She wanted to empower more people outside the therapy room by distilling psychological concepts into quick, digestible content. Her creative use of props (think overflowing "stress buckets", trauma filled waste paper baskets, fish tanks, or finger-trap metaphors) makes complex concepts like emotional regulation and anxiety relatable—without sacrificing clinical accuracy. Teaching through visual metaphors is a hallmark of her content, has resonated so well that she’s amassed millions of followers and is a trusted voice.

Unfortunately research shows that not all the content is as good. Parents report fractured relationships. Schools see distracted, distressed students insisting they “have” disorders based on TikTok clips and clinicians like me, spend valuable session time unpicking myths spread by influencers.

We don’t need another moral panic. We need action:

Parents: Talk with your kids about what they’re watching. Model healthy screen use. Don’t outsource mental health care to an app.
Schools: Make media literacy as fundamental as maths. Enforce phone-free classrooms.
Clinicians: Ask about social media use at intake. Offer credible alternatives.
Platforms: Stop pretending. Enforce algorithm transparency. Flag unverified health content.

TikTok is not going away. But if we leave our kids’ mental health in the hands of algorithms and amateurs, the cost will be enormous.

Young people deserve better. They deserve professional help, credible information, and adults willing to guide them through the noise. Self-awareness is healthy. Self-diagnosis on TikTok is not.