Our teens aren’t doing great. A recent CDC report shows that teen mental health has improved since the pandemic doldrums but is worse today than a decade ago. Meanwhile, absenteeism is up, and academic achievement is down. Is there a way out of this mess? Well, Mike Goldstein, a veteran education reformer, thinks it starts with paying more attention to what teens are doing after school. Mike is the co-founder of the Center for Teen Flourishing, which he describes as “an R&D lab for the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. hours.” The founder and longtime CEO of Match Education, an acclaimed Boston charter school, he went on to serve as chief academic officer of Bridge International Academies and to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I was curious to hear about his new venture, what he’s learning, and what advice he has for educators. Here’s what he had to say.
—Rick

Rick: Mike, you recently launched the Center for Teen Flourishing. Why is it needed?

Mike: The Center for Teen Flourishing is an R&D lab focused on understanding how teens are doing in the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. hours—from when kids get out of school to when they go to bed. We’re launching it because, based on the most comprehensive data available, teen anxiety, isolation, and scrolling have all been going up, while teen quality of life seems to be going down.

Rick: So, just what is the state of America’s teens in 2026?

Mike: Most quality of life measures for teens have been trending in the wrong direction: Physical health, sleep, and pleasure reading are all down. Face-to-face hangout time fell about 30% between 2006 and 2025, and teen summer jobs are at a historic low. Meanwhile, one-third of teens reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in 2025. That’s a 10 percentage point drop from an all-time high seen in 2021, coming out of the pandemic, but it’s still higher than a decade ago. Some public health experts have estimated that only about 40% of American teens are flourishing, while the rest are either languishing or facing acute challenges, whether mental health crises or hardships like domestic abuse or eviction.

Rick: Can you say a bit about exactly what you mean by “teen flourishing”?

Mike: We define flourishing teens as those who spend 15 hours per week outside of school engaged in “real life” activities like sports, music, working, or socializing with friends. Admittedly, 15 hours is an arbitrary cutoff—just like “10,000 steps per day.” We think a reasonable but imperfect target beats having none. Languishing is a word we borrowed from sociologist Corey Keyes to describe teens who aren’t clinically depressed or anxious but aren’t really “living,” either. Often, they get home from school, close their bedroom door, and spend six or seven hours alone with a screen.

Rick: Given that you’re targeting the hours after school, what’s your work mean for those in education?

Mike: We propose a Race to the Top for high school flourishing. It’d be a competition among states to boost the percentage of teens who spend 15 hours a week doing real-life stuff. The good news is that many communities have lots of unused capacity—open slots on school sports teams and clubs or community and religious organizations looking for more teens. They’re just missing the adult sherpas who can nudge the kids to get involved. We think educators can play that role.

Rick: What are some productive ways that schools can nudge kids into real-life stuff?

Mike: One idea would be to take existing “advisory” periods and have advisers flag languishing students and help each one pick an activity they’d like to try. Another idea comes from Will Austin, who has argued that schools should hire recent college grads whose whole job is connecting teens to after-school activities. The idea is a more proactive version of social prescribing in the U.K., where GPs refer lonely patients to a “link worker” who plugs them into community supports.

Rick: How much of this is a story of phones, screens, and social media?

Mike: Researchers debate this. We think social psychologist Jonathan Haidt generally gets the story right, but we’d reframe the culprit as total recreational screen time, not just social media. Using screens six-plus hours a day crowds out the “real-life good stuff” like sleep, exercise, and friendships.

Rick: Most parents buy phones for their teens even as they voice concerns about excessive screen time. What do we know about the role of parents, and what’s that mean for educators?

Mike: I’ve heard a consistent story from many parents: They describe a period of “patrol,” where they constantly nag their teens to consume less screen time, before giving up. Our message is that, as teens age, it’s sometimes easier to “increase the good stuff” than to patrol. When it comes to schools, we’ve identified 13 distinct “parent tribes” on ed-tech, which makes the issue that much harder for school leaders to navigate.

Rick: In K-12, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the gold standard for measuring student achievement. You’ve called for a new “National Assessment of Flourishing and Participation” to depict the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. lives of teens. Why is this needed?

Mike: One great thing about NAEP is that it drives governors to compete to increase math and reading scores. We need a National Assessment of Flourishing and Participation to spur states to work on the 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. languishing problem and increase teen participation in real life. The best way to do that is to first identify the scale of the problem by measuring it.

Rick: A while back, you wrote about what you learned mentoring college grads who’d done everything “right” but couldn’t find jobs. Now, you’re deep in this new area: teens’ out-of-school lives. Do any of the insights from that earlier work apply?

Mike: Back when I was doing career coaching, I was constantly surprised at how unhelpful many graduates found their college career offices. There’s a similar disconnect when we talk to teens with mild to moderate anxiety and depression; they’re often resistant to therapy or have tried it and found it unhelpful. In both cases, the go-to intervention for struggling teens and young adults doesn’t always work. Therapy can be helpful for teens who are open to it and willing to commit, but we need to offer better alternatives for the teens who aren’t.

Rick: What’s one piece of advice for educators concerned about teen flourishing?

Mike: Pick five teens you’re close with. Ask them what they do, hour by hour, on weekdays after school and on weekends. Check in with their parents. You’ll find some teens who struggle to list almost any real-life activities. Then help them find an activity they’d like to try.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.