That article was extremely confusing, and it didn’t list where the survey respondents came from, how many there were, or any other context.
To be clear, my statement was really within a narrower scope of mental health and how ill-equipped young people are to cope with life, including chronic mental illness. I think whether or not older kids are driving at the population level can maybe be used as a rough proxy for independence, but there will always be outliers, including disabled people and city dwellers.
My husband’s specialization is in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. So he is seeing the kids who are doing worse in terms of mental health, and he has his own conclusions, many supported by evidence, of why there are so many more severe cases than there used to be. COVID is certainly a factor, as are recent local shootings, but the kid’s environment and the expectations parents have for them is a big factor too. In particular he has observed a relationship between permissive, enabling parenting and poor mental health in adolescents and young adults. Which also includes adolescents of driving age who depend on their parents to drive them everywhere, who have no intention of ever learning to drive or to aspire to anything beyond sitting at home wasting time, and who are suffering greatly as a result of their lifestyle. These kids are the ones who deserve the most attention, and I don’t think that denying that they exist in greater numbers than, say, twenty years ago, is doing them any favors.