Unvaccinated teens turn to internet amid preventable-disease outbreaks
Some youth opting to get their own shots despite their parents’ opposition to it
Ethan Lindenberger, frustrated by years of arguments about his mother’s anti-vaccination stance, staged a quiet defection via Reddit.
The Norwalk, Ohio teenager said he needed advice on how to inoculate himself against infectious disease and his family’s dogma. At 18, he was old enough, Lindenberger said. He wanted to get vaccinated. But he didn’t know how.
“My parents think vaccines are some kind of government scheme,” Lindenberger wrote days before Thanksgiving. “But because of their beliefs, I’ve never been vaccinated for anything, God knows how I’m still alive.”
As anti-vaccination movements spread amid outbreaks of dangerous disease, internet-savvy teenagers are fact-checking their parents’ decisions in a digital health reawakening and seeking their own treatments in bouts of family defiance.
In three states, at least three self-described teenagers told Reddit they have a common problem: their parents are staunchly opposed to vaccination and they fear for their health if they do not take action. Different state laws affect how old minors need to be to make their own medical decisions.
Lindenberger’s post drew more than 1,000 comments, including detailed information on navigating the health-care system from someone who identified as a nurse.
The tension over vaccines started years ago after he began to notice his mother posting anti-vaccination videos on social media. His friends were getting vaccinated, so what was happening in his house?
Lindenberger read scientific papers and journals. He pulled up Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies on his phone at the dinner table, hoping his mother would relent and get him and his four younger siblings — now 16, 14, five and two — vaccinated.
“I looked into it, it was clear there was way more evidence in defence of vaccines,” he said. His mother resisted and claimed there were autism risks from vaccines, a common argument used by anti-vaccination groups that has been widely debunked.
His mother Jill Wheeler was angered by his pursuit, she told Undark, an online science magazine. “It was like him spitting on me,” she told the site, “saying, ‘You don’t know anything, I don’t trust you with anything. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You did make a bad decision and I’m gonna go fix it.’”
In Ohio and 16 other states, parents can opt out of required vaccines for philosophical reasons. All but three states allow the exemption on religious grounds. All 50 allow it for medical reasons.
Late last year, Lindenberger, now a high school senior, confided in a pastor, who suggested he was legally free to make decisions.
On Dec. 17, he walked into an Ohio Department of Heath office in Norwalk and received vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza and HPV, according to records viewed by the Washington Post.
He has shots listed for tetanus and hepatitis B, administered when he was two years old, but Wheeler told Undark he received the tetanus shot after he accidentally cut himself. The other must be a paperwork mistake, she said.
Lindenberger said he has seen a growing discussion online about teenagers emboldened to make their own health decisions and pursue vaccinations.
In Washington, a self-described underage teen wrote in January that their mother would not allow vaccines.
“I, as well as my siblings, hold the ideology that vaccines are a public health issue, and a personal responsibility to the benefit of the population, not a right you can revoke from your children,” the person wrote.
Washington state has become a battleground between anti-vaccine groups pushing for relaxed regulations and concerned parents watching a measles outbreak strike the Pacific Northwest, a well-documented anti-vaccination refuge.
At least 56 people in Washington and Oregon have contracted measles — a potentially deadly disease for children — in an outbreak near Portland, triggering a public health emergency in neighbouring Clark County, Wash.
“Measles is exquisitely contagious. If you have an undervaccinated population and you introduce a measles case into that population, it will take off like a wildfire,” Clark County public health director Alan Melnick said.
Another teenager, who in September identified himself as a 15-year-old from Minnesota, asked Reddit for help to parse state laws in an effort to gain immunization himself. Minnesota is a state where guardians can opt out of required vaccinations if they philosophically object to them.
Lindenberger suggested that to empower teenagers and get more people immunized, states should lower the age of consent required for vaccinations instead of pushing for stricter immunization laws and dropping exemptions.
The tension has complicated his home life. He said he regrets insulting the intelligence of his parents in the original Reddit post and urges other teenagers to be transparent and positive with parents when seeking permission to immunize.
The stakes are high for his four younger siblings. His mother has already indicated that she will not allow his 16-year-old brother to be immunized, although he wants it, Lindenberger said.
He also has a two-year-old sister, whose age exposes her to numerous infectious health risks.
“It breaks my heart that she could get measles and she’d be done,” Lindenberger said. Washington Post