Minnesota students reported being less depressed in 2025 than in recent years, but a majority still say they’d recently felt anxious and on edge, according to the Minnesota Student Survey released Tuesday by the Minnesota Department of Education and other state agencies.

Students also reported stronger connections to their schools and other improvements in overall wellbeing.

The findings offer some hope that the decadeslong decline of teen mental health, especially worsened in the 2022 survey amid the COVID-19 pandemic, could be turning around.

“We can build on this momentum by continuing to foster safe environments that make young people feel included, engaged and like they belong,” said Minnesota Commissioner of Health Dr. Brooke Cunningham in a statement announcing the survey results.

Rates of students who reported being recently bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless have gone down significantly from a 2022 high; around 40% of juniors in 2025 said they’d felt down or depressed compared to 54% in 2022 and 47% in 2019.

Students are also less anxious than before. Around 70% of juniors in 2022 said they were recently bothered by feeling anxious or on edge, compared with around 60% in 2025.

The survey’s accuracy may be limited, however. Less than half of Minnesota students in fifth, eighth, ninth and 11th grades — 119,689 of around 266,000 — completed the optional survey, which has been administered every three years since 1989 and includes public school districts and charter schools. The survey has become divisive in recent years for asking students about their drug use, sexual activity and gender orientation, with some school districts choosing to opt out altogether.

The improvement in student wellbeing is not yet mirrored by an improvement in standardized test scores, which have stagnated since the pandemic led to school closures and remote learning in 2020 and 2021.

Students have also stopped vaping so much. Less than 8% of juniors in 2025 reported vaping or using an e-cigarette in the 30 days prior to taking the survey, much lower than 26% in 2019.

New questions in the 2025 survey asked students about their technology usage and exposure to guns: 1 in 10 fifth graders said they’ve “experienced people using guns to threaten or hurt others in person,” compared to around 6% for the other grades surveyed.

About 90% of high school students said they used social media every day, and a large portion of them — 37% of eighth graders and 44% of juniors — suspect they have a social media problem.

From fifth to 11th grade, over half of respondents reported using technology at odd hours at least one school night a week, infringing on sleep. Over 1 in 6 students, including those in fifth grade, said they use technology between midnight and 5am on all five school nights.

Attorney General Keith Ellison, along with other state attorney generals, has sued TikTok and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for allegedly addicting children and fueling the youth mental health crisis. Both lawsuits are ongoing.