Study: No Dates Correlates to Less Depression.

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The article seems to specifically address teens who are in relationships, rather than teens who ask each other out on dates and accept such invitations, just to be clear. Unfortunately, the term "dating" can easily confuse the reader unless the definition is made clear.

I think there are multiple levels in the hierarchy:

1.) Lowest are those who desire relationships but can't have them for a number of reasons that should seem obvious to most people.
2.) Next come those who are in relationships that are doing more harm than good to their emotional health. I think most of us will agree that having a successful relationship between two people is challenging. Many adults struggle with this so how can we expect teenagers to succeed?
3.) Next come those who choose to stay out of romantic relationships, again for all sorts of reasons, however observation of those in group 2.) might be one major reason.
4.) Finally there are those teenagers who are in successful, happy relationships. The ones destined to marry their high school sweetheart. My in-laws were in that category as teens, although being in a high-school relationship back then (the mid 40s) had significantly different implications as compared to today.

Without the resources or credentials to conduct a formal study, I would conclude that teens in group 1.) are in fact the most miserable, and those in group 4.) are the happiest, however groups 2.) and 3.) greatly outnumber the other two, so they dominate the results found in the report.

It could be that today's society tends to discourage serious romantic relationships between teens, whereas this wasn't true in my in-laws' day. For example, a girl's boyfriend might have been treated as a member of the family then, whereas today that same family might regard any boyfriend as a delinquent who basically just wants to use their daughter for his own ends.