During 2025, there was a dramatic increase in the amount of violence experienced by at-risk youth. The percentage of youth receiving support from ELEM who experienced sexual violence tripled, rising from 18% in 2024 to 50% in 2025. The percentage of youth who experienced violence at home nearly doubled, from 20% to 38%. The percentage who experienced violence outside the home rose from 31% in 2024 to 53% in 2025. The percentage who experienced online violence more than doubled, from 17% to 40%. The percentage of youth involved in prostitution increased more than threefold, from 9% to 32%.

The other side of those figures: the percentage of youth who perpetrated sexual harm increased fivefold, from 3% to 16%. And the statistic that ELEM considers the most alarming: more than 40% of the youth they treated in 2025 experienced three or more types of violence, compared with only 17% in 2024.

These findings come from ELEM’s 2025 report on youth in situations of risk. In 2025, ELEM teams met with approximately 5,800 at-risk youth in physical spaces and maintained contact with another 9,100 online. ELEM has 1,050 volunteers, 280 employees, and 120 freelancers.

The report’s title, “The Cracks Are Revealed” (הסדקים נחשפים), describes, according to its authors, “the critical transition from the ‘false resilience’ that characterized 2024 — a year in which youth mobilized survival forces in order to 'hold on,' while postponing their emotional distress — toward an open eruption of a deep fracture in 2025."

They explain that, paradoxically, the relative decrease in the intensity of the security emergency allowed trauma to surface, accompanied by anxiety, extreme loneliness, anger, expressions of violence, and a loss of direction. They add that the difficulty is intensified by the fact that even today, “this is a reality of ongoing trauma rather than a one-time event, characterized by tension, sirens, uncertainty, and the absence of routine.”

ELEM CEO Tali Erez says:

“There is violence almost everywhere, and people’s fuse is short. They arrive with pepper spray or a knuckle weapon, and things escalate very easily.”

Erez explains that ELEM’s teams treat everyone they are able to reach, and therefore ELEM does not have data showing an increase in the number of at-risk youth themselves — only an increase in the scale and severity of the distress among the youth they are treating.

ELEM emphasizes that violence does not occur in isolation. Among youth experiencing violence at home or sexual violence, 66% also experience suicidal thoughts. 61% of those experiencing online violence engage in self-harm. Among those experiencing violence outside the home, 58% have dropped out of an educational framework, and 69% have been involved in delinquency.

But violence is not the only severe issue that escalated in 2025, although its increase is especially striking. There was also an increase in the percentage of youth receiving support from ELEM who reported alcohol use, rising from 60% in 2024 to 66% in 2025. The percentage experiencing severe alcohol consumption doubled, from 8% to 15%. The percentage using drugs rose from 37% to 45%. Additional increases were seen in:

• Poverty and hunger: from 16% in 2024 to 21% in 2025
• Homelessness: from 7% to 12%
• Eating disorders: from 11% to 27%

“I’m hungry all the time,” one teenage girl said. “There isn’t always food at home, and I’m ashamed to tell anyone.”

A serious issue highlighted in the report concerns suicidality. Youth who have experienced loss show a rate of suicidal thoughts/behavior 3.7 times higher than youth who have not experienced loss (45% compared with 12%). 82% of those who experienced loss report loneliness, and 75% report depression and anxiety, meaning these are extreme levels of distress.

The percentage of all youth receiving support from ELEM who suffer from depression and anxiety increased from 41% in 2024 to 50% in 2025. However, the report found that at-risk boys and girls tend to express distress differently. Girls show higher rates of internalized distress, while boys show higher rates of risk-taking behaviors:

• 54% of boys use drugs compared with 38% of girls
• 38% of boys report risky behavior compared with 12% of girls
• 45% of girls report eating disorders compared with 16% of boys
• 24% of girls report suicidality, three times the rate among boys (8%)
• 21% of girls self-harm compared with 5% of boys

The report notes that this is connected to the fact that significantly more girls report loneliness and social difficulties.

Although most of the report focuses on 2025, it also compares the condition of at-risk youth during two rounds of war with Iran. It found a deep worsening in young people’s emotional and behavioral state. During "Operation Roaring Lion" (Israel's current war with Iran), there was:

• a 70% increase in reports of self-harm
• a 73% increase in levels of anger
• a 30% increase in anxiety levels
• a 21% increase in the use of harmful substances