Ethan Lindenberger, frustrated by years of arguments about his mother’s anti-vaccination stance, staged a quiet defection via Reddit.
The Norwalk, Ohio, teenager needed advice, he said, on how to inoculate himself against infectious disease and his family's dogma. At 18, he was old enough, Lindenberger explained. 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 metastasize 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.