Anxiety in Teenagers

Anxiety+in+Teenagers

Laura Conway, Sophomore Staff Writer

As of today, teens currently have the highest levels of anxiety and depression than ever before. This causes one to wonder, “Why today are teenagers so anxious?” Various components factor into anxiety. Anxiety is mainly caused by multiple aspects of stress. Stress can come from emotional trauma, such as losing a loved one, a mental disorder, such as clinical depression, and from high expectations, such as excessive schoolwork. As stress builds up more and more in an individual anxiety results. Side effects of anxiety includes, fatigue, restlessness, sweating, lack of concentration, and irritability. Teens today exhibit these effects due to high expectations, excessive school work, and an overall pressure of the expectation to be happy. High expectations include constant reassurance from family figures that tell their teen that they either are the best, or in some cases have to be. The teen then pressures him or herself that they will not succeed unless they become the best in their parents and their own eyes. Similarly average to honors classes in high school includes rigorous expected work required. The inability for each teen to balance school work, sleep, and socialization relies heavily on how much homework is assigned to them, which in most cases includes hours of tasks. Lastly the overall pressure given by all different figures of the expectation of happiness is enough to cause anxiety of the lack of happiness. Adolescents off or wrong if they aren’t always happy. This expectation will only make them stress over their rocky mental state rather than allow their mental health to develop naturally. Another large factor of anxiety in teens is, you guessed it, their easy access to information especially on cellular devices. Cell phones allow teens to see both what their fellow peers are doing as well as unhealthy projections of “idealistic lives” presented on social media. All in all teens today are overwhelmingly exhibiting anxiety and stresses that mentally will cause great harm.