The growing teen epidemic: Stress
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Why are teens so stressed?
Teens routinely say that their school-year stress levels are far higher than they think is healthy and their average reported stress exceeds that of adults, per an annual survey published by the American Psychological Association. On average, teens reported their stress level was 5.8 on 10-point scale, compared with 5.1 for adults.
The most common reported sources of stress were school (83 percent), getting into a good college or deciding what to do after high school (69 percent), and financial concerns for their family (65 percent). In another survey on youth stress, the sources were school work (78 percent), parents (68 percent), romantic relationships (64 percent), friend problems (64 percent) and younger siblings (64 percent).
How is stress affecting them?
The APA’s Stress in America survey found that 30 percent of teens reported feeling sad or depressed because of stress and 31 percent felt overwhelmed. Another 35 percent of teens reported that stress caused them to lie awake at night and 26 percent said that they are overeating or eating unhealthy foods in the past month.
The pressures of schoolwork, family life, social life, sports or other activities, combined with a relentless media culture, result in young people being more stressed than ever before. As indicated, stress is also impacting teen’s sleep. They reported sleeping on average 7.4 on school nights and 8.1 hours on non-school nights,
In recent discussion, many Americans have been aware of teen stress. According to the New York post, millennials spend about 63 days of the year stressed out and worried, according to new research. That's nearly 20 percent of teens in America. High school is the biggest cause of teen stress coming from a teenager herself. Although I concede that that the best way to cope with teen stress is interacting with certain healthy activities, I still insist the best way for teens to cope with stress is dependent on the teens interest with any activity, that can be considered healthy or not to others. There are known to be many ways Teens can handle stress, the problem is what can be considered the “best” way. How we should not enforce the same coping methods on every teen due to consider every person is different, and can potentially hurt more than help.
44% of Americans feel more stress today than they have felt in the past 5 years. (American Psychology Association, 2015). Stress, a silent killer, has become a typical occurrence ranging amongst all generations. The American Psychology Association rates the top three causes of stress as money, work, and family responsibilities.Though stress has become more common amongst the population, knowing how to cope seems to be less known. Through education and applying coping skills, we can lead a strong and healthy lifestyle.
For teens, one of the biggest factors of stress is school and academics. Stress can be caused by worrying about your grades, receiving excessive amounts of homework and studying, while balancing social life and sports or outside school activities. In an interview taken by the 8th grade students of Hillsborough Middle school, 100% of the students said
As a result of a changing body and mind, adolescent sleep cycles have different needs than those of adults or younger children. As a matter of fact, Biologically, sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence -- meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm (“Teens”). In addition to biological change in sleep patterns, teenagers also tend to have eccentric sleep cycles. Obtaining less than healthy hours of sleep during the school week and then catching up on their sleep on the weekends. Most teenagers during the school week, do not get the suggested amount of sleep. In fact, according to a recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 80% of teenagers do not get the suggested amount of sleep of 9 hours on school nights (“School Start”). With changing bodies and minds, along with an increased amount of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, teenagers need more sleep than children of a younger age. Experts believe that moving back the start time of school for high school students will improve grades, test scores, and the overall health and personality of many students.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of stress on the lives of youth. Adolescents are exposed to a plethora of stressors that range from family discord (Omizo, Omizo, & Suzuki, 1988) to peer relationships (Newcomb, Huba, & Bentler, 1986; Patterson & McCubbin, 1987) to economic hardships (Lempers, Clark-Lempers, & Simon, 1989). However, the most frequently reported stressors stem
A new national survey suggests that teens across the US are feeling high levels of stress that they say negatively affect every aspect of their lives. More than a quarter (27%) say they experience "extreme stress" during the school year versus the minor 13% in the summer. 34% expect stress to increase in the coming
Stress is the most common thing in a teen’s life. The most common stressors are School, Work, Family Environment, and even Friendships/relationships. Those are the top categories that teens stress about. Most of the stress is natural and normal, but too much stress can cause serious problems. It is said that female teens have a higher rate than boys to stress out (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20322801#.UqJn8UPnaUk). Teens should learn how to manage stress in a productive and calming way.Excessive stress can build up making it hard to focus on things that are important. Too much stress can make it harder to fight illnesses like the cold. It also makes it hard time fighting against cancer. How a person
Stress occurs when there is a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs your physical or mental equilibrium in the brain. “Together, sleeping and engaging in educational activities accounted for almost two-thirds of high school students’ time on an average day. On average, students slept for 8.1 hours and preformed educational activities, such as attending class and doing homework, for 7.5 hours” (Allard, 2008). With your majority of concentration on school work, stress becomes a major
There are many cause and effects to teenage stress in the day of age we live in. Some causes are the amount of homework, doing too many extracurricular activities, and putting too much pressure on yourself. Some effects of teenage stress are not getting enough sleep, not getting you homework done on time, and stressing yourself out majorly. There are many other reasons why stress is so bad for teenagers. I listed three causes on why teenagers stress and three effects on what they do when they are stressed. Next time you start stressing, just take a deep breath and don’t
Why are teenagers so stressed out? Over and over again, I have heard adults say that teenagers have no reason to be stressed. In my opinion, I don't think teenagers are given enough credit considering how much stress we are actually put under. For example, a teenager is at school for roughly 8 hours. After school, they are expected to go home, study and do homework for around 4+ hours. At minimum, teenagers need 9 hours of sleep, due to their developing brains. Taking all of this into account, that leaves about 3 hours for activities such as eating, bathing, socializing (which is incredibly important for emotional, mental, and physical health, as well as the development of skills vital to their future career and having healthy relationship among other things), religious activities, hobbies, extra curricular activities, medical care of any kind, chores (a habit that helps to develop responsibility and is also required by many parents), relaxation, and family time. Not only this, but the teen's parents may pressure him or her into getting a job for economic reasons, or the teen might want one to earn extra spending money or to learn new skills. It seems quite clear that teenagers have significant reasons to be
A very important factor of stress is school. School can cause a lot of stress. "One of the greatest sources of pressure is school. Where we are herded like cattle from room to room, chewing on our cud, while the hay of knowledge is force fed to us as we are trying our hardest to gulp it down as more and more is shovelled in"( ).Grades can act upon stress. Students may think that you always need good grades, parents can cause this or even just their own minds. Teens want to get into a good college so they stress. "Stress is created by parental pressure to perform and to stand out among other children. When they can't rise up to that expectation, or during the process of meeting it, children may suffer from frustration, physical stress, aggression, undesirable complexes, and depression"( ). Students who are involved in extra activities, usually develope unfriendliness, jealousy, shyness, and may become loners ( ). "Over scheduling a student's life can put them under stress. A child's in school and after school activities should be carefully arranged to give them some breathing space. Parents may want him to learn music, painting, or be outstanding in a
Stress is the body 's normal emotional and physical response to different stimuli and different situations that it may encounter. Any situation, either positive or negative, may start to become dangerous when it builds up to a point of being overwhelmed. It is a common experience for teens to feel stress because they are starting to experience the world for the first time. Teens are forced to think for themselves and are less sheltered from the problems facing our world today, such as drugs and alcohol
Stress is a problem for today’s teenagers. There are many reasons for stress, including bullying, homework, and family problems. There are also many things that can happen because of stress, like suicide,depression, insomnia, and anxiety. This is how stress happens and what can happen from it.
The issues of youthful substance mishandle is essentially caused by stressful life occasions, peer impact and neglection of youngsters by guardians.
On the other hand, the consequences of stress will be tougher to handle than the causes. There are four main kinds of stress symptoms. The primary the first are psychological and emotional. Enclosed within the cognitive or psychological symptom category is negative thinking. “A negative attitude is self-defeating” (Gallozzi). Having a poor perspective will not fix the problem; it will only become more self-destroying. A foul attitude will result in poor judgment. An excellent example could be a straight a student who becomes stressed, begins not taking school seriously, and may potentially find themselves failing. The teenager may then begin to feel everyone seems to be against them and that they have no chance of succeeding in life. One factor leads to another then they are left with the emotional problems. “Chronic stressful life situations can increase the risk of developing depression if you aren't coping with the stress well” (Hall-Flavin). The consequences of stress can have a large emotional toll on an individual and can result in additional serious illnesses like depression if not managed properly. Sooner or later it will result in having to make medicine for the rest of their life. Moodiness and anxiety also are some key symptoms a teenager could also be