ANXIETY IN TEENS

 Anxiety in people younger than 30 is usually confused with an exaggeration of stress, adults think there is no reason for a “kid” to have such worries to make them end up whit anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

 However thanks to the social pressures the teens now suffer this phenomenon is rather common, one out of three teenagers suffer from anxiety. It is believed that most of the psychological problems a teenager con suffer are because of the changes the body goes through during puberty.

 Anxiety in teenagers has always existed, but, since the pandemic the number of persons suffering from it have been raising exponentially, the reasons are not known for sure however there are some factors that are believed to have a big effect on this drastic change on the population. 

High expectations and pressure to succeed, they feel the goals the society expects them to reach are really high if not impossible, these are based most of the time on looks. The “Higher Education Research” does a survey every year and we can see in the results how the stress put on the students is every time higher, they asked the college freshmen if they felt overwhelmed by all the things they have to do, the next percentage represents the number of survey persons who said yes, in 2016 41%, in 200 28% and in 1985 only 18%. 

Social media is another factor which has a bigger impact on the self-esteem of the user, the teenagers are already going trough a hard time with puberty and the social media makes them compare themselves to another person who has stuff they want, or popular things, so this causes the users to feel less capable than the rest of the world.

 Another important factor will be the rapidly decrease of the security in what used to be a safe place, mainly because of the increasing shooting and terrorist attacks, places in which they used to feel safe are really dangerous. This makes it hard to go out or let your guard down to feel relaxed. 

Anxiety is a real and big problem that is been raising, the pandemic did not help, however is not too late to do something. 

If you now of someone who suffer from anxiety try and make them reach people who can help like a psychologist and remember is recommended that we all go to therapy once in a while to unload and lighten our problems. 

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/emotionalproblems/Pages/Anxiety-Disorders.asp

By: Diana Angélica Orozco Narvaez