Teenagers Strive to Survive the World’s Pressures

Many adults and teachers try to imagine the perspective of their children or students.  Parents try to compare their childhood to that of teenagers now, and most of the time, teachers cannot fathom the workload that their students try to handle daily. Quickly, adults forget that teenagers have more on their plate in this day and age than what they had. 

Such different stresses and pressures can directly affect the mood of a teenager.  Many experts believe that this is the main cause of common depressive episodes seen in young adults. According to the CDC, the rate of diagnosing depression is most commonly seen in the ages of 15-24. Unfortunately, harming oneself is one of the primary ways that people are coping with this syndrome. In addition, as seen by a study done by Young Minds, the rates of self-harm for women and young girls have gone up at an alarming rate. 

Currently, there are many different ways that a teenager can feel stressed. Some of the most common causes are peer pressure and academic burdens. These modern expectations can lead to a child feeling stressed, anxious, and worried. In reference to a study done by a parenting website, the main culprit for students becoming stressed is school workload. Many children feel pressured to excel at school work. For some, the difficulty of the school work that is being given during the day, followed by the hours of homework that is being given to them each evening, can be overwhelming and lead to excessive stress. With a lack of free time, it may also seem that a child does not have any time to blow off steam after receiving this load of work. 

In addition to the workload that is being given to children, there is also the variable of societal pressures that can be enforced at a young age. A survey done by the Pew Research Center shows that 67% of students feel the need to maintain appearances in today’s society. It’s no surprise that many teens have unrealistic expectations about image. For some, this focus on unattainable perfection may lead to extreme measures, such as eating disorders, drug use to lose weight, or steroids to strengthen and improve body image. Other teens simply feel stressed in trying to keep up with their view on the prettiest, thinnest, or most fashionable kids at school. 

“A teenager’s brain is only about 80 percent developed,” says Gurinder Dabhia, a pediatrician at Scripps Clinic Rancho Bernardo. “Teens have extra unconnected synapses in the area where risk assessment occurs, and this gets in the way of judgment. In addition, the prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, which makes teens more sensitive to peer pressure and risky, impulsive behavior.”

In conclusion, society is putting pressure on teenagers to behave a certain way and fit in with society, when in reality, they are just trying to survive the world that has been handed to them.