Title: Our Teens Are More Stressed Than Ever: Why, and What Can You Do About It? — Developmental Science
Headings: Our Teens Are More Stressed Than Ever: Why, and What Can You Do About It?
Our Teens Are More Stressed Than Ever: Why, and What Can You Do About It?
The popular bogeyman
Are teens the canaries in the coal mine?
Resurrecting an old theory: Healthy identity development
What else is protective against stress?
Photo credits: D. Divecha, Unknown, D. Divecha, S. Burkhart, M. Divecha, R. Archibald
Copyright 2019 Diana Divecha

Content: Neurological changes occur in puberty that draw their attention outward, beyond the family, and their cognition allows them to ponder big issues in more abstract and sophisticated ways. Because they take in more and more of the outside world, what teens absorb is increasingly stressful. And high schools reinforce that expanding view with curricula on current social events. Yet teenagers have no prior experience and few strategies for dealing with this new level of exposure. More than two thirds of adults and teens surveyed by the APA said that the future of the country caused them significant stress and that the U.S. is on the “wrong path.” Teens had additional concerns: 75% of them were stressed about gun violence, mass shootings, and school shootings. This is not surprising given that 288 shootings have occurred in the U.S. since 2009, 57 times the rate of all other developed nations combined. More teens than adults feel stressed by societal issues like rising suicide rates, climate change, immigration separation and deportation issues, and sexual harassment and assault. More teens than adults worry about work, money, and health alongside more age-relevant issues like bullying, peer conflict, gender identity, and sexual orientation.