Mind4Youth

Authors: Ny Ha, Jillian Bettencourt, and Bridget

Adolescence is a critical stage of life for all people regardless of origins or backgrounds. For many, one’s teenage years can either be the best time of their life, or the most dreadful. With adolescence being in between childhood and adulthood, this stage is filled with awkwardness and new circumstances to adapt to like the presence of social media, changes in schooling, and now, the Covid-19 pandemic.

Social media usage:

As social media usage becomes increasingly common in the lives of teens, so does the presence of mental health struggles. Many scholarly publications and popular news outlets agree that a correlation between the two is extremely likely. Some suggest that teens may view connecting with others via social media as a sufficient replacement for connecting with peers in-person, thus promoting a physical sensation of loneliness, which can lead to feeling depressed and/or anxious. 

Jean Twenge, a researcher of generational trends at San Diego State University, acknowledged the intersections between the amount of time spent by teenagers on social media compared to their increased feelings of loneliness. NPR Science Desk Correspondent, Michaeleen Doucleff, reported on Twenge’s research in her article: The truth about teens, social media and the Mental Health Crisis. Doucleff inserted a quote made by Twenge to NPR in 2017, “Smartphones were used by the majority of Americans around 2012, and that’s the same time loneliness increases. That’s very suspicious” (Doucleff, 2023).

Other online publications, such as Rachel Ehmke’s article for the Child Mind Institute, How using social media affects teenagers, declared that social media not only acts as an inadequate replacement for in-person socializing, but as a potential contributor to the rise of social anxiety in today’s teens. Ehmke states, “There are key differences to socializing online. Teens miss out on things like body language and facial expressions. This can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. It can also make talking in person feel more intimidating” (Ehmke, 2023). Not only can uncomfortable social interactions be traumatizing for socially anxious teens, but these experiences can also reinforce the idea that in-person interactions aren’t necessary for fulfilling the human desire for communication. This can feel especially true now, as the internet becomes more accessible and prevalent in our society.

Although the internet is, without a doubt, a revolutionary method of communicating, learning, and so much more, it also comes with a great danger to the current and future mental health of its users. 

School/Academics

School-based stress has proven to be a prominent factor contributing to mental health issues in teens today. At the micro-level, the stressors of school like meeting deadlines, homework, and tests all contribute to an adolescent’s sense of identity (Hogberg, 2021). At the macro-level, today’s service-based economy (Hogberg, 2021), has increased pressure for young people to not only do well in school, but to be exceptional in order to have higher chances of success in the future. The inevitable growth of education has become a dominant force in the lives of today’s youth creating pressure that will create significant impact during the ages 13-16 (Giota and Gustafsson, 2016). At this point, an individual’s life will drastically transform, especially with the presence of school since this is when teens shift from middle to high school. The shift in schooling at this age contributes to varying different issues, like wanting to fit in, pressure to find new friends in a changing environment, adjusting to the demands of more mature education, etc. All of these changes create feelings of overwhelmedness which all have the potential to create mental health problems for a developing teen,

A research study conducted by Joanna Giota and Jan-Eric Gustafsson included 9000 Swedish adolescents aged 13-16 years old sought to answer the question “What are the relations between perceived school demands and stress in grade 6 (13 years old) and how do changes in perceived school demands and stress between grade 6 and grade 9 (16 years old) relate to one another and to mental health problems?” (Giota and Gustafsson, 2016). A model used to illustrate the data of the study showed that students indicating low stress and feelings of demand in the sixth grade are bound to increase these levels once grade nine comes around. 

In grade six, one’s feelings of stress strongly correlate with an adolescent’s emotional distress, whereas in grade nine, feelings of stress are predictive of both emotional distress and psychosomatic symptoms (Giota and Gustafsson, 2016). This relationship indicates how the impact of stressors become increasingly harmful with age, as major changes in schooling occurs in an adolescent’s life. It is undeniable that school is becoming more and more of a driving force in the lives of today’s youth, which is why it is vital we assess the impact school has on the mental health outcomes of teens today. 

Covid- 19 Pandemic 

Despite the frenzy of the Covid-19 Pandemic fizzling out in recent years, long lasting effects of the pandemic remain an evident factor in the declining mental health of teens. When the world shut down, students and teachers were left to their academics in a remote setting, subject to seven hours of online classes, devoid of face-to-face interaction. A majority of teens, inevitably, developed stress, anxiety, and unhealthy habits that continue to plague their minds well into the years after.

 In 2022, a study was conducted by Icelandic and Columbia University researchers examining post-pandemic effects on the mental health of youth. An article about the study was written by Columbia University’s Jacqueline Teschon who noted that, “Perhaps the most striking finding of the newest study is that the elevated depressive symptoms and worsened mental health that were… maintained for up to two years into the pandemic” (Teschon 2023). For many adolescents, consistent isolation seemed to have a direct link to increased depression and anxiety. As humans are naturally social creatures, isolation would have an effect on one’s psyche and therefore this link would make logical sense. 

However, the opposition would argue that jumping back into the standard school model, after in-person learning was reinstituted, should have allowed teens to essentially revert back into pre-pandemic society without harm. But a study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that adolescents who lived through Covid-19 were neurologically affected by brain aging. The study also confirmed that in the short term, teens were reporting increased stress and anxiety.

 It’s important to recognize that although society has worked to move forward from the Covid-19 pandemic, the impact of its event for teen’s cannot be ignored.