Why are we so stressed? Recently, these past years for teens have been really tough. We stress out about things that should not be stressful, and it seems to be getting worse and worse with each year. 

Statistics show that both teens and young adults have had a huge increase of suicide, stress, depression, as well as anxiety. One cause of this is social media. It’s not that we’re obsessed with it or care about follower count, it’s what we see on there that can affect us. We see these super “edgy memes” pretty much everyday. As these may be giving us a laugh or two, who knows what this could be doing to our mental health? With these edgy memes, you also risk the fact of seeing gore and other disturbing images and videos all over the internet. This can open us up to harming our mental health without even knowing it. 

Another cause of this could be school. The pressure schools put on teens nowadays is insane. Sometimes, teachers don’t understand just how stressed their students could be. (Which isn’t their fault because they don’t know every detail of every single student’s life.) It’s just something that should be taken into consideration when a student’s grades drop out of nowhere, or they might not understand what’s being taught. This can lead to teens thinking negatively about themselves because they may feel like they aren’t intelligent or living up to certain standards. 

Finally, another cause of stress in teens is parental standards. Parental standards are the standards parents put on their children. As an example, parents may expect their children to go to college even though that may not be what the child wants. Parental standards can be very stressful on teenagers because they want to make their parents happy and to not be a “disappointment” to them. They could be trying their best but not getting the best grades, which can take a toll on their self confidence, as well as their mental health in general. 

   So what can we do about this? Teachers could give teenagers less of a hard time when it comes to homework, for starters. Schools could allow students to be able to take a mental health day once a month. Health should come before school, mental or physical. It’s not stupid to give yourself some self care. Give time for yourself when you need it.