What happened to our teens?!

After working for 12 years in high schools from 2010 to 2022 as a school counselor, I couldn’t believe the increase of self-reported anxiety I was seeing from students. When I first started volunteering as a mentor with high school students in 2003, there was no discussion of anxiety and very little mention of depression overall. By 2022 it felt like that was all I was hearing about and most of what I talked about with teenagers in my office. During 2020 and into 2021, it was staggering how many students I was assessing for suicidal ideation, self-harm concerns, and counseling as they returned from hospitalizations due to SI. 

So much of the landscape had changed for teens in just 15-20 years and with the pandemic in 2020, everything got so much worse. 

So what happened in those 15-20 years to make such a huge impact? Our kids started living much of their lives online, especially during Covid. According to Jonathan Haidt, NYU professor and researcher, smart phones and social media are causing social and sleep deprivation, a major reduction in attention and focus ability, and addiction. Social comparison and interaction is a major developmental step for adolescents and instead of doing this just within the school and neighborhood setting, teens are doing this at a much larger scale which is leading to anxiety and depression due to unrealistic standards and an overload of information.

When a teen shares with me concerns about anxiety and depression, one of my first recommendations is a major reduction in phone use, especially social media use. Many adolescents are spending 4+ hours on social media each day which is equivalent to a part-time job. If we want to reduce anxiety and depression within the adolescents we love, we have to start taking back control of where they’re spending their time. Parents can also consider the way they use social media and the amount of time spent scrolling. Even adults can get caught up in comparing themselves to unrealistic accounts, which in turn can cause anxiety and an unhealthy relationship with ourselves.