Dear Readers:

American Psychology Association surveyed and discovered that lots of teenagers feel engulfed in stress and 30% of teens feel depressed because of that stress (American Psychology Association). Teenage stress is a big deal and affects lots of young adults. It can affect how they act, eat and work. Teenage stress is a real issue and they get stressed because they are forced to do so much in a little amount of time and have very high expectations made to be successful.

The first reason why teenage life is stressful is that they have to do so much in such little time. Teenagers are given so much homework everyday and they only have the few hours at home to complete it. They have different classes with different due dates and they have to manage their time extremely well. Another reason is that teens play sports and are in after school activities. Teenagers have to deal with school and then immediately after go to practice and other after school activities, which just takes away from the little time they have. According to Psychology Today, “Most teens work to earn money, which they like but it takes time away from other things” (Villanueva). Villanueva gives a great point; teens have all of their educational and athlete needs everyday but then most teens have after school jobs which is limiting them to almost no time for any downtime for themselves. People may say that teens have lots of time to do all of their after school activities, but they don’t take into consideration the amount of sleep a teenager should get, which according to Nationwide Children is 9.5 hours a night. Most kids will have no time once they do all of their after school activities will have no time for any spare/free time before they should go to sleep.

The second reason teenage life is so stressful are the expectations put on them. Adults give teenagers high expectations for their grades. They are expected to study out of school; so they can keep their grades up. Another reason is that teenagers are given a huge responsibility to get into a good college. Teens believe that they must attend the best college to be able to get a good job. According to Psychology Today, failure is a fear of teens and they believe they have to be good at everything they do (Villanueva). Teenagers feel a great pressure from all the people around them to be perfect. It’s not good that they feel like that because no one is perfect but they still believe they need to be.

As stated, teenage stress is caused by two main reasons: the little amount of time teens have to complete all of their responsibilities and the high expectations that the adults in their life give. Teenage stress is a big deal and affects lots of young adults, it affects how they act, eat and work. This big problem can not be eliminated but it can be reduced. If we can reduce the amount of triggers of teenage stress that we expose our young adults to, then we can dwindle this problem and slowly but surely until teens have a manageable amount of stress in their lives.

Sincerely,

Tyler D