What are the Biggest Challenges Facing Teenagers Today?
Teenagers face many challenges throughout their lives. With becoming a high schooler, our responsibilities increase. They deal with everything from new chores and expectations at home to harder classes and more homework at school. Even in their social lives, keeping friendships and relationships gets much harder. It’s no secret that teenagers must overcome numerous challenges, but have those challenges gotten worse in recent years? How has the rise of technology and social media impacted us, and how much damage did Covid actually do?
It’s no secret that mental health has become much more prominent in recent years. A school counselor at Greenwood High School, Ms. LeAnn Freeman, agrees. “One of the biggest issues I see in teenagers today that probably hasn’t existed on such a large scale is anxiety,” Ms. Freeman said, “There’s a lot more anxiety ridden kids than there have been in the past for lots of reasons.” Depression and anxiety have been on the rise in recent years and while there are many things that could cause that. Ms. Freeman has her own theories, “One big thing, I think, is because the information that teenagers take in never stops. You guys are connected twenty four seven to all types of information,” which is truer than many people want to admit. With social media and messages and emails, we are always taking in new information. Ms. Freeman goes on to say, “It can be good information, but it’s just too much…my generation of students, when we were at school, we were at school and when we were at home, we were at home. There wasn’t much overlap, but for you guys, there’s tons of overlap. People can reach you at any time. That leads to so much anxiety because we aren’t built to be dealing with that much information all the time.” And it’s true. With the amount of technology we use, there’s no stopping the information we take in and the longer we have access to that volume of information, the more stressed and anxious a person is going to get. And unfortunately, our access to technology and information is not slowing down anytime soon.
Another concept that has been unseen in previous generations is Covid. The pandemic knocked schools out for a long time, leaving students to almost teach themselves at home. Mr. Adam Wilkins, a history teacher at Greenwood, speaks about the effects of the Covid year that he’s seen in the classroom. According to Mr. Wilkins, “Overall, Covid affected everyone very, very poorly… and some students got very independent and grew up and as far as school goes became self starters, but the vast majority of students struggled…we can still see the effects in the juniors I teach…there’s been a dip in AP scores and in my regular classes there are students that are just missing necessary skills. Even just simple reading and writing that they just never learned, things they should’ve gotten in like, seventh and eighth grade.” Covid affected teens today on a level that we’ve never seen and many scientists also credit the mental health decline to Covid.
Teenagers today face all the typical challenges. It’s an awkward time of life. We’re slowly beginning to form opinions and meeting new people and constantly saying goodbye and forming new chapters. The biggest challenge teenagers face today is successfully accomplishing the usual achievements with a whole new set of rules and obstacles. Covid hurt us, but we can overcome the effects and while technology can have many negatives, it also has many benefits and we can use those benefits to do amazing things. We just need to learn how to play by this new set of rules.
