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Savanna Walker

Professor Moore

English 102

5 December 2018

Anxiety affects adolescent’s in a very serious way

Anxiety is a disorder that is hard to see on the surface, it is a disorder that affects many

people but is not visual. Anxiety affects people from all different walks of life, however it affects

more adolescents that any other age. Teenagers feel as if the weight of the world in on their

shoulders and everyone is pressuring them to do better and be better. Teenagers feel like

everyone is counting on them and they are afraid to let anyone down, they are afraid of failure.

As a young person that is a hard thought to deal with. Anxiety kicks in as soon as you feel like

you are letting someone down or you are failing at something, and it is a hard disorder to cope

with.

Anxiety is more prevalent in teenagers because they are trying to keep up with all the

things life is throwing at them. They are trying to find a healthy balance of keeping everyone

happy and keeping their selves happy as well, and that is not an easy task. When teenagers reach

college that is when anxiety because a big deal, because you are dealing with your future you

want to make sure you are focusing on school so that you can begin a debt-free life. “Over the

last decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek

counseling” (pg. 3). Although many people do seek help from counselors many people do not,

and that is the reality of this disorder. Anxiety does affect many people so much so that it has

acclaimed for people than depression has, but sometimes the two go hand in hand. Everyone is
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affected by anxiety in some form and some degree, but there are those with certain life factors

that are more likely to acquire anxiety. “For many young people, particularly those raised in

abusive families or who live in neighborhoods besieged by poverty or violence, anxiety is a

rational reaction to unstable, dangerous circumstances” (pg. 6). These are just some triggers that

may happen for people to develop anxiety, living in unstable conditions can affect your mental

health severely. However, people from higher social classes can be affected by anxiety.

Teenagers are more susceptible to anxiety because of the world we live in today, teenagers have

two separate worlds, their real one and their online one. Their online life opens a world of

problems, such as cyberbullying. Social media has become a trigger for anxiety. Although social

media affects teenagers, so does school life.

School life and anxiety play a big role together. The stress of school and being popular,

athletic, smart, having good grades would drive anyone crazy. Teenagers feel like they must be

the best version of themselves all the time and that is stressful, for anyone. An interview was

conducted with a teenage girl named Nora who has preparing for the college application process,

she began to experience anxiety. “Nora got counseling for her anxiety, which became crushing as

the college-application process ramped up. She’d fear getting an answer wrong when a teacher

called on her, and often felt she was not qualified to be in a class. “I don’t have pressure from my

parents. I’m the one putting pressure on myself”, she says” (Schrobsdorff). Teenagers build up

this pressure from anything, in Nora’s case she was worried about college and getting into the

perfect college so much so that she felt unworthy of everything she did. Teenagers are built up

with all this stress inside of them and given no tools with how to cope with the stresses of

becoming a teenager. The teenagers of today “are the post 9/11 generation, raise in an era of

economic and national insecurity” (Schrobsdorff). Teenagers have never known a time where
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they didn’t have to be fearful of what was going on, they haven’t lived in simpler times. These

teenagers have been affected in so many ways growing up, that it should be expected that they

will suffer from anxiety, they were never given a fair chance.

The statistics facing teenagers and anxiety is outrageous. They have got that odds stacked

against them in a sense. It is now more likely than it has ever been that you know a teenager

suffering from anxiety. Anxiety is a real problem that young people are left to struggle and cope

with. “In 2015, about 3 million teens ages 12 to 17 had had at least one major depressive episode

in the past year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services” (Schrobsdorff).

This tells you that this number has increased since then and will continue to increase. Anxiety

has affected, preteens, teens and adults. Anxiety affects many people every day, worldwide. The

numbers of the young people that are affected are outrageous and those are the numbers that are

documented. Researchers don’t know how many cases are undocumented, especially since many

teenagers with anxiety do not want to burden anyone with their issues. Schrobsdorff conducted

interviews with many people and “…there was a pervasive sense that being a teenager today is a

draining full-time job that includes doing schoolwork, managing a social-media identity and

fretting about career, climate, change, sexism, racism-you name it. Every fight or slight is

documented online for hours or days after the incident. It’s exhausting” (Schrobsdorff). These are

teenagers saying these things, and they are all to true. Teenagers feel that they have this image to

live up to, but they are also facing all these challenges. Anxiety in adolescents is a real thing.

Many people seem to mock the idea that teenagers could never have anxiety because they

are young and have so much of their life ahead of them to worry about things. What people don’t

realize is that teenagers have plenty of things to worry about amongst peers, their family, their

community, and their schools. Teenagers are always trying to be the best which creates this
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constant fear of never knowing if you are going to be good enough. The fear of failure is enough

to send a teenager into an anxiety attack. Anxiety is a real disorder that happens in everyday real

life, but especially in teenagers.

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Works Cited

Denizet-Lewis, Benoit. “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe

Anxiety?”. The New York Times. 11 October 2017.

Schrobsdorff, Susanna. “The Kids Are Not All Right (Cover Story)” Time, vol 188, no.19,

Nov.2016, pp.44-51 EBSCOhost, azwestern.idm.oclc.org/login?

url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=119124256&site=eds-

live.