{"id":67959,"date":"2025-08-15T03:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T03:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/67959\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T03:23:08","slug":"why-teens-are-so-stressed-according-to-an-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/67959\/","title":{"rendered":"Why teens are so stressed, according to an expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, help is available. Dial or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org<\/a> for free and confidential support.<\/p>\n

As teens head back to school this fall, many parents are worried about their mental health. And for good reason: Teens today \u2014 especially girls \u2014 are much more likely to say that they feel persistently sad or hopeless<\/a> and think about suicide than they did a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Forty percent of high school students reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2023, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey<\/a> by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure was down from a high of 42% two years earlier, during the Covid-19 pandemic, but is about 10 percentage points higher than a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

\"Journalist<\/p>\n

Journalist Matt Richtel shares insight into why teens are so stressed out in his new book, \u201cHow We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence.\u201d – Mariner Books<\/p>\n

The journalist Matt Richtel sheds light on the teen mental health crisis and what can be done about it in his new book, \u201cHow We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence<\/a>.\u201d Richtel, a Boulder, Colorado-based science reporter for The New York Times, spent four years researching adolescents for the book.<\/p>\n

In our conversation, Richtel offered important insight into why teens are so stressed and what we can do about it.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

CNN: What explains today\u2019s teen mental health crisis?<\/p>\n

Matt Richtel: Adolescent mental health is best understood by understanding what adolescents are going through, and there is new science that helps explain it. They have a highly sensitized brain in a period of time when the world is moving very quickly, and they are receiving a ton of information. Sometimes what they experience is a kind of information overload that looks like intense rumination, anxiety and other mental health distress.<\/p>\n

CNN: Does a lot of that information overload come from social media?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Sort of. There is a misconception that the phone is the singular or overwhelming source of the problem. In fact, the science is more complicated.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, adolescents faced immense challenges with binge drinking, drunk driving, early experimentation with sex, injury and death. Those risks have fallen sharply. What\u2019s important about that context is that it tells us there is a larger issue going on during this pivotal life period and that merely taking the phones away will not solve it.<\/p>\n

There is reason to limit access to phones because screen time displaces sleep, exercise and in-person interactions. At the same time, the challenges adolescents face come from a larger phenomenon.<\/p>\n

CNN: What is the larger phenomenon to explain why adolescence is such a tough time?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Adolescence is a process with a very important purpose: the integration of the known and unknown in a fast-changing world. The known is what your parents tell you is true, like you should read books. The unknown is what actually works as this world is changing. For instance, maybe books aren\u2019t the thing anymore.<\/p>\n

This integration of known and unknown creates an enormous sense of internal conflict for an adolescent. My parents, who love me and feed me, told me one thing, but I am discovering something else.<\/p>\n

This is happening against the backdrop of the falling age of puberty. As puberty happens earlier, it sensitizes the adolescent brain earlier in life to all this information at a time when the rest of their brain isn\u2019t particularly equipped to deal with it. This creates a kind of neurological mismatch between what an adolescent can take in and what they can process.<\/p>\n

\"Parents<\/p>\n

Parents are the biggest influencers in their children’s lives, according to Richtel. – Halfpoint Images\/Moment RF\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

CNN: Does this also help explain why teens often don\u2019t listen to their parents?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Yes. They don\u2019t listen to their parents because they\u2019re making a transition from being cared for by their parents to needing to learn to care for themselves and their offspring. Some of the research about how teens stop listening to their parents and start listening to strangers is almost funny.<\/p>\n

Sometimes when your kids look at you with that blank face, you\u2019re not looking at a jerk but at evolutionary biology.<\/p>\n

I would say to parents, please don\u2019t take this stuff personally. You can say to your kid, \u201cHey, please stop! You sound like a jerk. I don\u2019t like that.\u201d But that\u2019s very different from taking it personally.<\/p>\n

CNN: You call this generation of teens \u201cGeneration Rumination.\u201d Why?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Adolescents are programmed to explore the world around them. In the old days, that exploration happened outside. \u201cI\u2019m going to forge this river. I\u2019m going to climb this mountain. I\u2019m going to jump off this roof.\u201d Particularly since the 1960s, but even more so now, a lot of exploration happens on the inward side.<\/p>\n

When it happened on the outside, there were a lot of broken bones. In the last few decades, we\u2019ve seen more people with mental health questions.<\/p>\n

Questions have emerged in the past 20 years that no one bothered to talk about previously. Like what is a boy and what is a girl? As uncomfortable as it is for people, it\u2019s part of the survival mechanism of the human species, to have adolescents explore for themselves and for others.<\/p>\n

CNN: You say that many teens don\u2019t know why they feel awful when they have loving families and all their physical needs are met. Why?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Here\u2019s an example of what it\u2019s like to feel like an adolescent. Let\u2019s say, as a parent, you get in a fight with your spouse the same day that your boss leaves. Then you get a bad night of sleep, and the next day you\u2019re driving down the road and you look over and see a driver who gives you a look. You experience road rage. It\u2019s not all about that driver. And maybe that driver was actually smiling. It\u2019s about the combination of factors that have led you to feel really intensely. We feel like that occasionally as parents. Adolescents feel like that all the time.<\/p>\n

So, when they say they don\u2019t understand why they feel that way, I think we can empathize, or at least sympathize as parents, that when you\u2019re highly sensitized to your environment with a bit less sleep and a lot of moving parts, it\u2019s overwhelming.<\/p>\n

CNN: Some people think the reason more teens have mental health problems today is because we diagnose and talk about them more than in the past. Or do more teens actually have mental health problems now?<\/p>\n

Richtel: I think both things are true. There are more teens with mental health challenges, and we are scrutinizing it greatly.<\/p>\n

CNN: You say that social media affects different kids very differently. Why is this?<\/p>\n

Richtel: Some kids, interestingly, are actually in a better mood after using social media. Some kids are in a worse mood. It really depends on your genetic predisposition and how much you use it.<\/p>\n

If you use it all the time, you\u2019re displacing things we know to be really healthy (like sleep, exercise and in-person interactions). That\u2019s really important. But using it in the moment can affect different kids differently. Some kids wind up happier.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lonely and you want to connect with somebody, that\u2019s different than if you\u2019re predisposed to compare yourself with somebody else and every time you see the ostensibly healthy, wealthy, beautiful person online, you say, \u201cI am terrible by comparison.\u201d Or you see the fit person online and say, \u201cI need to stop eating.\u201d But not everybody has that predisposition.<\/p>\n

CNN: As kids head back to school, what advice do you have for parents when their teens get overwhelmed?<\/p>\n

Richtel: We need to teach our kids coping skills.<\/p>\n

Some of what they need is to let the emotion out, not to try to have a rational conversation. If your kiddo says, \u201cEveryone in the ninth grade hates me,\u201d that\u2019s not so rational. It\u2019s probably a product of a whole bunch of things, such as sleeplessness, a bad experience or trying to deal with a lot of information.<\/p>\n

The coping skills we\u2019re talking about here include things like putting your face in the snow, taking a cold shower or exercise, all of which allow your neurotransmitters and neurochemicals to settle down.<\/p>\n

If you can afford it, cognitive behavioral therapy<\/a> and dialectical behavioral therapy<\/a> are tools that let people understand that these sensations they\u2019re having in their bodies can be addressed and let go of, so that the next day you can have the question, \u201cDoes everyone in ninth grade really hate me? Oh, yeah, Doug likes me, I forgot. So does Sarah. It\u2019s going to be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, in the moment, if you try to have that conversation with your kid, you\u2019re adding more information to a brain that\u2019s already paralyzed. An overwhelmed kid is like a computer with a blue screen. When we\u2019re adding more information, it\u2019s like hitting the enter key over and over again. It\u2019s not going to do anything.<\/p>\n

Let them emote without trying to talk reason. It\u2019s hard for them to be rational in the midst of overload, so wait until they\u2019re ready to listen to you. Parents really are the biggest influencers in their kids\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her book \u201cOver the Influence<\/a>: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls \u2014 And How We Can Take It Back\u201d was published in 2024 by Alcove Press.<\/p>\n

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, help is available. Dial or text 988…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1822,102,35582,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-67959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-adolescence","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-matt-richtel","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}