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To be anxious has always been part of being a teenager. School, friendships, relationships, reputation, responsibilities, power, expectations.... It's normal to

• yunwal 4y ago
  > From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study This quote seems to suggest that being anxious has not always been part of being a teenager. What evidence do you have otherwise?
• plonk 4y ago
  > School, friendships, relationships, reputation, responsibilities, power, expectations.... It's normal to be worried/anxious! You say that like today's teens live in some dull high school drama. There's a loneliness epidemic, the environment is getting destroyed, money gets more concentrated each year, and house prices will be out of reach of most of today's teens for at least several decades, or possibly their whole lives. If you think all that is "the normal stress of being a teen", you're burying your head in the sand. Calling declining mental health "normal" and attributing it to "growing up" is a patronising perspective that implies teens are too dumb to be impacted by actual political and environmental problems, or alternatively, that these problems don't exist. I think we could do with less of that and more young influence in politics.