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While I don't doubt that social media can drive some of these mental health issues, I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's nec

by nluken 4y ago

While I don't doubt that social media can drive some of these mental health issues, I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I'm 24, so I would have been a teenager in 2012, but I didn't have a smartphone until I was 16 or so. My high school experience consisted almost entirely of school, studying, and running (my primary extracurricular). Most of the little extra time I had remaining would go to additional extracurricular activities that had the potential to enhance my college application. I only really got to socialize by talking to my teammates on our runs. As a result, even when I had extra time I was so burnt out and stressed from everything else that I felt consumed by anxiety. I would sometimes start crying spontaneously after I got home in the evenings. Things only started getting better when I started seeing a therapist and worked on my issues over the second half of my high school experience. Not everyone is so lucky. If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. Sure, less social media would help, but it won't solve the root of the problem. Today's society demands so much from adolescents for so little in return. It's very easy to think that you're a failure if you don't know exactly who you are and what you want to be at age 17, and that's not a fair expectation for any 17 year old. We shouldn't be surprised that many break under this kind of pressure.

FrontierPsych 4y ago
I think it dependson one's personality type. All those things didn't affect me because I didn't care about any of it. I made barely enough grades to barely squeeze into university. I just didn't care, not too much. I would think that college admissions is too narrow of a reason as to why. Only about 35% of high school graduates go on to university. I'm sure a significant number of university attendees don't have these issues to the extent that they have to go to a therapist. It's great that you went, wonderful that you did, but I am not convinced that anywhere near the majority of university students had that much pressure - to the extent of having their life break down. I do agree that everyone needs a healthier lifestyle.
xeromal 4y ago
> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I have absolutely no data to back this up but a difficult college admission process isn't novel to 2012+. This is also ignores the plenty of kids/young adults that never went to college and still suffer from whatever this epidemic is. We'd need to review data for people who didn't go to undergrad/grad to see if your idea still holds truth.
- RangerScience 4y ago
  * people who didn’t try to go If stress from college prep is an issue, it’s only people that weren’t going through that who you’d want in the other bucket.
carabiner 4y ago
40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). Of those, only a tiny portion are focused on elite universities. Many are just going to Long Beach State, University of Redlands and other 4 year schools that you've never heard of. They have lax admissions. Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)
  - mouse_ 4y ago
    I guarantee most of these "high achieving high anxiety types" live with significantly less anxiety than customer service reps/bag handlers/food service workers.
    - tdesilva 4y ago
      Why do you think that?
      - rfrey 4y ago
        Because most of us can afford food for our families, even in the last week of the month.
        WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
        Yeah. I did a decade where that wasn't the case. Poverty is longer and harder in southern states.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        None of them make six figures while browsing HN
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HEmanZ 4y ago
I understand your point, because I was the same. But I’m not sure our experience is a super common one among teens. Reason I think this now, is that I have volunteered at large local high schools for college admission help. There just aren’t that many students who get pushed or push themselves like this. The majority in the US don’t go to college, and the vast majority don’t put in a stressful amount of effort into college/career prep and extra-curricular activities. I don’t know what theory to replace it with, but I don’t think the majority of the students in the US are overworked like this.
wirrbel 4y ago
Coincidentally 2012 is IIRC the year I bought (then a university student) my first smart phone. IIRC when doing my abroad term overseas the american students all had smartphones in like 2010, I think most where on plans that provided smartphones eventually. So I would not be surprised if smartphones are part of the reason for a poor state of mental heath.
nixass 4y ago
I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, your peers and parents all tell you. You pretty much have a series of "one chance" events that you must pass or you're done for. Failure of any step is permanent, and affects your average (seemingly) forever. The whole path from elementary school through to college graduation feels like a career development game where the stakes are raised every year. Fail once off the path, and it's Walmart Greeter for you, forever! It's no wonder I still wake up in a cold sweat over it, 30 years on.
- pasquinelli 4y ago
  sounds like the process of becoming a civil servant in imperial china. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination > During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), authorities narrowed the content down to mostly texts on Neo-Confucian orthodoxy; the highest degree, the jinshi (Chinese: 進士), became essential for the highest offices. On the other hand, holders of the basic degree, the shengyuan (生員), became vastly oversupplied, resulting in holders who could not hope for office. Wealthy families, especially from the merchant class, could opt into the system by educating their sons or by purchasing degrees. During the late 19th century, some critics within Qing China blamed the examination system for stifling scientific and technical knowledge, and urged for some reforms. At the time, China had about one civil licentiate per 1000 people. Due to the stringent requirements, there was only a 1% passing rate among the two or three million annual applicants who took the exams.[3]
- coredog64 4y ago
  Something to consider is that many European countries aggressively track students in conjunction with that free/cheap college. As a consequence, failing during early education can put them onto the vocational track much earlier than you’d see for a U.S. student.
ok_dad 4y ago
> If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. We (American here) need to take a step back and let everyone enjoy life. That means providing healthcare, food, and shelter to every single person so that they can live their life and work in a non-anxiety-inducing way. Every therapist I've talked to in the past few years has told me that they think the number one thing that would reduce their workload is if people weren't so stressed about paying for the most basic things for their family. Most of the people they see would still have issues they need to deal with, but wouldn't be on the precipice of suicide and taking loads of pills. That's an anecdote, but to me it's clear that the "hustle culture" and lack of social support have combined in the USA to make things very hard for the average American. This applies to kids directly, too, because that hustle has to start pre-college!
- 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
  right, teen kids are so worried about healthcare costs! Gimmie a break, your comment has nothing to do with the article, it's low effort and a better fit for reddit
  - tasspeed 4y ago
    you're ignorant or extremely privileged if you think kids dont worry. have you ever had a parent be ill and your family has no money for their treatment?
    - 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
      OK, you got me. A lack of socialized everything that started in 2012 is the cause of the teen mental illness epidemic. Get out and vote everyone!!!
      - tasspeed 4y ago
        [flagged]
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Loughla 4y ago
>I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I am 100% behind this, and a lot of my professional career has been spent in higher education, specifically working with college access programs for pre-college students. The amount of pressure kids are under today is just astounding. When I was looking at colleges, the pressure started slightly in 10th or 11th grade. Now, it's in the grade schools. Colleges are trying to get into 6th grade classes to "offer services" (read: recruit those kids under the pretense of supplementing underfunded school classrooms). This may come off as a "things were better in my day" but hear me out: I played baseball starting in kindergarten. There were summer YMCA leagues, and a couple of kids played baseball on travel teams in junior high and high school. The really good ones got scouted in college, but 99% of us were in it because we liked the game and liked playing. No matter what our parents may have dreamed, we knew it was a fun way to be part of something we liked. My oldest plays baseball, he started in kindergarten, and has played all the way to high school now. He loves the game, but we also made sure it was a game, not a job. All kids in his class who could afford it were on travel teams, starting in first grade. All but three have private coaches for whatever position they specialize in. . . starting in first grade. The parents sponsored tournaments. The parents made sure their travel team attended tournaments that college scouts or colleges sponsored. Starting in first grade. The kids on his school team (town population of around 1000, school k-12 enrollment is around 400) have literally played or practiced baseball every weekend, barring some holiday weekends, since they were 5 years old. That is not an exaggeration, it is a statement of fact. I actually got cornered by other parents asking why out child (left handed) wasn't going to be on the travel team when they were little, because he'd be a great pitcher. In first grade. They were absolutely astounded that I said I just couldn't get behind putting that much pressure on a child. I don't think that people over the age of about 32 understand just how unbelievable the pressure is on kids these days. They're expected to be ON all the time, and their future is at risk if they're not. Parents see it as just trying to set their kids up for the best future possible. But it's so much pressure. It's astounding. I live in a poor, rural area. I have to imagine it's much worse in urban/affluent areas. And that's not even touching on the fact that social media and technology means the students literally cannot get away from social issues and bullying. That's a whole other thing.
- 4y ago
e40 4y ago
And the deteriorating job market when they get out. My son has struggled/struggles with this. I 100% understand and I would, too, if I were in his position. I compare his situation to mine and they are night and day. The prevailing sentiment when I was in college: get a degree (in anything) and you'll be OK if you want to work hard.
- nradov 4y ago
  What deteriorating job market? Despite some recent high profile tech industry layoffs, the US unemployment rate is 3.4%. There are jobs available for those who want to work. They may have to move. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-you-dont-have-recession-when-us-unemployment-53-year-low-2023-02-06/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-you-dont-have-rece... A recent survey showed that most college students seriously overestimate their earnings potential. There is a mismatch in expectations. Students graduating with low-value degrees need to take whatever job they can get and work their way up. https://www.realestatewitch.com/college-graduate-salary-2022/ https://www.realestatewitch.com/college-graduate-salary-2022...
  - e40 4y ago
    Yeah, that was badly phrased. I was replying too quickly. Yes, the job market has roared back in the last couple of years, but before that it was cooler. But, I should have mentioned other things besides jobs. The world is a pretty bleak place, in a lot of ways. Yeah, the cold war was always hovering about, but it was not really something that my peers really worried about.
    - nradov 4y ago
      The world is less bleak now than it has ever been in human history. If you zoom out and look beyond the news headlines we as a species are doing pretty well. Rates of extreme poverty are down worldwide and relatively few people are starving to death or being killed in wars. The world still has a lot of problems but let's be objective about the data instead of succumbing to defeatist narratives.
rychco 4y ago
Completely agree with this opinion. Teens expected to attend college are under tremendous admissions pressure. You don’t even realize how much more difficult it gets every year for them. For some students, nearly every waking moment is spent on something to fill an application/study/practice. While this itself isn’t new, I’d wager that the number of students having this experience has grown tremendously. However, as someone who was in high school right when Facebook/Instagram became ubiquitous amongst teens, I can’t emphasize enough how horrible the pressure of appealing to your peers was. There is a constant, deeply unsettling fear of being publicly shamed/embarrassed online at any time & for any reason. I am confident that this is still present & stronger than ever.
- waboremo 4y ago
  Part of the distinction between why this process has been made harder is primarily due to finances. If you do not get a scholarship, you are expected to have a job. Not a good job either specifically crafted for 18 year olds so they can get used to work and also handle school properly. No, we throw them into the depths of dealing with ghoulish customers with no way to climb so of course they feel they have to go to school to get out. It's a self reinforcing cycle of pressure.
eecc 4y ago
very well said, although allow me to make a minor correction. Where you wrote “Today's society demands so much from adolescents for so little in return. “ I would simply generalize to “Today's society demands so much from anyone for so little in return.” There, perfect
- roundandround 4y ago
  I don't agree. If you past the point where you are rising new potential and you have any income or some kind of right to income virtually nothing is expected of you. Kids in the mandatory school years face a fair amount of expectations in return for nothing tangible and only receive a smaller portion of the modern ultra conveniences.
- nradov 4y ago
  Society doesn't demand anything. You're free to drop out and live in a van down by the river if you want.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    And many, many do.
  - lmm 4y ago
    It gets harder every year. Twenty years ago you would've said cabin in the woods, but now you have to be a licensed electrician/general contractor/plumber to build a cabin, and the woods aren't zoned for residential. They'll be coming for the people in vans next.
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  while true, teenagers in particular have lost a great degree of the agency that was afforded to prior generations. the concept using surveillance devices on your children did not exist 20 years ago and yet you can see threads of HNers discussing how they or their schools monitor their children quite regularly.
johnfn 4y ago
I agree that the college admissions process is quite stressful, and we should take a critical look at it. But did it really only begin happening around 2012? Across all demographics? I don't think that this explanation really fits the data.
waboremo 4y ago
It's also important to note that social media doesn't operate in isolation. We can blame social media all we want, but when we keep preferring candidates in the hiring process who have presentable social media, it's just amplified for teens. Now they have to keep up a grand social media presence, good grades, stay in physical shape, manage their changing family dynamics, get and hold a job, and their own internal systems changing on them. It's no wonder stress levels are peaking. We demand they carry immense burdens the second they're able to hold a full conversation, but without any of the freedoms associated with responsibility. Can't move out, can't afford help, so what do we really expect to happen when people are placed into such conditions? We place them under constant pressure, and act surprised that this pressure hurts. Why can't you be more like your sister who's doing good in school? Look at your cousin he got a job already and he's only 16. When you turn 18 you need to have your act together because I'm kicking you out. Endless pressure because we are unable to process our own feelings of insignificance, we just project it on kids all without the help of social media. The rising wealth inquality amplifies these problems more in every way. Social media gets a lot of negative attention but there's also a huge positive here. You can connect with others who get you and can maybe help you get through those unbearable days - they make it feel tolerable. And so for people to pin the blame entirely on social media, we're just going to cause so much more harm when we realize how many teens are out there that are only avoiding suicide marginally because of social media.
- tasspeed 4y ago
  I only avoided suicide because of social media. I had no way to hang out with friends because my parents were always too busy working to take me places so I talked with my online friends to numb the pain.
  - PantaloonFlames 4y ago
    It's sad that you depended on your parents for transport to your friends. Ideally a teenager would be able to walk or ride a bicycle to hang out with peers. Or take a bus. Did you live in a place where homes were very far apart?
purpleblue 4y ago
My son is 10 and is naturally accelerated across many subjects (12th grade proficiency in ELA, 9th grade proficiency in Math, talented in music, writing, etc). We have been actively indoctrinating our kids with the idea that college is not the be-all-end-all, that they should NOT apply for Ivy schools, 3rd tier schools are very good and if they want to go abroad or even eschew college altogether, we will support them. I've seen the effects that college admissions have on kids, especially in schools like Gunn and Palo Alto high in the Bay Area. Children committing suicide because they screw up a test is disgusting. There is NO WAY I'm letting my kids go through that mental hell. And from some of the TikTok videos I've seen, you can dedicate your entire life to having a top application (sports, grades, extra curricular activities) and still get completely rejected by all Tier 1 schools. I won't allow my children to go through that just to be subjected to the whims of a racist, capricious admissions board.
- zabzonk 4y ago
  you do know that "indoctrinating" is not a positive thing to do?
  - swader999 4y ago
    That's just a word. They are parenting and looking after their kids welfare as best they can.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Sure it is. We get indoctrinated that murder & rape are bad, that eating vegetables is good, that you should brush your teeth, that the scientific method is a good approach for discovery, etc. Raising children is an exercise in indoctrinating them; no one (typically) objects.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  To be a good parent is to sacrifice your child's future like a pawn to save the queen of your own moral grandstanding.
  - 4y ago
woah 4y ago
Did you get into a good college or whatever?
nicoburns 4y ago
That only works in the US though. Colleges outside the US don't tend to care about extra-curriculars, etc.
- nluken 4y ago
  Agreed: the data in this article only discusses the US, so I was only discussing the US here. I'm not sure if there's a similar crisis in other countries. Some in this thread have indicated yes, others no.
- sylens 4y ago
  Unless you’re really pushing for Ivy League, I don’t think colleges in the US care either. Who is calling your high school to verify that they even had an Open Source Club and that you were the treasurer of it?
browningstreet 4y ago
So many people here want to say, "That's not it, it's {something else}." Might be more fruitful to argue about a stack-rank of the things. But, as the father of a son who is a freshman in college at a Research 1 university, I'll say that his college experience so closely mirrors my enterprise organization work bullshit experience it's shocking. And he doesn't have a social media account or a mobile phone. So, my humble counter is: it's all of it. We've entered a peak bullshit culture moment in time. We throw a million negative and spurious cultural and professional expectations at young people and then couple that with the death of a reasonable middle class end-game, and then are shocked that so many of them, and the rest of us, are angry and unhealthy and impoverished in various "whole person" ways. (Not to mention climate change...)
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  You have an 18 year old son without a mobile phone? I would think it is at least needed for all the logins requiring SMS 2FA.
  - browningstreet 4y ago
    Yes. They gave him an iPad, but none of their systems use SSO of any kind. He doesn't really care for the iPad, doesn't have a mobile phone, and doesn't do social. He does do Minecraft, KSP, and Davinci Resolve.
    - barking_biscuit 4y ago
      Well then it must be Minecraft.
    - officeplant 4y ago
      I would assume at that point he's on other platforms like Discord/Telegram instead of the usual social networks. Or has a cheap prepaid plan and smart phone the parents will never know about.
- strangattractor 4y ago
Jun8 4y ago
I have a son who’s a sophomore (15 yo, second year in HS) and this comment absolutely rings true. He fences competitively (2 HR training four times a week plus a few hrs with physical therapist) and his life pretty much consists of school, homework and sports. He has to be at school at 7:45am so gets up around 6am, goes to bed around 11am usually, so much for the 8 hrs of sleep per night! And he hasn’t even started the college death March yet.
- PantaloonFlames 4y ago
  > around 11am usually presumably 11pm. School, homework, and sports. But what is he missing? Are you saying there is zero time for - hanging out with friends - going on outings with the family (skiing or to the movies) - self-directed activities - walking, photography, church groups, getting a job ? If you're saying there's ZERO time for those things, I find it hard to believe. Weekends there is no school. The days are not consumed with training and homework, I guess. When I was in HS, my mother strongly encouraged me to engage in competitive sports to keep me away from the neighborhood crew. Most days that meant a 530am alarm clock, 615am in the pool, and after-school workouts too. So more like 3.5 hrs daily. Then a nap before dinner, then homework. Keeping busy with structured activities kept me out of trouble. The control group, my brother, got in lots more trouble than I did. I had time for friends and self-directed activities, especially off season.
- zabzonk 4y ago
  11 pm to 7 am (say) looks like 8 hours sleep to me. why does he _have_ to do anything you say he _has_ to do?
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    Not OP, but I think I get what you mean - my own son, who just started college, went through the same grind and honestly had been on it since elementary school. So technically, no, nobody has to do this stuff, and in reality there's a low ROI for most of it. My son (chose to) do a lot of extracurriculars to fluff up his college application in the hopes of getting into an MIT or a Stanford... and still didn't get in. He could have gotten away with doing a lot less than he did and still would have ended up in the same (good) state school he ended up in. But kids in affluent areas are surrounded by suggestions that you do have to do this stuff to get into a "good" school, so they get caught up in it.
jackmott42 4y ago
The vast majority of kids are not focused on college like you were, while that might have been a problem for you, that doesn't mean it is the problem.
srcreigh 4y ago
Grade inflation could be part of this. Look at canadian university admission averages. [1] What percentage of students had 95% or higher grade in high school? Waterloo: 8.1% (2010) vs 38.0% (2020) Western: 4.8% (2010) vs 25.0% (2020) [1]: https://uwaterloo.ca/performance-indicators/students/entering-averages-compared https://uwaterloo.ca/performance-indicators/students/enterin... I got into Waterloo CS in 2012 with a 92% high school average. Pretty lucky.
nabakin 4y ago
> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. If this was true, you'd expect there to be a similar trend between Major Depression and college admissions. The data doesn't seem to show that[1][2] [1] https://educationdata.org/wp-content/uploads/74/Historical-College-Enrollment.png https://educationdata.org/wp-content/uploads/74/Historical-C... [2] http://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a693397d-949f-43e4-9cad-3482af899f84_1410x852.png http://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a6... Most teenagers don't stress over college admissions in my experience. The top like 30% academically successful teens probably do, but I believe this effect is seen across teenagers of all groups
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Presuming people who aren’t stressed about college admissions aren’t instead stressed about not going to college and having extremely stunted career prospects.
  - taurath 4y ago
    I remember being a teenager. I was stressed all the time because EVERY decision I made had a consequence and I wouldn't feel that consequence sometimes for a very long time and had no scope or scale of how much any mistake would fuck me over. Be with the right friends, get good enough grades, express myself my personality in the right way, every single thing I did affected my "future life". Every single adult was telling me this every moment of my life. Get the grade or become a ditch digger. Pursue the right interests or be poor all of your life. There is NO CHILL. College is, for most people, a ONE TIME opportunity - the default track is you go to college after high school, and there are ways to do it after but most people don't end up doing it. Degree programs mostly assume you're coming out of high school. Getting a degree while paying for living expenses is practically impossible without going into massive debt, which you may or may not be tolerant of the risk to take on. You can't work min wage and make rent in most places, let alone go to a community college. Young people's economics already is horrific. I say this as someone who didn't have the opportunity to get a degree and who managed to scrape my way into a software engineering career - something that I don't recommend anyone do as its nearly impossible without connections and mentorship. Structurally we are making kids make decisions that will effect their entire lives and giving almost no recourse to anyone who can't make it happen right at 18. If you have a shitty home life, you're fucked. If you have health problems, you're fucked. There's very few second chances for college in this society.
Matticus_Rex 4y ago
For about 2.5 years starting in 2015 I was a high school teacher at a Title I (low income area) school. There was a lot of anxiety and depression -- obviously not far outside trends around that. Very, very few kids were doing extracurriculars beyond maybe one sport, or a part-time job for a minority of the juniors and seniors. The (very) few kids who were oversubscribed the way you were didn't seem to have a rate of anxiety or depression greater than their peers, and the greatest incidence seemed to be in the lowest-achieving students. Obviously this is anecdotal, and there can be multiple causes, but teaching gives you a lot of anecdotes and they don't seem to fit this narrative.
- nabakin 4y ago
  This is my experience as well, having multiple relatives who have worked at Title 1 schools and going to public school myself which was on the poverty side of things.
nineplay 4y ago
I agree that this is a serious issue. I know 3 kids who graduated in 2019 and got into top universities. Three years later -- One flatly refused to leave home despite a lot of pushing from their parents. They are working at the local theater and taking community college courses here and there with no real future plans or goals -- One also decided to go to CC, with her parent's support this time. She's 21, just got married, and has decided to be a vet tech with the anticipation of being a SAH wife and mother.[0] -- One went to a top university and had a mental breakdown earlier this year - going back home and almost refusing to get out of bed or eat. Fortunately(?) this happened over a 4 week winter break, and with support from her parents and a prescription for anti-depressants she is back in school. Not very inspiring outcomes. I personally think that the pressure from high school really ended up convincing them that they never wanted to work that hard again. [0] I don't want to look down on women who wish to become SAHMs, but I think it's terribly short-sighted to make that decision at 21 and give up on pursuing a "real" career.
- ndriscoll 4y ago
  > I don't want to look down on women who wish to become SAHMs, but I think it's terribly short-sighted to make that decision at 21 and give up on pursuing a "real" career. Certainly it requires a lot of trust and commitment, but I wouldn't call it short-sighted. It's risky, but if you do find a good spouse, it's not like you're missing out on anything (my wife is a SAHM and has never had nor wanted a career). To me people that go to grad school and take on tons of debt, only to be in a position to try to start having kids in their late 30s/early 40s seem a lot more short-sighted. I watched some consumer interviews while I was at my last employer. The market segment we were interviewing were very high achieving people, but some of them were 38+ and saying they're thinking about having kids soon; there's like a 25% chance that ship has already sailed, even ignoring the reality of being almost 60 when they graduate from high school. I suppose it comes down to knowing what you want out of life and what will bring you satisfaction with the time you've got.
  - nineplay 4y ago
    I don't trust a 21 year old to know if they've found a good spouse. I don't trust anyone to know if they've found a good spouse which is why I'd tell everyone, male or female, to have a career they can fall back to if something happens to their marriage. It might not just be a bad spouse, it might be a spouse who dies young and then a woman with multiple kids and a 10 year old vet tech degree has to figure out how on earth she's going to support herself. Life insurance only lasts so long. I'm old enough to have seen a lot of young happy couples turn into divorced bitter singles and I can't speak to the average experience but in my circle, the women end up screwed. They've got the kids, ( the ex wanted nothing to do with the kids ) they've got no income ( the ex either has no money or is fighting tooth and nail to avoid sending any money ) and they are living off of parents, friends, and social services trying to find some job they can do part time ( no daycare ) that has a hope of supporting them. Some of these women stayed in bad circumstances for a long time because they knew how hard it would be to manage without their spouse. Some women are still in terrible circumstances because they can't afford to leave. > some of them were 38+ and saying they're thinking about having kids soon; there's like a 25% chance that ship has already sailed, 25% is nonsense.
yamtaddle 4y ago
You're in a bubble. It's nowhere near that hard to get into non-elite universities, which the vast majority of college-bound students attend. Just keeping your grades up and doing well on a standardized test will get you into a good (well-regarded in at least some fields, very well-known at least regionally) state school—and the ones in the next couple tiers under that are even more lax. Then there are community colleges—ask nicely and they'll probably let you in at least on a probational basis, even if your grades were incredibly bad in high school and you don't have much else going for you. And that's for the students that go at all. [EDIT] Incidentally, from tales told by my various teacher friends, the students who genuinely have crazy-busy schedules are almost always the ones who are extremely into playing two or more sports. Even half-serious participation (so, maaaaybe gunning to play college ball, plus the mostly-delusional but fairly-common parental aspirations of having a pro-league kid) means being in a league that makes you travel a lot, and lots and lots of practice, for each sport, plus extra training camps and shit like that. I believe tales of some schools where the students are stressed over academics and non-sports extracurriculars (plus the single requisite sport to keep Harvard from binning your application) but out in the vast reaches of non-elite America, only a few students have very-high schedule pressure, and most (not all, but most) of those are because of a strong focus on sports.
- nluken 4y ago
  > You're in a bubble Yeah that seems evident from the breadth of replies I've gotten. Perhaps it's just one factor among many.
- wara23arish 4y ago
  Im an immigrant that attended a community college, transferred to a “top 10 CS Uni”. the CC didn’t even acknowledge the school I went to exists so i just took some placement tests that landed me at Calc 1 etc most americans dont know how good they have it, sure things could be better but you’re literally better off than most of the world no matter what class you’re born in here
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I think community colleges are one of those under-appreciated excellent institutions the US has (in addition to our institutions and systems that actually do kinda suck, compared to our peers, that get a lot more attention). They're available just about everywhere that many people live, it's pretty easy to get them to give you a chance unless you have a very recent history of being a committed academic screw-up—even if your history's a bit unusual, or you've had some screw-ups farther in the past—and in a couple years you can establish a record that represents a big step toward achieving an at-least middling life outcome, while opening up access to the next steps. I hope the admissions process and the rest of it was still relatively painless, despite their not recognizing your school. I'm sure immigration itself was pretty unpleasant—sorry about that :-/
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iueotnmunto 4y ago
> Things only started getting better when I started seeing a therapist and worked on my issues over the second half of my high school experience. I'm curious, would you mind sharing how a therapist helped you? I'm in a similar (but not the same) space mentally, and put everything down to environmental issues (high pressure job, etc) and disregard the thought that a therapist could help with this (unless they had a time machine, etc).
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  therapy helps you develop efficient thinking ime. This is evaluating your emotions without added judgement, addressing problems without the added emotional burden of shame, and rapidly and genuinely accepting things (like past harm) that can’t be inherently changed without the added agony of fighting yourself over it
stanford_labrat 4y ago
> It's very easy to think that you're a failure if you don't know exactly who you are and what you want to be at age 17 I'm 26 (almost 27, so let's say 27) and I think this echoes my experience fairly well. I felt like a failure because I didn't get into the top schools for undergrad even though I struggled so hard and objectively had good stats that I (at the time) thought would've made me a compelling/competitive applicant. Varsity athlete, played instrument, loads of APs and top of my class, yadayadayadayadayada. I think the evolution of the college application process and the perpetual rising bar has definitely affected teens mental health. Anecdotal but I experienced pressure to do well from peers, the school, and my own family.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> give teenagers a chance to actually live life You'd have to do it worldwide, though. Part of the reason my own teenage years were so (relatively) peaceful is because they took place in the late 80's, before globalization. I empathize with my own kids who've been on this treadmill since kindergarten, but it's there because they're competing with kids from countries that have never had childhoods.
jimmaswell 4y ago
Public school schoolwork is so easy. So is applying to a college. How is anyone stressed by it?
- neuronic 4y ago
  This is a tad bit insensitive. I have excelled at public school for the first years, then there was a rough patch in life caused by parents which TANKED my grades and social life for years. I recovered and eventually got an excellent Master's degree in Bioinformatics but it is condescending to assume that everyone was dealt the same hand as you in life and that anything at all is fair. Maybe schoolwork isn't so easy if you're being abused by a parent once a week?
  - candiodari 4y ago
    I had some serious incidents in High School, mostly with other kids, and while my grades dropped, I never lost the ability to make up for weeks, sometimes months of doing nothing for school in a matter of hours. Didn't stop me from getting bad grades for those weeks/months and making stupid mistakes like not completing assignments and the like. It's very easy. It's just that in a depressed/anxious/... state people aren't capable of sustaining even the most basic levels of effort after a while. Frankly, I bet that if it was a lot harder, that would have helped me.
xg15 4y ago
Meanwhile the comments below the article have already determined the unmistakable cause of the epidemic: Today's youth is just too coddled and the school environment is just not violent enough anymore. No further questions...
yodsanklai 4y ago
> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. Spoiler: it won't get easier :) I'm sure everyone has a different experience, but I find professional life to be much harder than being a student, even a student preparing for very selective admission process. You often work as hard as an adult (if not harder), plus have more responsibilities.
psychlops 4y ago
Here we go, everyone gets to share their stress story. Time to filter all comments that start with "I..."
kitsune_ 4y ago
You're making the mistake of extrapolating from your own personal experience.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Yeah... there's nothing wrong with growing up with a bit of a bubble, but yikes by 24 you'd think this person would start to be aware that their experience wasn't exactly universal As other comments pointed out, a large portion of society doesn't go to college, let alone "stress out about extracurriculars to make sure my app looks extra good"
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codeslave13 4y ago
Having a child that hit teens then and hindsight being 20/20. Crazy parents and social media i feel can be the root of the majority of. Really location specific and not the deciding factor but it laid a solid foundation for mental health issues even today. No citations or anything just my exp as a Dad.
partiallypro 4y ago
I think this is your personal anecdote and there isn't much to support it, but I do think, separate from college, that kids simply just can't be kids today. There is social, political and academic pressure that just didn't exist when most of us were growing up. I think the pandemic made it much worse.
WalterBright 4y ago
> break under this kind of pressure They aren't being drafted to go fight in Vietnam. The Russians aren't bombing our cities. The main health problem is eating too much food, not too little. Teens aren't even expected to have jobs anymore. (In my day, teens got jobs at 16.) My dad volunteered in WW2. He expected to die in combat, as his cohort had an 80% casualty rate. 4 out of 5. Every mission meant holes in the airplane, and you stayed on course and took it. He helplessly watched men die. His best friend had his face burned off. When he returned home, he thought the concerns on the home front were trivial. After all, they were going to live another day. > what you want to be at age 17 In other words, America is full of opportunity. We live in a golden age in America.
- nugget 4y ago
  My grandfather survived Pearl Harbor and became a B-25 pilot in one of those cohorts with an 80%+ casualty rate. As a kid, I enjoyed reading and hearing about his experiences. It made me proud of his service. But I'm not sure it lessened the stresses and anxieties I felt during my own adolescence. Years later when a close family member had a near death/should have died experience, that meaningfully altered my perspective on life - because I experienced it first hand.
  - Apofis 4y ago
    You discovered that suffering is relative to experience.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Your dad and mine were members of a very special club, and I'm sure they would have been fast friends. Thanks for talking about him!
Aeolun 4y ago
This is such a weird experience. I’ve heard this more often, and it’s just so foreign to me. I thought there was so much academics in my life at every age from 7 till 17, but basically I got to play as soon as school was out, with no other responsibilities. The same was true for all of my friends, and everyone surrounding me. It doesn’t hit me until today what an enormous privilege this solid educational system was, that would allow everyone to get (nearly) free schooling up to whatever level they wanted, with a quality high enough to require no further out-of-school lessons. No entrance examinations for university (bar a few extremely in demand or difficult courses), and roughly equivalent universities all over the country. This was in the Netherlands btw.
mrosett 4y ago
Everything you said about your experience could have been written in 2002. So it can't explain why there's an uptick in 2012.
likeabbas 4y ago
This is exactly why I advocate for less breadth and more depth starting from high school. I really didn’t need literature, history, or art. I knew I was more of a math and science person early on. Why do kids need to be so well rounded when they already have a bias towards certain fields? Lets let them focus on what they are good at, and give them a little more free time on their hands.
Alex3917 4y ago
> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. Or at least they're more stressed due to changes in the school system due to NCLB. The timing would be approximately correct for that also.
mikewarot 4y ago
>If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. We need something like Rumspringa[1], a period in life when I young person is given a bit of slack, and is expected to eventually voluntarily take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of an adult, or leave the community. I can't find it now[2], but I remember either Joseph Campbell, or some other such person in a TV interview describing how in earlier societies, the children once of sufficient age would be set outside of society, and allowed to sleep in the ashes around the camp fires, until they resolved to join society as an adult, with all the privileges and responsibilities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa [2] google really does suck these days, doesn't it?
- nervousvarun 4y ago
  In Europe this is "gap year". America needs it agreed.
phlipski 4y ago
I'm 43 and I felt the pressure of getting into a good college back in highschool. I remember anecdotes of older kids talking about it when I was in later elementary school grades. I don't think the college pressure is all that new. Maybe more widespread?
P_I_Staker 4y ago
This doesn't stop in high school, and you only get so much better at it. Your life feels like my life now, and it's largely going to waste. I think schools and colleges may be correctly preparing students for "the real world", and this is unfortunate.
Shocka1 4y ago
Sorry you went through this as that sounds like some terrible teenage years. You should of been having the time of your life at that age. When I was 17 I was screwing around more than anything else and basically having a blast 24/7. Was a mediocre C student at best, but ended up jumping through the right hoops after HS and got all but 4 classes of a CS Master's at a well known Upstate NY university completely paid for. This is not meant to brag, but just wanted to bring up that even a total idiot kid like me did well. I've seen it again and again. Parents and communities pushing on their kid's academics and sports lives to no ends. I was lucky to have well grounded parents that mostly just let me be a kid and figure things out for myself. Unfortunately I don't see this strategy getting bigger any time soon.

by nluken 4y ago

FrontierPsych 4y ago

I think it dependson one's personality type. All those things didn't affect me because I didn't care about any of it. I made barely enough grades to barely squeeze into university. I just didn't care, not too much. I would think that college admissions is too narrow of a reason as to why. Only about 35% of high school graduates go on to university. I'm sure a significant number of university attendees don't have these issues to the extent that they have to go to a therapist. It's great that you went, wonderful that you did, but I am not convinced that anywhere near the majority of university students had that much pressure - to the extent of having their life break down. I do agree that everyone needs a healthier lifestyle.

xeromal 4y ago

> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I have absolutely no data to back this up but a difficult college admission process isn't novel to 2012+. This is also ignores the plenty of kids/young adults that never went to college and still suffer from whatever this epidemic is. We'd need to review data for people who didn't go to undergrad/grad to see if your idea still holds truth.

RangerScience 4y ago
* people who didn’t try to go If stress from college prep is an issue, it’s only people that weren’t going through that who you’d want in the other bucket.

carabiner 4y ago

40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). Of those, only a tiny portion are focused on elite universities. Many are just going to Long Beach State, University of Redlands and other 4 year schools that you've never heard of. They have lax admissions. Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago
You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)
- mouse_ 4y ago
  I guarantee most of these "high achieving high anxiety types" live with significantly less anxiety than customer service reps/bag handlers/food service workers.
  - tdesilva 4y ago
    Why do you think that?
    - rfrey 4y ago
      Because most of us can afford food for our families, even in the last week of the month.
      - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
        Yeah. I did a decade where that wasn't the case. Poverty is longer and harder in southern states.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      None of them make six figures while browsing HN

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HEmanZ 4y ago

I understand your point, because I was the same. But I’m not sure our experience is a super common one among teens. Reason I think this now, is that I have volunteered at large local high schools for college admission help. There just aren’t that many students who get pushed or push themselves like this. The majority in the US don’t go to college, and the vast majority don’t put in a stressful amount of effort into college/career prep and extra-curricular activities. I don’t know what theory to replace it with, but I don’t think the majority of the students in the US are overworked like this.

wirrbel 4y ago

Coincidentally 2012 is IIRC the year I bought (then a university student) my first smart phone. IIRC when doing my abroad term overseas the american students all had smartphones in like 2010, I think most where on plans that provided smartphones eventually. So I would not be surprised if smartphones are part of the reason for a poor state of mental heath.

nixass 4y ago

I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, your peers and parents all tell you. You pretty much have a series of "one chance" events that you must pass or you're done for. Failure of any step is permanent, and affects your average (seemingly) forever. The whole path from elementary school through to college graduation feels like a career development game where the stakes are raised every year. Fail once off the path, and it's Walmart Greeter for you, forever! It's no wonder I still wake up in a cold sweat over it, 30 years on.

pasquinelli 4y ago
sounds like the process of becoming a civil servant in imperial china. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination > During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), authorities narrowed the content down to mostly texts on Neo-Confucian orthodoxy; the highest degree, the jinshi (Chinese: 進士), became essential for the highest offices. On the other hand, holders of the basic degree, the shengyuan (生員), became vastly oversupplied, resulting in holders who could not hope for office. Wealthy families, especially from the merchant class, could opt into the system by educating their sons or by purchasing degrees. During the late 19th century, some critics within Qing China blamed the examination system for stifling scientific and technical knowledge, and urged for some reforms. At the time, China had about one civil licentiate per 1000 people. Due to the stringent requirements, there was only a 1% passing rate among the two or three million annual applicants who took the exams.[3]
coredog64 4y ago
Something to consider is that many European countries aggressively track students in conjunction with that free/cheap college. As a consequence, failing during early education can put them onto the vocational track much earlier than you’d see for a U.S. student.

ok_dad 4y ago

> If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. We (American here) need to take a step back and let everyone enjoy life. That means providing healthcare, food, and shelter to every single person so that they can live their life and work in a non-anxiety-inducing way. Every therapist I've talked to in the past few years has told me that they think the number one thing that would reduce their workload is if people weren't so stressed about paying for the most basic things for their family. Most of the people they see would still have issues they need to deal with, but wouldn't be on the precipice of suicide and taking loads of pills. That's an anecdote, but to me it's clear that the "hustle culture" and lack of social support have combined in the USA to make things very hard for the average American. This applies to kids directly, too, because that hustle has to start pre-college!

1234letshaveatw 4y ago
right, teen kids are so worried about healthcare costs! Gimmie a break, your comment has nothing to do with the article, it's low effort and a better fit for reddit
- tasspeed 4y ago
  you're ignorant or extremely privileged if you think kids dont worry. have you ever had a parent be ill and your family has no money for their treatment?
  - 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
    OK, you got me. A lack of socialized everything that started in 2012 is the cause of the teen mental illness epidemic. Get out and vote everyone!!!
    - tasspeed 4y ago
      [flagged]

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Loughla 4y ago

>I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I am 100% behind this, and a lot of my professional career has been spent in higher education, specifically working with college access programs for pre-college students. The amount of pressure kids are under today is just astounding. When I was looking at colleges, the pressure started slightly in 10th or 11th grade. Now, it's in the grade schools. Colleges are trying to get into 6th grade classes to "offer services" (read: recruit those kids under the pretense of supplementing underfunded school classrooms). This may come off as a "things were better in my day" but hear me out: I played baseball starting in kindergarten. There were summer YMCA leagues, and a couple of kids played baseball on travel teams in junior high and high school. The really good ones got scouted in college, but 99% of us were in it because we liked the game and liked playing. No matter what our parents may have dreamed, we knew it was a fun way to be part of something we liked. My oldest plays baseball, he started in kindergarten, and has played all the way to high school now. He loves the game, but we also made sure it was a game, not a job. All kids in his class who could afford it were on travel teams, starting in first grade. All but three have private coaches for whatever position they specialize in. . . starting in first grade. The parents sponsored tournaments. The parents made sure their travel team attended tournaments that college scouts or colleges sponsored. Starting in first grade. The kids on his school team (town population of around 1000, school k-12 enrollment is around 400) have literally played or practiced baseball every weekend, barring some holiday weekends, since they were 5 years old. That is not an exaggeration, it is a statement of fact. I actually got cornered by other parents asking why out child (left handed) wasn't going to be on the travel team when they were little, because he'd be a great pitcher. In first grade. They were absolutely astounded that I said I just couldn't get behind putting that much pressure on a child. I don't think that people over the age of about 32 understand just how unbelievable the pressure is on kids these days. They're expected to be ON all the time, and their future is at risk if they're not. Parents see it as just trying to set their kids up for the best future possible. But it's so much pressure. It's astounding. I live in a poor, rural area. I have to imagine it's much worse in urban/affluent areas. And that's not even touching on the fact that social media and technology means the students literally cannot get away from social issues and bullying. That's a whole other thing.

4y ago

e40 4y ago

And the deteriorating job market when they get out. My son has struggled/struggles with this. I 100% understand and I would, too, if I were in his position. I compare his situation to mine and they are night and day. The prevailing sentiment when I was in college: get a degree (in anything) and you'll be OK if you want to work hard.

nradov 4y ago
What deteriorating job market? Despite some recent high profile tech industry layoffs, the US unemployment rate is 3.4%. There are jobs available for those who want to work. They may have to move. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-you-dont-have-recession-when-us-unemployment-53-year-low-2023-02-06/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-you-dont-have-rece... A recent survey showed that most college students seriously overestimate their earnings potential. There is a mismatch in expectations. Students graduating with low-value degrees need to take whatever job they can get and work their way up. https://www.realestatewitch.com/college-graduate-salary-2022/ https://www.realestatewitch.com/college-graduate-salary-2022...
- e40 4y ago
  Yeah, that was badly phrased. I was replying too quickly. Yes, the job market has roared back in the last couple of years, but before that it was cooler. But, I should have mentioned other things besides jobs. The world is a pretty bleak place, in a lot of ways. Yeah, the cold war was always hovering about, but it was not really something that my peers really worried about.
  - nradov 4y ago
    The world is less bleak now than it has ever been in human history. If you zoom out and look beyond the news headlines we as a species are doing pretty well. Rates of extreme poverty are down worldwide and relatively few people are starving to death or being killed in wars. The world still has a lot of problems but let's be objective about the data instead of succumbing to defeatist narratives.

rychco 4y ago

Completely agree with this opinion. Teens expected to attend college are under tremendous admissions pressure. You don’t even realize how much more difficult it gets every year for them. For some students, nearly every waking moment is spent on something to fill an application/study/practice. While this itself isn’t new, I’d wager that the number of students having this experience has grown tremendously. However, as someone who was in high school right when Facebook/Instagram became ubiquitous amongst teens, I can’t emphasize enough how horrible the pressure of appealing to your peers was. There is a constant, deeply unsettling fear of being publicly shamed/embarrassed online at any time & for any reason. I am confident that this is still present & stronger than ever.

waboremo 4y ago
Part of the distinction between why this process has been made harder is primarily due to finances. If you do not get a scholarship, you are expected to have a job. Not a good job either specifically crafted for 18 year olds so they can get used to work and also handle school properly. No, we throw them into the depths of dealing with ghoulish customers with no way to climb so of course they feel they have to go to school to get out. It's a self reinforcing cycle of pressure.

eecc 4y ago

very well said, although allow me to make a minor correction. Where you wrote “Today's society demands so much from adolescents for so little in return. “ I would simply generalize to “Today's society demands so much from anyone for so little in return.” There, perfect

roundandround 4y ago
I don't agree. If you past the point where you are rising new potential and you have any income or some kind of right to income virtually nothing is expected of you. Kids in the mandatory school years face a fair amount of expectations in return for nothing tangible and only receive a smaller portion of the modern ultra conveniences.
nradov 4y ago
Society doesn't demand anything. You're free to drop out and live in a van down by the river if you want.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  And many, many do.
- lmm 4y ago
  It gets harder every year. Twenty years ago you would've said cabin in the woods, but now you have to be a licensed electrician/general contractor/plumber to build a cabin, and the woods aren't zoned for residential. They'll be coming for the people in vans next.
odessacubbage 4y ago
while true, teenagers in particular have lost a great degree of the agency that was afforded to prior generations. the concept using surveillance devices on your children did not exist 20 years ago and yet you can see threads of HNers discussing how they or their schools monitor their children quite regularly.

johnfn 4y ago

I agree that the college admissions process is quite stressful, and we should take a critical look at it. But did it really only begin happening around 2012? Across all demographics? I don't think that this explanation really fits the data.

waboremo 4y ago

It's also important to note that social media doesn't operate in isolation. We can blame social media all we want, but when we keep preferring candidates in the hiring process who have presentable social media, it's just amplified for teens. Now they have to keep up a grand social media presence, good grades, stay in physical shape, manage their changing family dynamics, get and hold a job, and their own internal systems changing on them. It's no wonder stress levels are peaking. We demand they carry immense burdens the second they're able to hold a full conversation, but without any of the freedoms associated with responsibility. Can't move out, can't afford help, so what do we really expect to happen when people are placed into such conditions? We place them under constant pressure, and act surprised that this pressure hurts. Why can't you be more like your sister who's doing good in school? Look at your cousin he got a job already and he's only 16. When you turn 18 you need to have your act together because I'm kicking you out. Endless pressure because we are unable to process our own feelings of insignificance, we just project it on kids all without the help of social media. The rising wealth inquality amplifies these problems more in every way. Social media gets a lot of negative attention but there's also a huge positive here. You can connect with others who get you and can maybe help you get through those unbearable days - they make it feel tolerable. And so for people to pin the blame entirely on social media, we're just going to cause so much more harm when we realize how many teens are out there that are only avoiding suicide marginally because of social media.

tasspeed 4y ago
I only avoided suicide because of social media. I had no way to hang out with friends because my parents were always too busy working to take me places so I talked with my online friends to numb the pain.
- PantaloonFlames 4y ago
  It's sad that you depended on your parents for transport to your friends. Ideally a teenager would be able to walk or ride a bicycle to hang out with peers. Or take a bus. Did you live in a place where homes were very far apart?

purpleblue 4y ago

My son is 10 and is naturally accelerated across many subjects (12th grade proficiency in ELA, 9th grade proficiency in Math, talented in music, writing, etc). We have been actively indoctrinating our kids with the idea that college is not the be-all-end-all, that they should NOT apply for Ivy schools, 3rd tier schools are very good and if they want to go abroad or even eschew college altogether, we will support them. I've seen the effects that college admissions have on kids, especially in schools like Gunn and Palo Alto high in the Bay Area. Children committing suicide because they screw up a test is disgusting. There is NO WAY I'm letting my kids go through that mental hell. And from some of the TikTok videos I've seen, you can dedicate your entire life to having a top application (sports, grades, extra curricular activities) and still get completely rejected by all Tier 1 schools. I won't allow my children to go through that just to be subjected to the whims of a racist, capricious admissions board.

zabzonk 4y ago
you do know that "indoctrinating" is not a positive thing to do?
- swader999 4y ago
  That's just a word. They are parenting and looking after their kids welfare as best they can.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Sure it is. We get indoctrinated that murder & rape are bad, that eating vegetables is good, that you should brush your teeth, that the scientific method is a good approach for discovery, etc. Raising children is an exercise in indoctrinating them; no one (typically) objects.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
To be a good parent is to sacrifice your child's future like a pawn to save the queen of your own moral grandstanding.
- 4y ago

woah 4y ago

Did you get into a good college or whatever?

nicoburns 4y ago

That only works in the US though. Colleges outside the US don't tend to care about extra-curriculars, etc.

nluken 4y ago
Agreed: the data in this article only discusses the US, so I was only discussing the US here. I'm not sure if there's a similar crisis in other countries. Some in this thread have indicated yes, others no.
sylens 4y ago
Unless you’re really pushing for Ivy League, I don’t think colleges in the US care either. Who is calling your high school to verify that they even had an Open Source Club and that you were the treasurer of it?

browningstreet 4y ago

So many people here want to say, "That's not it, it's {something else}." Might be more fruitful to argue about a stack-rank of the things. But, as the father of a son who is a freshman in college at a Research 1 university, I'll say that his college experience so closely mirrors my enterprise organization work bullshit experience it's shocking. And he doesn't have a social media account or a mobile phone. So, my humble counter is: it's all of it. We've entered a peak bullshit culture moment in time. We throw a million negative and spurious cultural and professional expectations at young people and then couple that with the death of a reasonable middle class end-game, and then are shocked that so many of them, and the rest of us, are angry and unhealthy and impoverished in various "whole person" ways. (Not to mention climate change...)

lotsofpulp 4y ago
You have an 18 year old son without a mobile phone? I would think it is at least needed for all the logins requiring SMS 2FA.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  Yes. They gave him an iPad, but none of their systems use SSO of any kind. He doesn't really care for the iPad, doesn't have a mobile phone, and doesn't do social. He does do Minecraft, KSP, and Davinci Resolve.
  - barking_biscuit 4y ago
    Well then it must be Minecraft.
  - officeplant 4y ago
    I would assume at that point he's on other platforms like Discord/Telegram instead of the usual social networks. Or has a cheap prepaid plan and smart phone the parents will never know about.
strangattractor 4y ago

Jun8 4y ago

I have a son who’s a sophomore (15 yo, second year in HS) and this comment absolutely rings true. He fences competitively (2 HR training four times a week plus a few hrs with physical therapist) and his life pretty much consists of school, homework and sports. He has to be at school at 7:45am so gets up around 6am, goes to bed around 11am usually, so much for the 8 hrs of sleep per night! And he hasn’t even started the college death March yet.

PantaloonFlames 4y ago
> around 11am usually presumably 11pm. School, homework, and sports. But what is he missing? Are you saying there is zero time for - hanging out with friends - going on outings with the family (skiing or to the movies) - self-directed activities - walking, photography, church groups, getting a job ? If you're saying there's ZERO time for those things, I find it hard to believe. Weekends there is no school. The days are not consumed with training and homework, I guess. When I was in HS, my mother strongly encouraged me to engage in competitive sports to keep me away from the neighborhood crew. Most days that meant a 530am alarm clock, 615am in the pool, and after-school workouts too. So more like 3.5 hrs daily. Then a nap before dinner, then homework. Keeping busy with structured activities kept me out of trouble. The control group, my brother, got in lots more trouble than I did. I had time for friends and self-directed activities, especially off season.
zabzonk 4y ago
11 pm to 7 am (say) looks like 8 hours sleep to me. why does he _have_ to do anything you say he _has_ to do?
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  Not OP, but I think I get what you mean - my own son, who just started college, went through the same grind and honestly had been on it since elementary school. So technically, no, nobody has to do this stuff, and in reality there's a low ROI for most of it. My son (chose to) do a lot of extracurriculars to fluff up his college application in the hopes of getting into an MIT or a Stanford... and still didn't get in. He could have gotten away with doing a lot less than he did and still would have ended up in the same (good) state school he ended up in. But kids in affluent areas are surrounded by suggestions that you do have to do this stuff to get into a "good" school, so they get caught up in it.

jackmott42 4y ago

The vast majority of kids are not focused on college like you were, while that might have been a problem for you, that doesn't mean it is the problem.

srcreigh 4y ago

Grade inflation could be part of this. Look at canadian university admission averages. [1] What percentage of students had 95% or higher grade in high school? Waterloo: 8.1% (2010) vs 38.0% (2020) Western: 4.8% (2010) vs 25.0% (2020) [1]: https://uwaterloo.ca/performance-indicators/students/entering-averages-compared https://uwaterloo.ca/performance-indicators/students/enterin... I got into Waterloo CS in 2012 with a 92% high school average. Pretty lucky.

nabakin 4y ago

> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. If this was true, you'd expect there to be a similar trend between Major Depression and college admissions. The data doesn't seem to show that[1][2] [1] https://educationdata.org/wp-content/uploads/74/Historical-College-Enrollment.png https://educationdata.org/wp-content/uploads/74/Historical-C... [2] http://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a693397d-949f-43e4-9cad-3482af899f84_1410x852.png http://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a6... Most teenagers don't stress over college admissions in my experience. The top like 30% academically successful teens probably do, but I believe this effect is seen across teenagers of all groups

ethanbond 4y ago
Presuming people who aren’t stressed about college admissions aren’t instead stressed about not going to college and having extremely stunted career prospects.
- taurath 4y ago
  I remember being a teenager. I was stressed all the time because EVERY decision I made had a consequence and I wouldn't feel that consequence sometimes for a very long time and had no scope or scale of how much any mistake would fuck me over. Be with the right friends, get good enough grades, express myself my personality in the right way, every single thing I did affected my "future life". Every single adult was telling me this every moment of my life. Get the grade or become a ditch digger. Pursue the right interests or be poor all of your life. There is NO CHILL. College is, for most people, a ONE TIME opportunity - the default track is you go to college after high school, and there are ways to do it after but most people don't end up doing it. Degree programs mostly assume you're coming out of high school. Getting a degree while paying for living expenses is practically impossible without going into massive debt, which you may or may not be tolerant of the risk to take on. You can't work min wage and make rent in most places, let alone go to a community college. Young people's economics already is horrific. I say this as someone who didn't have the opportunity to get a degree and who managed to scrape my way into a software engineering career - something that I don't recommend anyone do as its nearly impossible without connections and mentorship. Structurally we are making kids make decisions that will effect their entire lives and giving almost no recourse to anyone who can't make it happen right at 18. If you have a shitty home life, you're fucked. If you have health problems, you're fucked. There's very few second chances for college in this society.

Matticus_Rex 4y ago

For about 2.5 years starting in 2015 I was a high school teacher at a Title I (low income area) school. There was a lot of anxiety and depression -- obviously not far outside trends around that. Very, very few kids were doing extracurriculars beyond maybe one sport, or a part-time job for a minority of the juniors and seniors. The (very) few kids who were oversubscribed the way you were didn't seem to have a rate of anxiety or depression greater than their peers, and the greatest incidence seemed to be in the lowest-achieving students. Obviously this is anecdotal, and there can be multiple causes, but teaching gives you a lot of anecdotes and they don't seem to fit this narrative.

nabakin 4y ago
This is my experience as well, having multiple relatives who have worked at Title 1 schools and going to public school myself which was on the poverty side of things.

nineplay 4y ago

I agree that this is a serious issue. I know 3 kids who graduated in 2019 and got into top universities. Three years later -- One flatly refused to leave home despite a lot of pushing from their parents. They are working at the local theater and taking community college courses here and there with no real future plans or goals -- One also decided to go to CC, with her parent's support this time. She's 21, just got married, and has decided to be a vet tech with the anticipation of being a SAH wife and mother.[0] -- One went to a top university and had a mental breakdown earlier this year - going back home and almost refusing to get out of bed or eat. Fortunately(?) this happened over a 4 week winter break, and with support from her parents and a prescription for anti-depressants she is back in school. Not very inspiring outcomes. I personally think that the pressure from high school really ended up convincing them that they never wanted to work that hard again. [0] I don't want to look down on women who wish to become SAHMs, but I think it's terribly short-sighted to make that decision at 21 and give up on pursuing a "real" career.

ndriscoll 4y ago
> I don't want to look down on women who wish to become SAHMs, but I think it's terribly short-sighted to make that decision at 21 and give up on pursuing a "real" career. Certainly it requires a lot of trust and commitment, but I wouldn't call it short-sighted. It's risky, but if you do find a good spouse, it's not like you're missing out on anything (my wife is a SAHM and has never had nor wanted a career). To me people that go to grad school and take on tons of debt, only to be in a position to try to start having kids in their late 30s/early 40s seem a lot more short-sighted. I watched some consumer interviews while I was at my last employer. The market segment we were interviewing were very high achieving people, but some of them were 38+ and saying they're thinking about having kids soon; there's like a 25% chance that ship has already sailed, even ignoring the reality of being almost 60 when they graduate from high school. I suppose it comes down to knowing what you want out of life and what will bring you satisfaction with the time you've got.
- nineplay 4y ago
  I don't trust a 21 year old to know if they've found a good spouse. I don't trust anyone to know if they've found a good spouse which is why I'd tell everyone, male or female, to have a career they can fall back to if something happens to their marriage. It might not just be a bad spouse, it might be a spouse who dies young and then a woman with multiple kids and a 10 year old vet tech degree has to figure out how on earth she's going to support herself. Life insurance only lasts so long. I'm old enough to have seen a lot of young happy couples turn into divorced bitter singles and I can't speak to the average experience but in my circle, the women end up screwed. They've got the kids, ( the ex wanted nothing to do with the kids ) they've got no income ( the ex either has no money or is fighting tooth and nail to avoid sending any money ) and they are living off of parents, friends, and social services trying to find some job they can do part time ( no daycare ) that has a hope of supporting them. Some of these women stayed in bad circumstances for a long time because they knew how hard it would be to manage without their spouse. Some women are still in terrible circumstances because they can't afford to leave. > some of them were 38+ and saying they're thinking about having kids soon; there's like a 25% chance that ship has already sailed, 25% is nonsense.

yamtaddle 4y ago

You're in a bubble. It's nowhere near that hard to get into non-elite universities, which the vast majority of college-bound students attend. Just keeping your grades up and doing well on a standardized test will get you into a good (well-regarded in at least some fields, very well-known at least regionally) state school—and the ones in the next couple tiers under that are even more lax. Then there are community colleges—ask nicely and they'll probably let you in at least on a probational basis, even if your grades were incredibly bad in high school and you don't have much else going for you. And that's for the students that go at all. [EDIT] Incidentally, from tales told by my various teacher friends, the students who genuinely have crazy-busy schedules are almost always the ones who are extremely into playing two or more sports. Even half-serious participation (so, maaaaybe gunning to play college ball, plus the mostly-delusional but fairly-common parental aspirations of having a pro-league kid) means being in a league that makes you travel a lot, and lots and lots of practice, for each sport, plus extra training camps and shit like that. I believe tales of some schools where the students are stressed over academics and non-sports extracurriculars (plus the single requisite sport to keep Harvard from binning your application) but out in the vast reaches of non-elite America, only a few students have very-high schedule pressure, and most (not all, but most) of those are because of a strong focus on sports.

nluken 4y ago
> You're in a bubble Yeah that seems evident from the breadth of replies I've gotten. Perhaps it's just one factor among many.
wara23arish 4y ago
Im an immigrant that attended a community college, transferred to a “top 10 CS Uni”. the CC didn’t even acknowledge the school I went to exists so i just took some placement tests that landed me at Calc 1 etc most americans dont know how good they have it, sure things could be better but you’re literally better off than most of the world no matter what class you’re born in here
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I think community colleges are one of those under-appreciated excellent institutions the US has (in addition to our institutions and systems that actually do kinda suck, compared to our peers, that get a lot more attention). They're available just about everywhere that many people live, it's pretty easy to get them to give you a chance unless you have a very recent history of being a committed academic screw-up—even if your history's a bit unusual, or you've had some screw-ups farther in the past—and in a couple years you can establish a record that represents a big step toward achieving an at-least middling life outcome, while opening up access to the next steps. I hope the admissions process and the rest of it was still relatively painless, despite their not recognizing your school. I'm sure immigration itself was pretty unpleasant—sorry about that :-/

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iueotnmunto 4y ago

> Things only started getting better when I started seeing a therapist and worked on my issues over the second half of my high school experience. I'm curious, would you mind sharing how a therapist helped you? I'm in a similar (but not the same) space mentally, and put everything down to environmental issues (high pressure job, etc) and disregard the thought that a therapist could help with this (unless they had a time machine, etc).

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
therapy helps you develop efficient thinking ime. This is evaluating your emotions without added judgement, addressing problems without the added emotional burden of shame, and rapidly and genuinely accepting things (like past harm) that can’t be inherently changed without the added agony of fighting yourself over it

stanford_labrat 4y ago

> It's very easy to think that you're a failure if you don't know exactly who you are and what you want to be at age 17 I'm 26 (almost 27, so let's say 27) and I think this echoes my experience fairly well. I felt like a failure because I didn't get into the top schools for undergrad even though I struggled so hard and objectively had good stats that I (at the time) thought would've made me a compelling/competitive applicant. Varsity athlete, played instrument, loads of APs and top of my class, yadayadayadayadayada. I think the evolution of the college application process and the perpetual rising bar has definitely affected teens mental health. Anecdotal but I experienced pressure to do well from peers, the school, and my own family.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> give teenagers a chance to actually live life You'd have to do it worldwide, though. Part of the reason my own teenage years were so (relatively) peaceful is because they took place in the late 80's, before globalization. I empathize with my own kids who've been on this treadmill since kindergarten, but it's there because they're competing with kids from countries that have never had childhoods.

jimmaswell 4y ago

Public school schoolwork is so easy. So is applying to a college. How is anyone stressed by it?

neuronic 4y ago
This is a tad bit insensitive. I have excelled at public school for the first years, then there was a rough patch in life caused by parents which TANKED my grades and social life for years. I recovered and eventually got an excellent Master's degree in Bioinformatics but it is condescending to assume that everyone was dealt the same hand as you in life and that anything at all is fair. Maybe schoolwork isn't so easy if you're being abused by a parent once a week?
- candiodari 4y ago
  I had some serious incidents in High School, mostly with other kids, and while my grades dropped, I never lost the ability to make up for weeks, sometimes months of doing nothing for school in a matter of hours. Didn't stop me from getting bad grades for those weeks/months and making stupid mistakes like not completing assignments and the like. It's very easy. It's just that in a depressed/anxious/... state people aren't capable of sustaining even the most basic levels of effort after a while. Frankly, I bet that if it was a lot harder, that would have helped me.

xg15 4y ago

Meanwhile the comments below the article have already determined the unmistakable cause of the epidemic: Today's youth is just too coddled and the school environment is just not violent enough anymore. No further questions...

yodsanklai 4y ago

> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. Spoiler: it won't get easier :) I'm sure everyone has a different experience, but I find professional life to be much harder than being a student, even a student preparing for very selective admission process. You often work as hard as an adult (if not harder), plus have more responsibilities.

psychlops 4y ago

Here we go, everyone gets to share their stress story. Time to filter all comments that start with "I..."

kitsune_ 4y ago

You're making the mistake of extrapolating from your own personal experience.

BoorishBears 4y ago
Yeah... there's nothing wrong with growing up with a bit of a bubble, but yikes by 24 you'd think this person would start to be aware that their experience wasn't exactly universal As other comments pointed out, a large portion of society doesn't go to college, let alone "stress out about extracurriculars to make sure my app looks extra good"

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codeslave13 4y ago

Having a child that hit teens then and hindsight being 20/20. Crazy parents and social media i feel can be the root of the majority of. Really location specific and not the deciding factor but it laid a solid foundation for mental health issues even today. No citations or anything just my exp as a Dad.

partiallypro 4y ago

I think this is your personal anecdote and there isn't much to support it, but I do think, separate from college, that kids simply just can't be kids today. There is social, political and academic pressure that just didn't exist when most of us were growing up. I think the pandemic made it much worse.

WalterBright 4y ago

> break under this kind of pressure They aren't being drafted to go fight in Vietnam. The Russians aren't bombing our cities. The main health problem is eating too much food, not too little. Teens aren't even expected to have jobs anymore. (In my day, teens got jobs at 16.) My dad volunteered in WW2. He expected to die in combat, as his cohort had an 80% casualty rate. 4 out of 5. Every mission meant holes in the airplane, and you stayed on course and took it. He helplessly watched men die. His best friend had his face burned off. When he returned home, he thought the concerns on the home front were trivial. After all, they were going to live another day. > what you want to be at age 17 In other words, America is full of opportunity. We live in a golden age in America.

nugget 4y ago
My grandfather survived Pearl Harbor and became a B-25 pilot in one of those cohorts with an 80%+ casualty rate. As a kid, I enjoyed reading and hearing about his experiences. It made me proud of his service. But I'm not sure it lessened the stresses and anxieties I felt during my own adolescence. Years later when a close family member had a near death/should have died experience, that meaningfully altered my perspective on life - because I experienced it first hand.
- Apofis 4y ago
  You discovered that suffering is relative to experience.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Your dad and mine were members of a very special club, and I'm sure they would have been fast friends. Thanks for talking about him!

Aeolun 4y ago

This is such a weird experience. I’ve heard this more often, and it’s just so foreign to me. I thought there was so much academics in my life at every age from 7 till 17, but basically I got to play as soon as school was out, with no other responsibilities. The same was true for all of my friends, and everyone surrounding me. It doesn’t hit me until today what an enormous privilege this solid educational system was, that would allow everyone to get (nearly) free schooling up to whatever level they wanted, with a quality high enough to require no further out-of-school lessons. No entrance examinations for university (bar a few extremely in demand or difficult courses), and roughly equivalent universities all over the country. This was in the Netherlands btw.

mrosett 4y ago

Everything you said about your experience could have been written in 2002. So it can't explain why there's an uptick in 2012.

likeabbas 4y ago

This is exactly why I advocate for less breadth and more depth starting from high school. I really didn’t need literature, history, or art. I knew I was more of a math and science person early on. Why do kids need to be so well rounded when they already have a bias towards certain fields? Lets let them focus on what they are good at, and give them a little more free time on their hands.

Alex3917 4y ago

> I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. Or at least they're more stressed due to changes in the school system due to NCLB. The timing would be approximately correct for that also.

mikewarot 4y ago

>If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. We need something like Rumspringa[1], a period in life when I young person is given a bit of slack, and is expected to eventually voluntarily take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of an adult, or leave the community. I can't find it now[2], but I remember either Joseph Campbell, or some other such person in a TV interview describing how in earlier societies, the children once of sufficient age would be set outside of society, and allowed to sleep in the ashes around the camp fires, until they resolved to join society as an adult, with all the privileges and responsibilities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa [2] google really does suck these days, doesn't it?

nervousvarun 4y ago
In Europe this is "gap year". America needs it agreed.

phlipski 4y ago

I'm 43 and I felt the pressure of getting into a good college back in highschool. I remember anecdotes of older kids talking about it when I was in later elementary school grades. I don't think the college pressure is all that new. Maybe more widespread?

P_I_Staker 4y ago

This doesn't stop in high school, and you only get so much better at it. Your life feels like my life now, and it's largely going to waste. I think schools and colleges may be correctly preparing students for "the real world", and this is unfortunate.

Shocka1 4y ago

Sorry you went through this as that sounds like some terrible teenage years. You should of been having the time of your life at that age. When I was 17 I was screwing around more than anything else and basically having a blast 24/7. Was a mediocre C student at best, but ended up jumping through the right hoops after HS and got all but 4 classes of a CS Master's at a well known Upstate NY university completely paid for. This is not meant to brag, but just wanted to bring up that even a total idiot kid like me did well. I've seen it again and again. Parents and communities pushing on their kid's academics and sports lives to no ends. I was lucky to have well grounded parents that mostly just let me be a kid and figure things out for myself. Unfortunately I don't see this strategy getting bigger any time soon.