Young Anxiety

“We would like to think of history as progress, but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950s.” 

- Psychology Today

We are in the grip of an epidemic of young people at odds with the world around them. Parents and teachers find this difficult to confront, a poor reflection of the society we've created for them.

Much of the blame has been heaped on social media. Last month Instagram, a social network popular with young people, was in the spotlight for claiming the 51 million likes that “Eugene”, an image of an egg, had generated was intended to raise awareness of mental health issues. At the same time the company was being censured by the press for the suicide of the 14-year-old British girl Molly Russell. Instagram boss Adam Moseri acknowledged the company’s responsibilities to its users. “We need to do more to protect the most vulnerable,” he said. 

There have been calls to enact a duty of care obligation for social media companies to their users, citing in particular the effect they have on vulnerable young people.

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The sharp rise in anxiety and depression among teens could be linked to the appearance of smartphones. Combined with social media, they provide endless possibilities for social comparison. “For all their power to link kids day and night,” says Jean Twenge, in The Atlantic, “social media also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out.” And young adults are primed to notice the stuff that makes them feel bad about themselves.

Dr Scott Stanley, writing in Psychology Today, believes the current malaise is the consequence of being “young and cueless” [sic]. He cites a dearth of relationship cues among young people today. “One of the most profound changes in dating and mating over the past 40 years is the rise of ambiguity,” he says, “exacerbated by decreases in the reliability of information about relationships that can be found in devices, messaging, and social media.” 

Others believe it is a reflection of the state of the world we live in. But rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the turbulent 1960s and early ‘70s than they are today. The changes seem to have much more to do with the way young people view the world than with the way the world actually is. 

Dr Peter Gray also writing in Psychology Today attributes this to a dramatic shift among young people, from an Internal locus of control to an External locus of control. He gives the following examples:

"I can, through personal effort, quite definitely improve my competence, but that doesn't guarantee that I'll get rich. I can, through spiritual practices or philosophical delving, find my own sense of meaning in life, but that doesn't guarantee that people will find me more attractive or lavish praise on me. To the extent that my emotional sense of satisfaction comes from progress toward intrinsic goals I can control my emotional wellbeing. To the extent that my satisfaction comes from others' judgments and rewards, I have much less control over my emotional state.” 

In the 1960s, 80 percent of teens believed they were in charge of their own fates and only 20 percent believed they were victims of circumstances beyond their control. Now this trend is reversed. What, then, must be done to reverse the trend again? How can we help young people cope better?