What's Causing So Much Anxiety in Students?

Anxiety or the feeling of anxiousness has become a constant issue among students of this age. School can be rife with stress, disquietude and worry. Not just academically, even social situations and norms have caused a steep rise in anxiety among the youth. Keeping up with futile trends, having the perfect image, interpersonal issues as well as peer pressure has played a key role in the up rise of this mental health illness. 

So then the question arises,

"If this is that common, where do we even know where this originates from?"

The answer is simple-everywhere.

The environment the youth is exposed to has multiple repercussions-one of which include anxiety.

It can come from something that is happening in school, something that is happening online or even something at home. These three places are the most places where an adolescent spends 90% of time in; and that is where this can arise. 

For most cases, one sees the first signs of anxiety are seen between the ages of kindergarten and grade 12 and usually is manifested in 3 forms namely, school refusal, test anxiety and social anxiety. Apart from these, there are a multiple types of disorders that can develop when these types of anxiety reaches an extreme level or condition. 

A couple of common symptoms that one may have one of these types of anxiety is avoidance of social situations and participating in school activities, irregular sleep cycle and the need for perfection.

These are directly connected to the above mentioned Anxiety's or can be called as 'early symptoms'. 

Now that we covered 'where' it originates from, the next question that would click our minds would be

"What has caused a rise in it over years?"

The main cause is school. 

There are multiple factors that contribute to this statement. A few would include-

• Extreme pressure and high expectations: This usually comes from people that expect a lot from you such as your parents, guardians and teachers. There is also that burden on top of one's head that controls their mind and forces the need to be perfect. Pressure from parents to do well, from friends to live up to societal expectations - the nerd/scholar has to get a 100, the popular sporty kid will fail but get into college with a scholarship, pressure from teachers and the school to excel at every single aspect of school so their institution gets praised - and one ends up trying to do it all and fall into the abyss instead. It often leads to burnout and also has other consequences.
  
  
• Unrealistic deadlines: Another cause of anxiety-instead a pretty common one. Students are given almost less than a week or maybe just a day or two to complete a bombardment of assignments. Unlike some cases, teachers aren't very lenient when one can't complete their work-rather have dire consequences.
  My point here is not to cut down on workload completely, or not reprimand them for not completing their work-but giving flexible deadlines should definitely be tried to be incorporated for better results.
  
  
• Uncertainty of examinations: This is one which has drastically increased over the past 2 years owing to the the ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic. The constant cancellation and rescheduling of examinations along with the paranoia of what consequences could occur if one catches the virus has caused a constant growth in the anxiousness of students.

Next major seed of the rise is Social Media

The absurdity of social media standards is just appalling. 

From having the "perfect body" to having your "aesthetic" and unnecessary negative comments on people's feed it has really caused a drop in teens self-esteem and has caused them to worry over such frivolous topics. I would definitely recommend watching the documentary on Netflix called "The Social Dilemma" to know more about this topic.

Another cause also includes parental pressure such as choosing a stream that does interest you one bit but you have to pursue it for their satisfaction. Students at times open the doors for anxiety when they ponder over the thought about the uncertainty as to how they'll be able to succeed in that particular field as well as fulfil their own dream.

These are just the most common reasons the feeling of general anxiety exists among students. Of course, there are plenty more which I haven't mentioned here in this post.

As we are progressing with times, though the pressure is increasing there are lot of changes that are coming up. People are more openminded towards different streams, schools are giving a little more leniency towards particular situations and students are speaking up. They are being open about concerns which is giving a room for improvement. With age the pressure is going to increase-no doubt about that. But, we should learn how to cope with it and try incorporating stress busters into our lives to become successful and help out the future generations.

That was it for today's post! Drop off your views in the comments below! Hope you enjoyed this post :)

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Signing off,

Kuhu :)