By Norah Jewett ’25
Stress: it’s something that we experience at one point or another, and highschoolers tend to be carrying a lot of it. However, how do stress levels of high school students today compare to years past? Shockingly, many studies show that the levels of anxiety and stress in teenages today is equivalent to those put in mental hospitals in the 1950s. This is due to several factors, including the recent pandemic we are emerging from, social media, and the constant need to fit an impossible standard. So what seems to be the root of stress for your average highschooler?
Surveys were passed out to several students to measure how much of their stress is due to school. Unsurprisingly, 80% of responses listed school work as the number one cause of their stress. If school work wasn’t first for people, it was almost always second. While the number of hours spent on homework varies, the average seems to be around two hours for most kids. All freshmen answered to one hour of homework. One and two hours were a common answer for sophomores, but a good deal of them were working at three to four or more. Juniors were up at three hours, and seniors replied with three or more hours for the most part.
The interesting part is that students with a grade range of all A’s answered that they were always or often stressed over school work. Additionally, many had around three hours of homework. This leads to the possible conclusion that the higher the teenager’s grade, the more they feel obliged to keep it at that consistent A range so they put more time, energy, and worry into it. In general, most kids answered to always or often being stressed over school, not just those with all A’s. One junior states, “I am always stressed with only two AP classes, I can’t imagine how it is for people that take more.” A sophomore replies, “Summitives and tests in different classes line up pretty often which largely adds to the stressfulness of test days.”
In regards to how necessary the homework kids are getting is, a good portion of freshmen and seniors said that their homework was necessary for them to learn in their classes. It makes sense, as freshmen are getting eased into the way of schoolwork in high school and the seniors are preparing for college and the real world. Sophomores and particularly juniors are less sure of how necessary their homework is. A sophomore who wasn’t sure about their workload said, “Homework can be necessary and helpful in certain scenarios, but giving homework just for the sake of it is unfair and illogical.”
“I don’t get enough sleep. Between a lot of other commitments, my part time job, and still finding time to take care of basic needs, it’s already late. I stay up late to do the homework I didn’t have time to do,” a senior answers. A sophomore adds, “This time of year is especially hard because I have three sports going on and I also have school work. I’m in all honors classes which adds to the stress as well.”
Teenages are supposed to be getting eight to ten hours of sleep per night. When told about this, a student exclaimed, “Eight to ten hours? I don’t have enough time for that!” Now, ten hours can’t be achieved on a normal week day unless you go to bed at nine every night. And with jobs, school work, and sports, getting to bed at that time just isn’t possible. After asking several students, the average amount of sleep per night is standing at about six hours, two hours under the minimum. When asked about what causes people to get less sleep, almost everyone said it was school work what was keeping them up. Only a few said it was due to insomnia or other sleeping disorders and said they used the time they were up to do homework anyway. It turns out that not just teenagers, but their parents as well, are getting less sleep than they did twenty to thirty years ago.
Of course, bad habits can play a role in stress. Procrastination is something that everyone struggles with at some point, some more than others. With the added distractions of phones, teenages can end up putting homework off until the last minute. But even teachers agree that this generation is a lot more stressed than the previous ones—not only due to the never ending access to social media, but also the social norms of today and the need to constantly stay in touch with everyone.
In general, the stress of students today has shot up even in the past few years, not only due to the school work and other commitments, but social lives, family relationships and how the public perceives you. Public perception for a lot of teenagers seems to revolve around their school work, and the worry of what will happen when their grades slip. If this is the state of teenagers today, who knows what the future generations will hold.
