Then and Now

She’s first in her class. She plays clarinet in four different bands and an orchestra. And she’s stressed out. For sophomore Ashley Raster, stress is such a normal part of life that she has come to accept it. She rarely thinks about it, preferring to focus on completing her schoolwork and performing well in her extracurriculars. Ashley is just one girl in the sea of modern teenagers that feel stressed on a daily basis.

“I don’t think modern teens are more stressed, but we’re stressed about different things,” Ashley said. “Now we’re stressed about school, but in the past people weren’t so much stressed about that as their personal lives. We have different mindsets, so we get stressed for different reasons.”

According to Becky Raster, Ashley’s mom, stress levels have stayed the same over the years, albeit in different forms. She says that the economic climate has heightened the importance of college while also driving up tuition and making it harder to find jobs. This pressures students to attend college and compete for scholarships, even those that would be better suited to other routes, such as trade school or the workforce. In Becky’s experience, teenagers in the past were worried more about jobs and personal relationships, and there wasn’t as big of a focus on grades and college preparation as there is today.

“I think that there needs to be an appropriate amount of stress because without it there isn’t a drive to stay organized and to achieve,” Becky said. “However, I do think that in many cases stress has been raised unfairly. Economics has created stress that really doesn’t need to be there.”

Overall, there’s more awareness of stress as a real issue. The perceived importance of college also forces students to perform better in class. In order to get accepted to their top colleges and receive scholarships, teenagers today worry about grades, GPAs and test scores. They also try squeezing in time for friends, family and extracurriculars. In some cases, this pressure can cause grades to slip and relationships to become strained.

“Grades are the most important thing,” Ashley said. “It’s like your life is defined by numbers. It’s about the number you get, not how well you do. It should be about what you’re learning, but that’s not really a priority we understand anymore.”

Social media also plays a role in stress these days. Now, every mistake a person makes can be recorded for future generations to see online. The internet also provides a platform for new issues like cyberbullying. These problems simply didn’t exist when past generations were growing up.

“This is the generation that’s growing up with all the social media, and I worry about that,” guidance counselor Lisa Woodrum said. “We as adults try to guide as best we can, but it’s definitely still a risk factor. Our mistakes growing up weren’t documented for future generations to see like they are now, and that can be really stressful for teens.”

Woodrum believes that stress levels in teenagers have actually increased over the years. Woodrum attributes this growth to the introduction of social media and the way high schools pressure many students into taking advanced classes so they look better when compared to other schools. Many schools believe that the more high-achieving students they have, the better they are.

“Most high schools are junior colleges now,” Woodrum said. “The expectation used to be to graduate from high school. Now, the expectation is to take advanced courses and to not only take the ACT, but to take it three, four or even five times.”

In many cases, the expectations put on teenagers have changed over the years. Rather than work, many modern students prefer to concentrate on school and other activities. According to a study conducted by JPMorgan Chase, the number of working teenagers in 2011 was at 26 percent, the lowest since World War II.

Even the response to stress has changed. Certain methods of stress relief have been used for decades, including listening to music and exercising. However, teens today are more likely to turn to substance abuse to relieve stress, according to Woodrum. When used healthily, social media and the internet can help relieve stress too. Stress has also been recognized as more of a health problem in recent years. Many people, including doctors, did not accept it as a real problem in the past. Today’s schools are more likely to have guidance departments to help stressed students, even if the cause of stress is not academic.

“In today’s climate, I think that more people are sensitive to stress,” Becky said. “Overall, there’s more of an awareness of stress as a real issue.”

Ashley doesn’t see herself becoming any less stressed out in the near future. Like many teenagers, she has come to accept the fact that her life is busy and her classes are often demanding. However, she still wishes that the pressures on modern teenagers would be relieved, at least a little bit.

“Just keep trying and push through the wall of stress,” Ashley said. “You’ll learn to handle it and then you’ll be less stressed out in the future.”