The Teen Stress Epidemic

It's tough to be a North American teenage girl yet the majority of teens in North America have the luxuries of going to school, owning a cellphone and living in a middle class house. So shouldn't they be happy? Dr. Leonard Sax, a Ph.D psychologist, medical doctor and writer, has found through research in Canada and the U.S that "today's teens and tweens look confident on the outside but have a dangerously fragile sense of self". Dr. Sax has addressed in Macleans magazine that teen girls struggle with anxiety, present themselves as fake and are harming their bodies.

Anxiety has now become the norm among teenage girls. Common stresses for most girls are looking hot, getting into the best university or being popular. The TV show "Gossip Girl, which is about anxious teens trying to present a sexual persona," and many other shows and celebrities are idolized by teens. Teen girls are continually trying to perfect themselves to look like and have the the same lives as the characters in the media instead of focusing on their own identity. "Girls are loosing what psychologists used to call middle childhood" and replacing this stage with the stress of becoming the perfect adult.

Teen girls spend endless amounts of time obsessing over their appearance. This not only includes their physical appearance but also their social, athletic or academic status. According to Dr. Sax, there are "girls presenting themselves as a brand, trying to create a public persona, [and] polishing an image of themselves that's all surface". This leaves their sense of self undeveloped. Anorexia is only a minority but it's common for teen girls to obsess over their weight. Being anorexic is then considered an achievement to teen girls and they "believe it's a lifestyle choice, not a pathology".

In order to cope with the stress of being perfect many girls resort to harmful addictions. It is found "that more than one in five girls [are] cutting and/or burning [themselves] with matches [and] more than one in four high school girls [are] binge drinking". What's even more surprising is that the teen who is the top student or athlete is more likely to be cutting or binge drinking. This is because they "haven't been living, they've been performing". Cutting and drinking is real and it relieves anxiety.

The issues of anxiety, fake identities and self-harm have become too common to be brushed aside. Dr. Sax's main ideas should be widely acknowledged by parents and teenagers. Most teen girls don't even realize the emptiness of their identity because they are too occupied with creating a fake life. The harmful cycle of teen stress will never end unless teens become aware of it.