In this chaotic modern world, it is no wonder that our nervous systems are dysregulated and at high risk of burnout. When I tell people I am a stress and burnout coach they tend to confide about their challenges of feeling over-stressed, and their concern about burning out and not having the energy to go to work and support their families. Parents are concerned about their kids’ stress levels and high incidences of anxiety, in both boys and girls. Some of these parents perceive themselves as low-stress parents, who don’t put pressure on their kids, and do their best to provide a safe and secure home environment, so it makes sense that they should wonder why their kids are experiencing so much anxiety.
In Johnathan Haidt’s latest book, The Anxious Generation, he expounds a convincing argument for the exponential rise in mental health disorders in children since 2012. His research supports a correlation between the amount of time children and teens are spending on social media and the rise in mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. In fact, the data he obtained from the United States CDC shows that actual completed suicides in children aged 10 to 14 have increased by 91% in boys and 167% in girls in the USA between 2010 and 2020, now if that doesn’t freak you out, and make you realise that we need to get very serious about proactively supporting and guiding these children, I don’t know what will. His findings allude to the fact that it is since the commercialisation of three new functions on our smartphones that changed the nature of the effect of social media on children and teens.
Those functions were the “like“, “share” and the “reverse camera” options.
Before the addition of these functions, the performance of our social media posts was not digitally measured or as compellingly evaluated as it is now by the number of “likes and “shares” let alone the critical judgements that are often included in the comments. This “fickle” data often gathered from people who have never met us, feeds our compulsion to gain external validation for our looks, our activities, our achievements, as we seek approval by the greater community.
Assessment and evaluation have always been a source of great stress for humans, especially since the invention of “production line schooling”. However, exams were usually only twice per year at most. With this new online daily evaluation of posts and photos, and the dire consequence of social failure being rejection and humiliation, you couldn’t have designed a better machine for generating inadequacy and confusion more efficiently if you tried. Even adults, who have mature, fully developed brains, struggle to deal with the constant evaluation of their social media posts. You can only imagine the impact on children. Teens and children are far more susceptible to these stressors because they are undergoing what Psychologists have identified as, various “sensitive periods” where developing brains and bodies are particularly vulnerable.
According to the legendary psychologist Eric Erickson’s Psychosocial Stages of development from ages 7 to 11 years, the primary struggle, he calls industry versus inferiority, is about developing self-confidence in our competence to master the skills necessary to engage with life and if this is unsuccessful then we develop a sense of inferiority or inadequacy. From age 12 to 18 years, is the process of developing a personal identity by exploring values, beliefs, and goals in life, versus role-confusion which results when teens are unsure about their place in the world and future direction. If these stages are disturbed or not completed successfully then the next stage of development will be hindered which is the capacity to develop intimacy versus the tendency towards isolation.
If we look at Haidt’s trends in conjunction with Erickson’s stages of development at each vulnerable period, can you understand some of the reasons why the repeated judgement, evaluation, and rejection experienced by the youth of today on social media can have devastating effects on the development of their identities, feelings of competence in the world and their ability to engage in intimate relationships? Then with this knowledge in mind, knowing that the younger generation of today have been undermined at critical stages of their development and not been able to grow vital competencies to cope with life, it becomes understandable why so many people are overwhelmed by the stressors of everyday living in this competitive, fast-paced world. Then on top of that, if this stress is sustained for a long period of time, the stress hormones will drain the body’s energy, and with no hope of a way-out people become exhausted and burnt out.