Why are more teenagers suffering from severe anxiety & what can we do about it?

I am going to suggest a solution, becoming more mindful, and you are going to like it...

Anxiety is rising

Anxiety rates in teenagers have skyrocketed in the last 20 years. Eleven percent of teenagers meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder (Costello, Egger, Copeland, Erkanli, & Angold, 2011) and 22.7% of young people will suffer from an anxiety disorder by the time they become a young adult (Copeland, Angold, Shanahan, & Costello, 2014).

Why is anxiety on the rise?

You can blame it on the bombardment of social media into our everyday lives, skewing our view of what others are experiencing at the expense of making ourselves feel bad.

You can blame it on the competitive job market and poor economy that puts pressure on middle class kids to excel and overachieve in high school to enter the college-debt market that college offers with the hope it will include a well paying job.

You can blame it on our TV laden culture that shortens our attention span and gives us expectations of receiving information in sound bites, carefully crafted for consumption, and probably contributing to the increases over time of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder).

And you would of course be right for all of the above.

In a culture that values immediate information and undervalues patience and wisdom, it is no wonder there is so much unease. It breeds feeling uncertain even when you have all the answers.

Embrace technology for the good

But the answer does not lie in turning off our phones, it’s not realistic. The best advice that I can offer is to learn how to combine technology with our lives. What does that mean and how does one do it? There are lots of ways to do it that don’t entail banning the phone, donning a robe and doing yoga (not that there is anything wrong with that).

But after reading Rohan Gunatillake's book, Modern Mindfulness, I realized there is a way to use technology without letting it use us. Gunatillake suggests using our modern world as a jump start for different mindfulness techniques. What if every time we read something on our tablet, and come to a natural break, we used that break to slow down for a minute and pay attention to our breaths? What if every time after we checked a phone related message, we took a moment to slow down and find something in our sight line to focus our attention on? What if we used our everyday distractions to refocus ourselves instead? To learn how to do this you can google meditation breathing tutorial or watch this brief Ujjayi Breath Tutorial

Rediscover Play

Another way to reduce anxiety is to rediscover play. In the book Play, Stuart Brown MD, explains how play is something vitally important that is often lost to us as we get older and become adults. I think in this way, teenagers are becoming adults faster. They have stopped playing, stopped using their imagination, stopped letting their minds wander, and they have filled their minds with worries about school, with worries about money, and with constant filler, that is modern media, smartphones, selfies, and technology. They have lost the ability to have a quiet mind, and they have lost the desire to seek out play. Brown explains in his book that play is pleasurable, energizing, and enlivens; it promotes optimism, and opens up new possibilities. To me that doesn’t sound like the definition of browsing Instagram, or Twitter, or even playing video games. True play can shape our brain and stimulates nerve growth in the amygdala (emotion- center) and prefrontal cortex (decision-making) and make us smarter, more creative and innovative. For these reasons, making play a part of our lives is vitally important. To get a video perspective; Watch Charlie Hoehn talk about how he overcame his anxiety through rediscovering play.

Find the right play for you

So how do we do this? One way is to give yourself some time to think about what activities make you happy. It should be something apparently purposeless, voluntary, with an inherent attraction, freedom from time, where you feel a diminished consciousness of self, has improvisational potential and you have the continuous desire to keep on doing it. Sometimes the hardest part for adults in remembering what we like to do. For teenagers hopefully it won’t be so hard to remind them how they used to spend hours shooting hoops, or riding bikes, or playing water polo with friends. I was recently at our local park and saw a group of teenagers sitting in a circle, presumably socializing except that every one of them was holding and using their smartphone. As parents, we need to set a good example, and set aside time for play, so that our children can learn from us to make themselves and their well-being a priority when they become a parent. There, parents, now you have an excuse to do something fun for yourself. Sometimes we must be selfish; It's the altruistic choice.