Two studies published last week pointed to increased levels of emotional difficulties for young people – and for teenage girls in particular.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report, The Changing Social Worlds of 13-Year-Olds which compared groups of children aged 13 in 2011/2012 with those in 2021/2022, found that the emotional difficulties many 13-year-old girls are now experiencing is negatively impacting on their engagement in school.
The other study, Children’s School Lives, by researchers in the School of Education at University College Dublin, found that children’s happiness tends to decrease as they progress through primary school, amid growing levels of anxiety over friendships and academic achievement.
Both studies confirm anecdotes from counsellors and psychotherapists that more young teenage girls are coming to them with anxiety issues. So, what is causing the increased levels of anxiety in this age group? And what can we do to help them?
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Counsellor and psychotherapist Stella O’Malley says that although people talk about the impact of social media all the time, it is still understated as a factor.
“Children are getting added to group chats now from the age of 10 or 11. Their ability to handle complex interactions is quite limited at that age. They are unable to navigate the level of sophisticated [communications] that is launched at them,” she says.
The ESRI study found that 13-year-old girls are more online now than boys, with 38 per cent of girls spending two or more hours online each day compared with 25 per cent of boys.
TikTok posts from influencers advising on how to behave, what to eat, how to dress and how to treat boys can lead to emotional overload – all while your body is changing and you still feel like you did when you were 12.
Teenage girls also tend to channel their frustrations emotionally compared with boys, who are more likely to physically lash out when angry or upset. “Their way to being distressed is very different, and girls are more likely to turn a group against someone they are annoyed with,” explains O’Malley.
Other apps such as Snapchat now allow teenagers to track where their friends are, resulting in feelings of exclusion if everyone else is out socialising while they are alone in their bedroom, scrolling through TikTok videos, desperately looking for something to make them laugh.
But O’Malley points to more existential reasons for the rise in anxiety in teenage girls. She doesn’t think that the lives of young teenage girls are tougher now than before – perhaps even the opposite – but that their ability to withstand emotional pressure has been reduced.
“We are not handling mental health very well even if we are trying very hard. A lot of teenagers had very pleasant, magical childhoods and then they land with their face against a wall, seeing the unfairness and difficulties in life,” she says.
“Many of them are incredibly disappointed with their teenage experience. They thought it would be magical too. They don’t expect life to be difficult and to realise that we are often discontented and distressed even if there are lots of glimpses of happiness.
Some counsellors and teachers say that so-called helicopter parenting doesn’t allow teenagers to find their own solutions to problems. “When a young person tells their parent that they had a problem with a teacher and the parent contacts the teacher directly through the school, that deskills the young person from solving the problem herself,” says Fiona Hughes, clinical manager with Jigsaw, the mental health charity working with 12-25-year-olds.
Hughes says that the central part of resilience is to expose young people to difficulties and let them learn from them. “It’s about saying, I can cope and feel these big feelings and be okay and that the world doesn’t end,” she says.
She argues that the replacement of freestyle outdoor play with structured activities has contributed to teenagers not being able to problem-solve without parental input.
“Working out small difficulties, looking at things, trying something and trying something else – these are the building block for resilience that is needed throughout adolescence,” she says.
On a wider level, Hughes says that it’s also very important to normalise anxiety. “Anxiety is a protective thing. We need it to survive. It gives us energy to focus and cram for exams or put the work in before a musical performance or a sporting event.”
She says that teachers and parents need to help young people understand that it’s okay to feel anxious. “There is a narrative out there now that anxiety is bad and that we need to get rid of it. We have a tendency now not to want our young people to feel these negative emotions at all.”
Linda Breathnach, a counsellor and psychotherapist who manages counsellors working one-on-one with students in north Dublin schools, says that she doesn’t use the word anxiety any more. “I talk about anxious feelings and how there is always a reason for them and how they are normal and human. The key is to allow yourself to have these feelings and still do what you have to do, to trust that they will pass and not to suppress them. That’s part of building resilience,” she says.
Hughes adds, however, that if anxiety is causing someone not to go to school, parents and teachers do need to help them find a way through it. “We need to support them to have a different relationship with these negative emotions. We need to accept them and not immediately try to get rid of them which would only cause more difficulty. Pushing things away is not learning to ride out the wave of emotion,” she explains.
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