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Kasi Alexander

Professor Blouch

Composition II

29 March, 2020

Why Has the Mental Health in America’s Youth Progressively Gotten Worse Over the Years?

one in five teenagers suffer from mental illness, that's roughly 20% of our population.

Having said that, it’s very common for teenagers or young adults to suffer from a variety of

mental illnesses and no one is completely sure on why this epidemic has occurred. Most of the

newer social media such as snapchat and instagram began to get popular and used a lot more in

the year 2014, this is also the year that the mental health of teenagers and young adults began to

decrease. I have dealt with mental illness for a couple years now and the purpose of this paper is

to introduce more information about this epidemic and raise awareness that many teens and

young adults suffer from this. The mental health of America's youth has progressively decreased

over the years due to the introduction of social media. Social media platforms have made it

possible for big corporations to give younger audiences expectations to live up to and if they

don't reach these requirements they are made to feel worse about themselves and cause mental

illnesses.

There are many mental illnesses that occur during this epidemic, the most common one

we run into during this is depression. Depression is a mood disorder that causes extreme sadness
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or loss of interest in doing everyday things and even hobbies. This mental illness is more than

just someone being sad for a day or two, this illness can range from being sad or not interested in

things for weeks and sometimes even months. Mental illness is not a choice and you can’t just

snap out of it, this is something you need to work on for awhile so you can build your mental

health back up and it's not always an easy task to do so. The standards that these big corporations

are creating and sharing on social media can cause these individuals that aren’t meeting the

standards to become unmotivated or depressed. We can avoid this by ignoring all these “beauty

standards” and focus on reachable goals, even one small goal at a time could benefit the overall

mental health of these teenagers and young adults affected in this epidemic.

Another mental illness that is very common is anxiety, everyone experiences anxiety

every once in a while during everyday activities, however, people who have anxiety disorders

have more intense feelings of worry or fear that occurs more often and often ends with their

anxiety peaking causing panic attacks. There are many types of anxiety such as social anxiety,

separation anxiety, etc., the anxiety that mostly relates to this paper is social anxiety. The

introduction of these social media platforms allow teens and young adults to avoid face to face

contact with others and often leads to social anxiety, this occurs due to the person who has this

disorder often avoid socializing and face to face contact with others. When they do eventually

socialize with people face to face, they often have a spike in their anxiety and it overwhelms the

person causing panic attacks and worsens that social anxiety they have.

These mental illnesses or disorders can also put the physical health of the individual at

risk, depression and anxiety can cause that individual to develop an eating disorder due to the

standards that these big corporations are introducing. These eating disorders can range from
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individuals starving themselves to meet these beauty standards or it could be the complete

opposite and cause someone to overeat or binge. Either way these beauty standards that are

introduced through social media could be potentially dangerous and we need to focus on trying

to change these to more reasonable expectations or just ignore them all together and just let these

teenagers and young adults live their lives while being healthy both physically and mentally.

Mental illnesses focus more on the emotional stability of the person that is diagnosed,

these illnesses make it hard for the person to do simple activities that others can do easily such

as: working, school, social life, and even sleeping. Mental illnesses can be caused for many

reasons like home environment, family relationships, school status, etc. The most common cause

since 2014 has been tied to social media platforms, these platforms allow big corporations to

essentially “bully” younger audiences by giving them standards to live up to and many teens and

young adults aren't able to exceed these expectations. These expectations are causing those who

are unable to reach them to fall into a depression or decrease their mental health because it

causes them to feel like they aren’t good enough for the rest of the world.

In an article called “Health complaints among adolescents in Norway: A twenty-year

perspective on trends.”, written by Thomas Potrebny and others, older adolescent females have

the largest decrease in mental health as well as younger adolescent boys. Over their 20-year

research period, between the years 1992 and 2016 they received more complaints for mental

illness or as they word it “psychological health complaints”. These complaints progressively got

worse as more social media were introduced to these teenagers and young adults. These mental
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illnesses don’t just affect teenagers and young adults, they can also affect children and adults but

they aren’t the main group that are being influenced by these social media platforms.

In another article called “Violent Media Hinders Students' Emotional and Intellectual

Development”, written by Marianna King, she talks about how about 50% of students have

admitted to being cyber bullied. This percentage seems big as it is but there are also teens and

young adults that aren’t completely honest or they don’t realize that they are being cyberbullied

by these big corporations. Now if everyone they interviewed or questioned were honest or more

informed, the percentage could be much bigger than it is. These social media platforms allow the

teenagers and young adults to avoid more face to face interactions which negatively affects their

social life and allows those affected to stay home more and possibly worsen their conditions.

In an article called “Violent Media Hinders Students’ Emotional and Intellectual

Development”, written by Marianna King, she mentions that the decrease in mental health is

connected to the increase in violence caused by the violent media introduced on television and

social media. In this article, she mentions the hundreds of studies done by psychologists and the

effect of videogames on the adolescents brain activity, they have proven that violent video games

and media decrease the brains’ emotional processing. This can cause the individual to have

violent outbursts and could potentially cause them to become antisocial and develop social

anxiety when around people at school, work, or any public setting.

With the recent introduction of the coronavirus or COVID-19, more and more people are

being required to stay home as much as possible and avoid social gatherings. This is a perfect
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opportunity for these big corporations to post and share more content with these individuals

because of them avoiding social gatherings, more time is being spent on social media and there's

less socializing with friends due to required quarantine in some states. After this pandemic is

over or when it starts to calm down and we are once again free to leave our houses and have

social gatherings, this mental health epidemic could decrease even more because of how much

time is being spent on social media platforms.

Along with mental illness there has also been an increase in suicides and self harm. In

“The Mental Health Crisis Among Americas’ Youth is Real- and Staggering”, written by Jean

Twenge, they state “ the suicide rate among 18- to 19-year-olds climbed 56 percent from 2008 to

2017. Other behaviors related to depression have also increased, including emergency

department admissions for self-harm, such as cutting, as well as hospital admissions for suicidal

thoughts and suicide attempts”. This article also mentions that older teenagers or young adults

are one of the main groups affected by mental illnesses and the least affected are the individuals

26 years old or older. Jean explains that social life is the main cause of these illnesses and

suicides, individuals during this period were not affected by their jobs causing this because “U.S.

economic growth was strong and the unemployment rate dropped significantly from 2011 to

2017, when mental health issues were rising the most”. The more popular social shift was when

social media was introduced, ever since smartphones, video games, etc. was introduced mental

health has decreased. While older individuals use this technology as well, younger individuals

adapted to it quickly and it has reconstructed the social lives we all currently have. Jean also

mentions in their article that there has been many studies connecting mental health and social

media, “teens today spend less time with their friends in person and more time communicating
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electronically, which study after study has found is associated with mental health issues”, the less

face to face contact that these teens and young adults have the more mental health issues seem to

appear.

In conclusion, mental health has decreased significantly ever since social media and

advanced technology was introduced. Ways we can help these individuals that are affected by

mental illnesses and some disorders are by giving them an outlet or someone to talk to, allowing

these individuals to have someone they can trust with all their problems with help significantly

with mental health. Some other ways to help yourself if you are affect by these mental illnesses

are: listening to music, socializing face to face and not over social media, new hobbies, activities

outside, etc. The mental health among teenagers and young adults is plummeting and we can’t sit

back and ignore it anymore, things are escalating to higher suicide rates and higher drug abuse

among these young people and its very dangerous not just to the individuals but to others around

them aswell.

Works Cited

King, Marianna. "Violent Media Hinders Students' Emotional and Intellectual Development."
Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing
Viewpoints, https://link-gale-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/apps/doc/EITKQJ250642368/OVIC?
u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=d947acd4. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020. Originally published as
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"Educating Students to be Critical of Violent Media," Association for Middle Level Education,
Apr. 2018.

“Mental Disorders.” Teen Mental Health, Teen Mental Health, 2020,

teenmentalhealth.org/learn/mental-disorders/

Morris, Nathaniel. "We need to rethink mental health laws. But not because of mass shootings."
Washington Post, 2 Mar. 2018. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link-gale-
com.sinclair.ohionet.org/apps/doc/A529515343/OVIC?u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=78d83141.
Accessed 23 Mar. 2020.

"Preface to 'What Mental Health Issues Do Youths Face Today?'." Mental Illness, edited by
Roman Espejo, Greenhaven Press, 2012. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale In Context: Opposing
Viewpoints, https://link-gale-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/apps/doc/EJ3010154157/OVIC?
u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=007f35d4. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020.

Potrebny, Thomas, et al. "Health complaints among adolescents in Norway: A twenty-year

perspective on trends." PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no. 1, 2019, p. e0210509. Gale In Context:
Opposing Viewpoints, https://link-gale-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/apps/doc/A568929299/OVIC?
u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=d91fa1dc. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020.

Twenge, Jean. "The mental health crisis among America's youth is real—and staggering." Gale
Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,
https://link-gale-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/apps/doc/AVFUEM325097915/OVIC?
u=dayt30401&sid=OVIC&xid=7be557dd . Accessed 23 Mar. 2020. Originally published as "The
mental health crisis among America's youth is real—and staggering," The Conversation, 14
Mar. 2019.