These days, it seems as if every high school student is stressed.
Relationships, school, sports, clubs, parents, and more fill up both teenagers’ time and their heads.
Many students, such as junior Leila Skosples, feel this burden often as a result of schoolwork and activities.
Skosples said she feels stressed “six days a week.”
During her time in high school, Skosples has run cross country and track, played tennis, and participated in student council and National Honors Society. She also serves her community regularly and cleans houses in her neighborhood for money.
Next school year, she will focus on work, National Honors Society, student council, and community service.
The main reason she plans on dropping out of several activities is because of their high demand.
“Whenever one class ramps up, all my other classes coincidentally ramp up,” Skosples said. “So it’ll be a week where a lot of assignments and tests are happening or due on the same day. It just leaves no time, and that paired with sports just makes things really stressful.”
Skosples is not the only teenager affected by the load that comes with high school.
In 2023, 91% of high school athletes experienced some level of stress due to sports. Further, in 2024, 75% of high school students reported that they felt consistently stressed due to schoolwork.
Even students who are not easily stressed can still deal with this burden.
Freshman Beau Henson said he is hardly stressed. However, when he is, the main cause is school.
“[It’s] rough, rough, rough. [I’m] worried about a test; worried about homework I didn’t have time to do,” Henson said.
Though the cause for persistent stress is not black-and-white, pressure put on students plays a large factor. This is sourced from both students themselves and from others, such as parents.
Nicole Marroni, a licensed professional clinical counselor, said she has seen the fallout in young clients who are typically in college or immediately post-college. The crash is usually due to clients overstretching themselves from the pressure to be perfect.
“Through middle school, all the way through college, to be really perfect and perform really well in sports, perform really well academically, and then to also try to be creative and TikTok pretty, and all the things, it’s a lot of pressure,” Marroni said.
She says that social media is to blame.
“Social media really does make you feel like there are so many options, and everyone is doing better than you,” Marroni said. “They look happier than you. They look more successful than you. They look like they’re in better relationships than you. That’s the message, even if none of it’s true.”
Skosples had a very different idea as to why so many high school students face consistent burdens.
“I think that a lot of people who aren’t teenagers anymore regret that they didn’t do as much as they could have in their prime years,” she said. “[So, they] try to get teenagers to do that so that they don’t regret it, but it just backfires and makes us feel like we have to do everything.”
Stress from activities and homework may seem unavoidable, especially when so much is expected of teens. However, there are ways to relieve some of the mental turmoil.
Focusing on healthy habits such as getting 8 hours of sleep per night, being active, and eating healthy can all help. Another way to feel better is to participate in activities that act as a recharge.
For Skosples, those activities are running and community service. Even though she will stop running for a team, she still finds joy in running outside of school.
“Running is the thing that helps me decompress …[because it] gives me time to overthink, but without the stress,” Skosples said. “And service and helping others shows me that my problems aren’t as bad as they are, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.”
