Why being an adolescent is hard nowadays ?

Why being an adolescent is hard nowadays ?

Adolescence is a phase of life which is saturated with energy, hope, life, joy, beauty, and passion. 

Today, it is easy to judge the generation of teenagers as being oversensitive, having feelings of entitlement, and being mollycoddled and pampered too much.  What we fail to understand is the dynamics of their bio-psycho-social factors as they are faced with challenges, that determine their reactions and responses.  It's imperative to understand and being considerate of the common teenage issues that can have an effect on an individual's lifestyle, behavior, emotional, and psycho-social well-being. Some of these are:

Continuous revelation & exposure:

While accessing the internet, adolescents gain access to a perennial flow of knowledge and information. Though teenagers can opt out of using it, it would be like telling them to remain confined in a room during their high school days, which is not pragmatic to say the least. They go online and virtually see everything that they want to. Unfortunately, the negative facets of the world-wide-web can have long lasting, detrimental effects on their brains and value systems.

Bullying:

Being bullied at school by peers or by students who are senior to them is common for adolescents, who go to school and more often than not, adversely affects their attendance and grades. In certain cases, bullying can become the cause for grave trauma. In addition to this, social media bullying is 

also unavoidable nowadays.

Puberty & Hormonal Changes

Mood swings among adolescents are heightened due to hormonal changes and because of the onset of puberty. An adolescent may be happy at one point in time and become distraught the very next.

Privacy and Independence

Though adolescents are expected to act with maturity, they tend to be treated like kids. Though they greatly yearn for independence, they are denied the same.

Irrational expectations

Most of the adolescents are faced with damaging expectations such as the fear of failing in an exam, not getting admission into a desirable university, fear of not earning enough money in the future, fear of not landing a job and of not getting respect from society, which usually results in mental health problems like depression & anxiety, along with physical problems such as insomnia, etc.

Already stressed, such teenagers should not be treated harshly by their parents and other relatives. Family members, teachers, and friends should talk to them in an affable manner in order to better understand their feelings and concerns.

Adolescents’ well-being underpins their ability to learn and develop satisfying
relationships and to grow into healthy adults. Appropriate guidance and mentoring
during adolescence can significantly contribute to promotion of positive well-being
and healthy personality development, thereby, preventing development of
maladjusted patterns in adulthood and grounding psychological well-being at the
root level from where most mental health issues stem.