The Recent Concern for Anxiety and Fear among Teenagers

I’ve been upset and worried lately along with those expressing concern in popular culture and serious news outlets over increasing anxiety among teenagers and children. Some of this focuses on the dangers of teen suicide and a sense of environmental hopelessness. As a retired psychoanalytic psychotherapist whose practice included child and family therapy, I’m keenly aware of the extent to which children pick up on the fears of their parents, and as a historian, my awareness focuses on the incredible anxiety in our contemporary society where materially we are incredibly better off than were our forbearers.

Children so often seem to be immersed in their own worlds of friends, play, school, and screens, yet they are extremely sensitive to the emotions of their parents and caretakers. As they pick up on these emotions, they are inclined to look at them from a childlike narcissistic vantage point, which is one of the things that makes childhood so confusing at times: most especially in the teen years when they’re developing a sense of themselves apart from their parents. When my kids were young, my fears for them centered overwhelmingly on issues of health, success in schoolwork, relationships with their peers, and establishing their own identities. Today, gender identity and environmental fears are added to these concerns.

The technology of our modern world brings us more than the wonderful advantages of foods that are grown in other climates, creativity and products from people around the entire world, travel to seven continents, and knowledge of what’s happening on this entire small planet. The fears and problems of the entire globe are brought to us by the 24-hour news cycle. Consequently, the anxieties, fears, and worries of the entire planet are presented to us along with the benefits we receive. As a result, most educated people have a sense that the world is a terribly dangerous, war-like place, with a declining standard of living for most humans. In fact, I con-

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cur with Featured Scholar Steven Pinker’s findings that humans have never lived so long, been as healthy (COVID was simply a blip like the Spanish flu), had such a high standard of living, or lived in such relative safety as they do today. Yes, there’s terrible poverty, including in the U.S.A., but by the standards of the not-too-distant past, even our poor are materially better off.

Why, the reader may ask, is this the case? First, and perhaps foremost, is that the news is about the “bad stuff” in the world. As Pinker reports in this issue, if journalists write about the enormous positive developments occurring, they feel they would be spreading government propaganda. The enormous anxiety in our society gets transmitted to the entire population, who have lost sight of the fact that we have never been as well off as we are at the moment. However, the rapidness of change and complexity of our world creates unwarranted fear and anxiety, which is compounded by the U.S. political system in which the Republican Party continues to support Trump in the face of his untruths and rejection of the values of the Party of Lincoln. Is it any wonder that our kids are scared? I’m scared and worried for the future of our society!

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