Anxious high schoolers and the pressures of grades, social media and fitting in

This is part three of a three-part series on supporting kids who have school-based anxiety. Part one focused on elementary school children, part two on junior high, and our final part focuses on high school students. At the end of the story, you'll find links to parts one and two.

Students who struggle with school-based anxiety in high school have an extra burden. They face the same social stressors as kids at younger levels, but it's also when they start realizing that their grades matter and have consequences on what they want to do with their lives. 

"There is still that social concern: 'I want to fit in, I want to express the sense of identity that I've been developing since junior high, but I want to do it in a way that feels safe and comfortable and is accepted,'" said Dr. Brent Macdonald, lead psychologist with Macdonald Psychology Group.

"But there is that additional pressure, that awareness, that your academics do start to matter." 

'What is your plan?'

"One of the things we do have to remember is for every individual, every single student, pretty much any interaction … with an adult is at some level going to be, 'What is your plan after high school?'" said Macdonald.

"They get asked that question repeatedly, over and over and over again."

Macdonald said even when adults tell high school kids there's no pressure to do one specific thing or another, there is a lot of subtle and implied pressure. The message comes across that even if you do whatever you want to do, "you'd better do something."

Yet at 15, 16 or 17, few kids actually know exactly what they want to do or be when they grow up.

"If I went with my plan back in the day, I'd be a marine biologist," Macdonald said. "Things change … once you're exposed to this much more broad spectrum of choices … because in high school we don't have a lot of choice."

Streaming can create pressure

Macdonald said high school students face the additional intensity of the academic workload. School work is more challenging and kids start being streamed.

"There's certain kids who are going into the quote-unquote 'university prep courses' and others who are going more toward the trade-based courses.

"There is a hierarchy and always has been — and it's not fair, it's not reasonable," said Macdonald.

He said many teenagers adopt that hierarchy in their own minds, "based on their observation of us as adults and how we value people in different professions." 

Anger and frustration

When Macdonald sees kids with school-based anxiety at the high school level, it's not always expressed as anxiety. It can often come out as anger and frustration.

"I see a number of students in my practice who experience such high degrees of stress and anxiety that they start to self-harm… They start cutting and that sort of thing," he said.

"We see them turn to substances — alcohol and drugs — because they're accessible." 

He said that just like avoidance, mood-altering substances work for a time, because they do immediately remove the anxiety. The problem is that they do nothing to solve the problem of what's causing the anxiety in the first place.

"It's at best a temporary Band-Aid," he said. "It's certainly not a solution."

No escaping social media

Unlike the high school experience of most of the adults in their lives, high school students today have the added pressure of juggling social and academic pressures in a world where there's no escape from social media.

"When we went to school, we went to school," said Macdonald. "We came home and we were home.

"If we were having challenging social interactions or even good social interactions, we would have to learn patience in order to wait until our next time to hang out with our friends.

"Or if we were having challenges and being bullied, at least we could go home and be safe there. That's no longer the case — that safety isn't there anymore, that capacity to develop patience isn't there anymore, because they have immediate access to their entire social network."

It's not all bad

Despite the never-ending access to a peer group on social media, Macdonald said technology gets a bit of a bad rap. He thinks social media does hold some value. For one thing, it can help find like-minded friends for kids who otherwise might feel isolated or alone because they are interested in non-mainstream things.

"You could go to a school of 1,000 kids and not find your people. Now they can find them because there's millions of choices… and millions of kids online. So, you know, there is value to that."

Macdonald said moderation is key. He's not a fan of taking smartphones away from your children at this age; he said a ban approach doesn't work, and neither do fear-based approaches.

"But we can still put boundaries on things," he said.

Boundaries go both ways

Macdonald said adults need to be able to have honest check-ins with their kids about social media. That's something that is possible only when an open relationship built on trust has already been established.

He said parents and kids should agree that the parent has access to their kid's device — within limits.

That [trust] only comes with open, clear, genuine, non-judgmental communication.— Dr. Brent Macdonald

"They know the password and that sort of thing. But the parent makes a commitment that they're not going to check unless they feel that there's something wrong, and if there's something wrong, they're going to check with the kid first before they start snooping around on their phone."

That builds respect and allows for communication, said Macdonald. It allows teens to have reasonable expectations, in contrast to those with parents who enforce strict rules, leading to a situation where the phone becomes "the forbidden fruit." 

Importance of trust

Macdonald said parents and caregivers must be able talk about difficult things with high school kids — especially important if their children are exploring online pornography, which he said is very common.

"This is a hard conversation for a parent to have with a 14-year-old and the kid will hate it, and you will hate it probably as a parent, but it's important that you have the conversation," he said.

When working with adolescents in his practice, Macdonald said his primary function is to develop trust — and that's his advice for parents, caregivers, teachers or other adults in the lives of high school students.

"That only comes with open, clear, genuine, non-judgmental communication."

This article concludes a three-part series on supporting kids who have school-based anxiety. Part one focuses  on elementary school children, and part two on junior high school students.