The first semester has passed. Grades were finalized and submitted. Some failed and some passed. Either way, everyone is stressed. The stress comes from a number of things going on in students’ lives: grades, sports, looks, popularity, family and peer pressure. How do students deal with this stress? Well, many times it is not in a healthy way. Stress eating, depression, and anger are just a few of the ways teens react to stress. These stressful factors can be helped and replaced with healthy, relaxing activities.
Studies show that school is the number one leading cause of stress in teens. In my opinion, the most stressful thing about school is the homework and deadlines, and I’m sure many more would agree with me. The majority of students attend after-school activities which leave them little to no time to work on homework. The stress builds up with late nights after practice spending hours on work they should be given time to do at school. However, since this is not in our control, we have to get the work done. A simple solution to this would be a required study hall for every student. Students would get work done or just have some time for self-reflection and relaxation. You may say that it’s school and students should be working every period, but mental health is extremely important; allowing a study hall would decrease student stress levels by ensuring time to complete assignments.
Schoolwork is not the only source of stress. I often find myself stressing over what is expected of me. Parents, teachers, and friends can inflict this feeling. Most of the time, the situation is not as bad as I make it out to be. To relax I will go outside and go for a walk or just sit and think. According to Harvard Health Publishing, research shows that ecotherapy (time spent in nature) is correlated with reduced stress, anxiety, and depression. There is something about the outdoors that just relaxes the mind and calms a person down.
Another source of stress, possibly the most influential factor,  is spending too much time in front of a screen. It has to do with the blue light source on our devices. In 2016, the NCBI conducted an experiment. They examined a random sample of 2-17 year-olds. According to the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health “After 1 h/day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks.” These results are shocking considering that I spend well over an hour on my phone each day.
In conclusion, getting away from your phones or devices for a little while and going outside and relaxing will ultimately help to steady your mental state and prevent severe depression. I don’t mean to sound like a mom when saying this, but our generation is dependent on our phones. We feel depressed, so we turn to our phones, which only makes us more depressed. So go outside, spend time with loved ones, read a book, learn to think for yourself, and I guarantee that you will feel better.