Youth Stress
Youth have the easy life, right? Wrong. While it may seem that most youth just go to school, talk on the phone for hours, play video games, and watch TV, they actually have more responsibilities and stress then most imagine. Research from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that preteens spend an average of eight hours more a week at school, two hours more on sports, three hours more on chores and fewer hours watching TV or relaxing than preteens did 16 years ago. They also found that out of 8,000 high school students and people in their early 20s, nearly two-thirds of the correspondents feel stressed out at least once a week. Many youth try to squeeze in schoolwork, friends, TV, fitness, clubs, and sleep all from the time they leave school until they have to get ready for school the next morning. As a result, stress is a major problem for youths. This is shown in the academics, home, and in their extracurricular activities. One of the major things causing youth stress is academics. The biggest source of this is homework. For example, the March 2, 2001 Issues and Controversies On File article, "Homework" says that students are overburdened by homework. Homework lev
els have risen dramatically and the students are assigned more homework today than ever before. The article states, "The homework stressed children unduly, often making them sick." (67) To further illustrate, the same article states, "In 1981... six-to-eight-year olds averaged 44 minutes of homework per week. By 1997, that weekly total had almost tripled, to 123 minutes per week. For children aged nine to twelve, homework increased to three hours and 37 minutes weekly, from two hours and 49 minutes. Also, an article entitled, "Too Young To Freak," in the October 2001 issue of Seventeen magazine constructed a survey of 5,315 people on the most stressful things in a teenager's life. Forty-two percent said school, compared to the smaller 19 percent parents, 14 percent appearance, and 14 percent relationships. Obviously, the increased amount of homework adds stress to youth. The more homework assigned, the more time it takes up when a youth could have been unraveling from the test they had taken earlier that day. In conclusion, youth have been more and more stressed in the academics, home, or extracurricular activities. Finally, youth seem to be stressed in their extra curricular activities. This could be anything from sports to speech and debate. To illustrate, a March, 2001 Contemporary Pediatrics article entitled,
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Approximate Word count = 903
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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