The Stressed Out Society Contributes To Children And Youth Mental And Emotional Issues

There has been a continued significant rise in the amount of children diagnosed with everything from ADHD to Asperger’s and various Autism Spectrum maladies. Could it be that we are causing these issues, not only through medications, preservatives and additives in our foods and drinks, but also through stressing our children? For past multiple years now, authors have been commenting on the stress that our children are facing and yet little is being done to “alleviate” that stress.

Studies in neuroscience and brain development show that a child’s brain development is dramatically impacted by stress. The impact on brain development is significant as the brain is the organ that also controls chemical regulation as well as emotional development. It seems that every institution that was supposedly the bastions of child protection and development have done more to harm child development than help. Families in America are fractured through divorce, abuse, systemic abandonment, parental negligence by pursuing adult desires and agendas for personal fulfillment as well as a move from nuclear families to permeable families (See Elkind, “Ties That Stress, The New Family Imbalance”). This fracturing causes a significant amount of trauma in the lives of children and youth.

Families are not the only “institution” in America to blame. Educational institutions, with their “No Child Left Behind” policies that focus on standardized testing, produce a new level of stress in both the classroom and at home. We have all been hearing and reading about the loss of common sense in the public classroom through Zero Tolerance policies. Who can forget the outrageous actions taken against the infamous “Pop tart gun” and “Hello Kitty bubble gun”? Statistically, both No Child Left Behind and Zero Tolerance policies have inadvertently (I hope) targeted families already struggling with stresses in their home life. Schools no longer teach children how to think, rather they teach children what to think by teaching to tests and standards. Granted, standards and safety are never the issue. How you go about meeting standards and safety are the issue. Children, as young as 3 and 4 years of age are already being academically and rigorously tested. The age of learning through socialization seems to be a thing of bygone days. Is it any wonder that our children are facing more and more awkwardness when it comes to socialization, and therefore learning, as they grow older? 

Along with the technology of education comes the technology of socialization. As children are growing up, deprived of education through socialization and best educational practices, children now grow up in a virtual world. This virtual world can often expose children to stressors unheard of before the 1990’s. Virtual bullying has become a problem. Now, bullying can follow a child through the internet into a child’s home through the computer or phone. What is more, few parents think of the ramifications of exposing a child to the internet and pornography on the portable pornography portal known as the phone. Countless young people, who do not really need internet access on their phones, are exposed to countless disturbing images ranging from “live” pornography to “virtual” and anime pornography to horror and blood spattered pictures. These issues produce another level of stress that kids are left to figure out on their own – especially when parents have little knowledge of what their children are being exposed to.

Recreational outlets have also become stress producers in the lives of our children. Sports have now become high-stress producers as parents and coaches live vicariously through the youth participants. We send mixed messages that, “Everyone is a winner” and yet on the other hand coaches, parents and officials get into fights right in front of the youth participants because of a “win at all costs” mentality. Children, once again, find themselves in an environment where sportsmanship and playing for the fun of it have been thrown under the bus of adult driven agendas. The result, of course, is additional stress in and on the lives of our young people.

Of course, as a Youth and Family Pastor of 28 years, I have to point an incriminating finger at “The Church” as well! I would not know where to even begin on this. The issues here range from “deeper discipleship” (meaning we cut out socialization and having fun in order to produce yet another adult-agenda driven worship service thereby separating youth from adult role models and the body of Christ), to success based on numbers of bottoms in seats (the Youth Pastor who can’t produce numbers will soon find herself looking for a new ministry position), which leads to the ridiculous turn over rate of Youth professionals at a church, the egos of Pastors (both Youth and Senior/Lead), to the judgmental and exclusive air of youth clubs, to the segregation of The Body of Christ programmatically; all of these things cause The Church in America contribute to the growing stress felt by young people. I would suspect that much of what I have mentioned above are not exclusive to youth ministry but also occur in the younger ages of children’s ministry.

What is my point? Simply this: American society, and all of the institutions that are supposed to help children and youth develop into healthy interdependent adults, have abandoned approaches that are child-driven agendas in favor of adult-driven agendas thereby producing more stress in children and youth and contributing to the heightened stress the escalation of mental and social health issues among our children and youth contributing to the social and emotional decay our society. I can wrap all this up in a simple statement that we have known to be true for years: Stress kills, and in this case, our stress handed down to children is causing a cacophony of mental and social health issues.