Why are so many children suffering from anxiety?

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I'm watching an episode of 'School' where the Head is saying the number of children with anxiety is increasing every year, seems to be backed up by research too.

I don't have children yet but I'm aware of how debilitating anxiety can be and so guess I am wondering out loud why so many more children have anxiety these days?

What part of this is in the control of parents? What can we do to try to build more resilience in children?

Do any of those with DC who have anxiety have thoughts about what has caused it?

I feel sure that increasing pressure to succeed is one reason.

Also children don't spend enough time with their parents these days, because of technology (I include mine!). That must have an effect.

Dh was speaking to a group of 18yos the other day who have happiness journals and make sure to read one happy thought every morning to help manage stress. He was wondering when they get to their forties how they're going to cope with life but I was giving out to him saying it's all relative to the time you're in

It seems that every second adult on MN suffers from anxiety too, so it’s hardly surprising that the next generation will - either through learned behaviour or by their parents instilling fear/anxiety into them about perfectly normal transactions.

Social media

It has a hell of a lot to answer for.

Not just children, half the people I know seem to have some kind of anxiety problem. Plus a lot of people on here - feels like every post features ‘I suffer from anxiety/depression so......’

Either it’s more prevalent, or the levels are the same and we’re just better at recognising and acknowledging it.

I was wondering about a comment on another thread about children being allowed to make choices about things like family holidays at a young age.

I have no medical answer

I'm.mot a psychologist or anythung so this is merely my uneducated opinion
Personally I think we baby and protect our children too much

They get awards at school merely for showing up. Red pen is no longer used to mark work as it's to harsh

No one's allowed to he good at or recognise for anything.

They get to secondary school and have no idea how to deal with the expectations of looking after themselves and their stuff and having to think for themselves. With making mistakes and learning from them.

Babies left to CIO leads to children, teens and adults with emotional issues.

Link
link... read down to the Harvard study findings of 1998

That and I think it's more readily diagnosed now.

I have a theory. Children by and large are not encouraged to take risks and see that it's okto say get things wrong or even hurt yourself a bit and that things will be ok in the long run any more.

So they end up with no confidence in themselves to manage situations which results in a feeling of loss of control - anxiety.

Also rather than teach them it's ok to be terrified sometimes everyone feels like that but you need to learn to push through sometimes (I mean things like speaking to shop assistants!) it's now termed anxiety which is a condition and not a feeling we all have and thus excises them from having to do it.

So I guess in short I blame the parents 😬

Pressure from all sorts of sources.
Parents
Friends
Social media
School
Too much time on tech and not enough time doing family stuff or exercise. Being “scheduled” to death, the amount of kids I know at clubs or classes every night and weekend is shocking.

As for adults, again I think lack of time is also a huge factor for them. Add on money and career worries and it’s not surprising really.

Bad food has a lot to do with it.

I do think we're to quick to medicalise things sometimes (and I have bipolar disorder so I don't think I'm biased).

It's pretty normal to feel anxious sometimes, especially at particular times of life / in particular circumstances but we are quite quick to say that someone has 'anxiety' as in the medical condition rather than just feeling a bit anxious.

Is pressure at school really a lot more than it was in the 90s?

I think it must be a combination of many things. School pressure, social media, being babied by parents (15 years olds who can’t stay a night they on their own!), constant use of technology.

I don't think they do, but many more children are given a label of anxiety when they lack resilience, as it then takes the pressure off.

Unrealistic expectations.
Lack of genuine human connection.

Technology/social media

Technology, lack of family time, social media, early to go to nursery, increased school pressures, too many organised activities.

I reckon the potential list could be endless

As others have said, expectations in schools are routinely set incredibly high where nothing but the best outcome is good enough; going onto university post school doesn't have to be for everyone.
I also can't imagine how hard it must be to grow up in the insta facebook time where again perfection in appearance seems to be the norm and to have masses of friends.
Parents need to help build resilience in their children but so often the average parent leads an impossibly busy life and isn't always there to support their child in the best way.

Afraid to say that social media is the biggest cause. They have been bombarded at a very early age about the perfect “insta-life”, as well as not being able to switch off from ‘conversations’ with friends from school like we used to, as they are connected 24/7.

Exam pressure has always been there to some extent but to be reminded of it permanently through social media, without being given the tools from parents etc. to deal with issues that cause worry, is the key to its recent increase in the term being used as a catch-all for teenage ‘angst’.

The actual number of teens with diagnosed Anxiety issues that need medical intervention is relatively small. In the programme ‘School’, what you are seeing is the issue that pastoral care is being the first areas to be cut and whereas, in the past, supportive staff would help give teens the mechanisms to cope through exam stress and other examples of stress, now, this is just not possible in most cases. Minor issues that could have been resolved quickly are being left to fester and get worse, as the adults in these teens’ lives just can’t keep up with what they have access to.

The demands of the curriculum are largely to blame. Every pupil ‘has’ to progress in a linear way in every subject all of the time, or the teachers are threatened with no career progression, pay rises or the boot. League tables and ofsted offer the same pressures for the school as a whole. A fair few of the SMT of those schools on the ‘School’ program have since moved on or out of teaching altogether and it was only made last year!

Further to my post about bad food it’s worth checking out Dr Rangan Chaterjee’s theory on this. When I read about what people eat and how they feed their dc on here I am not surprised that menta health is such a problem. The brain needs all sorts of nutrients to make it work properly which it simply cannot find in a highly processed diet.

I think it’s partly down to a cultural shift in that children must now be protected from everything and any “negative experience” will damage them - therefore we now have children and teens who can’t cope or handle themselves in any situation.
(I will add here, this isn’t everyone!)
From my childcare and school experience:
Many children are being bought up “gently” with the word “no” being considered “traumatic” “negative” “unenpowering”. They then get sent to school, where suddenly they are overwhelmed with the harsh reality of a routine and no more “gentleness” being applied to everything. Mum and dad jump in and fix things and try to make everything go the child’s way. Child gets used to this. Then they hit their teens. Mummy and Daddy suddenly can’t help them as much anymore because the secondary schools won’t stand for it as much as a primary has to. Peer pressure starts to mount. Child’s anxiety levels start to rocket.
Many children simply don’t face punishment when they do something wrong (even as simple as forgetting their homework or a piece of equipment which everyone does at some point) - many parents jump in and take the wrath themselves or find someone to blame. As child gets older, they have to start defending themselves and have been protected for so long they can’t do it. So their stress and anxiety levels boil over.
This is just my opinion from things I’ve encountered over the years, I will add.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that
I think sometimes families and educational establishments can trigger anxiety too.

I see parents panicking that their child is behind. It’s happening in my Pre-School right now. Parents of children who have just turned 3, worrying that their child isn’t recognising their own name or matching sounds to letter symbols, or can’t count to 10- when actually, they don’t need to be doing this yet. Developmentally, most children won’t be ready to do this yet.
But the parents are panicking (and I think the ability to show off child’s cleverness to family and on social media is playing a part here) so when I show them a child’s picture, they look at the marks a child has made which is meant to be their name and child is them told off that the letters are not clear. And suddenly a simple drawing activity (which benefits the child greatly) is something that makes child anxious.
A couple of weeks ago: A child practises their counting, gets some numbers wrong. Parent jumps in. “What comes after 3? Come on. You know this. It’s not 6 is it? You know the answer don’t be silly” none of us had heard the child in question count correctly to 5 (again just turned 3) but did use numbers randomly which is the sign they are right on track. Parent apologised and said the child was better than that. Poor little one. Way to spoil any counting game that came up as the week went by.

I think social media play a huge part in child anxiety.

Plus kids and teens are looking at these “perfect” teens who have everything on Instagram. People who are being thrust into kids faces online as role models and what they should be aspiring to be. Dance moms stars, Ziegler’s, Jo Jo, Rich kids of Instagram, toddlers and tiaras kids now grown up.....and that life is out of reach to most and of course that just sends anxietyand stress soaring in so many because it’s so far out of reach. I’m an adult and I find social media depressing

Are more children suffering from anxiety or are people just listening now and in the olden days you were told to shut up and get on with it unless your leg is falling off?

Stupid posts about people not belong resilient enough is a great example of why there is stigma around mental health.

I know someone who works in a hospital and has noticed lots of teenagers on antidepressants etc. He said that he doesn’t understand why. Children have nothing to worry about. They have a roof over their heads. They don’t really know what stress is! Wait till you’re an adult and you’re struggling to put food on the table and you can’t provide for your kids. When he said this I somewhat agreed with him. I think we all feel anxious and depressed at times but doesn’t mean everyone is medically depressed or anxious.

You can't underestimate the effects of social media. 8 and 9 year olds measuring their worth by the numbers of 'likes' for miming on a 'music' site (actually a paedophile's paradise).
But also the curriculum has a lot to answer for. In primary we are banging on about fronted adverbials to children who can't reliably remember where full stops and capital letters are used. There's never time to consolidate what they've (almost) learned before moving on to the next thing. We're always trying to cram more and more in and many simply can't cope. If I spent every day not really understanding what I was doing yet at the same time being under pressure to excel either by school or parents, I'd be anxious.
Add to that a lack of physical exercise, rising levels of both SEMH and violence in your average school, it's not coincidence that students, teachers and support staff are all experiencing high levels of depression and anxiety.