Mental health is not an easy topic, but I want to talk about how many teenagers now are not in a healthy mindset. This is  partly because of social media. Social media influences everyone’s lives.  Often it can give negative feedback to a person. For example, someone can call another girl fat but they don’t know how bad it’s going to affect the person getting picked on. Everyone shows what they want someone else to see, at times they have to pretend to be someone they are not.

Growing and maturing can be hard on an adolescent. Teenagers come home from school having to do chores, go to after school programs, watch their siblings and still have to manage to do their homework. On top of that, their parents come home from a long day of work, sometimes with a not so pleasant demeanor, making things that much more stressful for everyone.

Many parents don’t understand how hard school is now for this generation. We go to school for seven hours a day with a few days being only online. It feels like we don’t have much down time to ourselves. On top of worrying about studying for tests, we are thinking about which college to go to and what type of career we want to have as a grown up.

Home and school are supposed to be  safe places for us teensagers where we can be comfortable being ourselves, but it seems to just give us more stress. It weighs us down and really makes our mental health unstable. With everything that comes with growing up, now is the time for this generation to start to open up and become aware of this condition and have open non judgemental conversations.

Parents may say they know their child but they do not know how their child is suffering on the inside and most parents or guardians say they are being dramatic. How do you think that makes us feel behind closed doors? It makes the situation way more worse than what it was.  It makes us feel like we aren’t being heard, that no one understands what we are experiencing and going through. Like our voices are just a whisper in the shadows and we are embarrassed to be seen.

This generation is the most troubled one yet because everyone is embarrassed to tell their truth and feelings. All I’m saying is that parents, guardians and grandparents should ask how their child is feeling or if they need any help. Yelling at your child for not doing the dishes or taking the trash out isn’t going to fix the problem, it’s actually making it worse. If you just tried to explain to them in a calm manner, the message would get across better than yelling. We all need to work together to help each other.