Teenage or adolescent years are marred with conflicts and controversies. Generally it is believed that teen years are years of fun, frolic and living life to fullest, but you ask any single adolescent about how is it going and the chances are that he/she will come up with a long list of issues and problems?
Why is it so?
There are many reasons behind the stress build up among teens. To begin with, teenage is the period when the hormonal surge is on peak which leads to a whirlwind of emotions, ranging from anger to guilt and curiosity to attraction for opposite sex. All this confuses them further, and the inability to communicate these emotions to their guardians or teachers, who can in fact guide them in the right direction, stresses them further.
Peer pressure also creates wrath on teenagers. The desire for acceptance among their peer group is very high among adolescents. Since this is the age of experimentation, acceptance in their group comes when they experiment with risky behaviors like befriending and having sex with opposite sex, smoking, drinking, etc. On the other side, this kind of lifestyle does not get acceptance in the family and when exposed, they are looked down upon.
If the girls get pregnant while experimenting with sex then it leads to tension build up between the boy and the girl, and the girls go through added pressure of pregnancy.
The pressure of proving their worth at this age also becomes quite high, since it is the age when crucial academic years, which determine a person’s career, begin. They have to study well, prove themselves in extracurricular activities, have to learn household jobs like cooking, cleaning, etc, and have to maintain good looks to become a centre of attraction among opposite sex. All these factors lead to stress build up among teenagers.
