School top issue for Generation Stress

School struggles are the top cause of anxiety among stressed and sleep-starved teenagers.

‘I lost all motivation’ … school leaver Bella Calder, 18, says she struggled with her final-year studies during lockdown in Melbourne. Picture: Natalie Grono

School struggles are the top cause of anxiety among stressed and sleep-starved teenagers, the biggest survey of young Australians shows.

A generation hobbled by Covid-19 chaos, body image ­issues, education angst and climate change concerns is revealed in Mission Australia’s 2021 youth survey, which exposes the heavy toll of lockdowns on youth wellbeing. Teenage girls and gender diverse teenagers are far more likely than boys to suffer from anxiety and school stress, worry about body image or suffer from bullying.

Among the 20,000 teens surveyed, nearly half cited their top personal concerns as coping with stress and mental health during the pandemic. And 36.8 per cent were “extremely or very concerned’’ about school or study problems.

Two-thirds of teens reported that Covid-19, including lockdowns, had harmed their education.

School leaver Bella Calder, 18, struggled through her Year 12 studies during lockdown in Melbourne this year.

“It was terrible,’’ she said. “I was in such a privileged position in a private school, with a good home life, so I felt guilty that I was struggling so much. I lost all motivation.’’

Ms Calder, who has been ­accepted into an engineering course at the Australian National University, said she had trouble coping with the isolation of lockdowns. “Seeing friends at recess and lunchtime was such a huge part of school, so without any ­social interaction it was very difficult,’’ she said.

“I couldn’t concentrate on the screen, and I spent a lot of time in bed. There was nothing to feel happy or excited for – everyone was feeling quite down, constantly. There was a huge rise in eating disorders and people with depression.’’

Ms Calder, who is now celebrating her graduation with friends at Schoolies Week in Byron Bay, said the end of school was “a huge weight off my ­shoulders’’.

Her sentiments echoed those of the teenagers surveyed by Mission Australia, who expressed the challenges of home schooling.

 

“I mostly procrastinate at home, it is difficult to focus and get work done,’’ a Year 12 boy from Victoria stated. “I cannot obtain individual help from my teacher while stuck at home and I cannot understand the content to a satisfactory extent.’’

A 15-year-old boy from Canberra said he often felt “overwhelmed by the amount of school work I am given, and begin to stress if I feel my work is not at a high enough standard’.’

A teenage girl lamented that without friends and teachers to support her at school, “I feel ­deflated and tired’’.

“Body image issues’’ severely affected one in three teens – ­nearly half of all girls and one in seven boys – explaining the ­alarming rise in eating disorders among teenage girls since the start of the pandemic.

Climate change rivalled Covid-19 as one of the key concerns, cited by one in four teens. “It is hard for me to see the light at the end of the tunnel when there is so much climate change, and it feels like the world is going to end,’’ one teenager stated.

One in four teens said they felt lonely “all or most of the time’’ in the past four weeks, based on the survey between April and August, coinciding with periods of lockdown in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Many teenagers are starved of sleep and glued to screens, the survey reveals, with one in five teenagers sleeping less than six hours a day and one in three exercising less than two hours a week – well below the health guidelines of eight to 10 hours’ sleep and at least an hour a day of exercise for adolescents.

One third of teens spend at least nine hours a day on screens, scrolling through social media, watching TV, gaming or doing school work.