There is no shortage of possible causes: excessive parenting, screens and social media, ruthless academic and sports competition, political acrimony, social injustice, climate concerns, gun violence, and virtual learning, among others. However, what is obscured when we group all young people together is that certain demographic groups are especially vulnerable to psychological problems and may disproportionately explain the overall trend.
In my practice and that of my colleagues, it is tweens between the ages of 10 and 14 who have had more difficulty than in the past. High school has long been believed to be the hardest time to get through, especially for girls, but a confluence of more recent social and biological trends has led to a perfect storm for tween girls.
A recent study of British girls aged 10 to 15, for example, found that behavioral difficulties and dissatisfaction with life increased more among this group of girls than children during the pandemic, compared to the pre-pandemic period. Another study, with Canadian and Australian girls, reported more anxiety and depression, relative to boys, during the same time.
Further back, the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that the percentage of girls ages 12 to 17 who experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year increased from 12% to 25% between 2010 and 2020. For boys, the increase was 5 to 9% over the past year . Same period.
And researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that emergency room admissions for self-harm double for girls from 10 to 14 years between 2010 and 2014, while they were virtually unchanged for other demographic groups.
Long-standing research shows that girls and boys initially don’t differ much in their rates of anxiety and depression. But in high school years, girls become much more depressed and somewhat more anxious, and these differences persist into adulthood. What happens during this critical period to make girls especially vulnerable?
“Puberty interacts with stress and makes girls prone to depression, self-harm and other psychological problems,” said Mitchell J. Prinstein, chief scientific officer of the American Psychological Association (APA) and author of “Popular: Finding happiness and success in a world that cares too much about the wrong relationships.” “And the amount and variety of stress increases during preadolescence.”
the hormonal and neural changes of puberty occur as well as stress related to appearance, family, school, social life and extracurriculars increase. During the middle school years, research has found that girls usually start to worry a lot more than boys about how they fit into the world and what their peers think of them. And that’s an area where they only have limited control.
“Girls’ brain areas involved in social evaluation sensitivity become more active during puberty,” said Jennifer S. Silk, a professor of developmental and clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. “And the more active this part of the brain is, the greater the risk of depression, anxiety and even suicidal tendencies.”
At the same time, girls face the same pressure as boys, which comes with more serious academic demands and, for example, high school sports. But research suggests that often take it more seriously the message that you should excel at everything. Between ages 12 and 13, the proportion of girls who said they were not allowed to fail increased from 18 to 45 percent.
“Adolescent girls work so hard to be perfect everywhere for everyone that they inevitably fall short and are exhausted when they get home,” said Phyllis L. Fagell, clinical career counselor, school counselor and author of “High School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond, and How Parents Can Help.” “Many would be surprised to hear how harshly they judge themselves and how self-deprecating their internal dialogue sounds.”
And girls often use less active coping strategies when facing difficulties. While boys are more distracted by, for example, physical activity and concrete problem solving, previous research has found that girls often dwell on problems and their negative emotions. This tendency to overthink and regurgitate negative content, either alone or with a friend, also comes with puberty.
perfectionism, self-criticism Y rumination are all, in turn, well-established risk factors for depression and related mental health problems.
Social changes hurt tweens even more
puberty has been starting before during the last three decades among girls; the trend for boys is much less pronounced. It’s not clear why this might be happening, but changes in nutrition, environmental toxins, and stress have been suggested. The pandemic seems to have accelerated the trend. Unfortunately, early onset of puberty has been linked to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other psychological problems in girls.
The biggest contributor to the rise in mental health problems in young people is the use of technology. Although the overall research on this link has been inconclusive, some studies suggest that girls seem to be particularly negatively affected by social networks
After years of a slow but steady increase in social media activity, today’s tweens use it 17 percent more than in 2019. As expected, girls are more engaged with social media, while boys play more video games. The problem is that the greater use of social networks by girls affects them more than boys. The more time they spend on Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok, among others, the more likely they are to experience depression, low self-esteem, poor body image, poor sleep, and other mental health issues.
“In general, girls are more likely to engage in comparisons and are more likely to be affected by interpersonal feedback. And those tendencies predisposed them to depression,” Prinstein said. “Now those processes are greatly amplified by social media.”
A JAMA Network Study published this year, with 84,011 participants between the ages of 10 and 80, found that the relationship between the use of social networks and life satisfaction is more negative among young adolescents, compared to any other demographic group. This finding suggests that pre-adolescence could be a critical period during which girls should stay away from social media as much as possible.
In addition to being potentially toxic in and of itself, long hours of social media use prevent girls from engaging in behaviors that promote wellness, such as in-person interaction with friends, sleep, and physical activity.
For example, eighth graders who meet their friends “almost every day” it fell from more than 50 percent in the 1990s to about a quarter in 2015, and it’s probably less now.
“What started before the pandemic got worse with restrictions on socializing and in-person school and activities,” said Deborah Roth Ledley, a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia and co-author of “The worry workbook for kids.” “I’ve seen it take a toll on girls because they completely changed their social world online.”
Parents should know that with the onset of puberty, their daughters may need more support than before. A good place to start is to examine the amount of stress your daughters are feeling and, if necessary, help them reduce the pressure or the number of scheduled obligations.
“Our study of pre-teen girls early in the pandemic showed that surprisingly many felt freer, had more time to sleep and relax,” Silk said. “We can see it as a positive side of the pandemic, but also as a wake-up call that our girls are too stressed.”
We can counter girls’ perfectionism and self-criticism with self-compassion.
“Make sure you model self-compassion by how you treat yourself, because tweens watch us even when we think they’re just focused on their peers,” said Karen Bluth, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel. Hill and the author of the audiobook”Self-Compassion for Girls: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Coaches.” “And then help them question the validity of the self-critical voice by asking ‘Is that true all the time?’ ‘Is it really, really true?’ ‘Are you absolutely sure, without a doubt?’ ”
When it comes to the most frequently accessed social media and smartphones, do your best to delay both until high school. “Give them a flip phone until they are 14 years old and always collect the screens by 9 pm,” Prinstein said. online organization wait until the 8th can provide helpful advice.
To get your tweens involved, make screen policies together by creating a media family plan. Then engage with him, implementing consequences if necessary. Be sure to model healthy technology-related behaviors like having screen time and space, not sleeping with a phone, and talking about what you see online.
Talk to your daughters about your values and your goals when using social media.
“Appeal to their beliefs of social justice, of not wanting to be manipulated by companies,” Fagell said. “And discuss empathy, thinking about how your online involvement affects others. That will reinforce their sense of agency and counter helplessness and hopelessness.”
Bluth suggested inviting tweens to experiment with social media by varying the type of use (passive vs. active vs. interactive), the timing (early morning vs. later vs. late at night), and the duration, and checking how to feel afterwards.
“Ask them if they feel good, connected, with a sense of purpose versus bad about themselves, sad, worried, alone,” he said.
Finally, always keep the lines of communication open. Be curious about the girls’ lives, but don’t bombard them with questions or pressure them. Share your own high school struggles and setbacks. And more than anything, listen.
