Kim Mills: Everyone is stressed these days, but young people are feeling the stress of 2020 most acutely. In a survey conducted by The Harris Poll for the American Psychological Association, more than one-third of young adults ages 18 to 23, also known as Generation Z, said that their mental health was worse now than it was at the same time last year. That compares with just 19% of Millennials, 21% of Gen X-ers, 12% of baby boomers and 8% of older adults who felt that their mental health had gone downhill since last year. Why are the stresses of 2020 hitting young people so hard and how will that affect them both now and in the longterm? Welcome to Speaking Of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the link between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.
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Our guest today is Dr. Emma Adam, a Developmental Psychologist and Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She worked with APA and The Harris Poll on the Stress in America survey to include young people from ages 11 to 23 in our sample and helped to interpret the data. In her lab she studies how factors like school, family, and peer relationships affect teens and young adults stress levels and how stress in turn affects their health and development. Welcome to Speaking Of Psychology, Dr. Adam.
Emma Adam, PhD: Thanks very much, Kim, I'm delighted to be here.
Mills: Let's start with the Stress in America report. Gen Z adults reported more stress and worse mental health than any other age group right now. Was that a surprise finding or was that what you expected the results to be?
Adam: Well, it was partly a surprise and partly expected. So, I was very interested in the Gen Z teens and the Gen Z young adults. And we've known for many years that stress and depression and anxiety have been increasing in adolescents and so we were expecting to see that continue into 2020, but there really, the surprise was the size of the jump and particularly for the Gen Z young adults. And also the fact that the Gen Z young adults showed notably more stress than the Gen Z teens.
Mills: Talk about the Gen Z teens. How are they doing and they're feeling a little bit less stressed, why might that be?
Adam: First of all, let me point out that teens haven't been tested every year in the Stress in America Survey. We've had really reliable data year over year on adults, but there's only been teens tested for a few years. So their stress was not notably higher than in the past years that they've been tested. And that's a bit of a mystery of why that might be the case, but I have actually some other data that speaks to that question. One thing about the Stress in America data is that it's cross-sectional, so it's different teams asked every years. In my own research lab, the COAST Lab, the Context Of Adolescent Stress and Thriving Lab, we had a survey ongoing, and we were able to test teens prior to lockdown, and then the same teens again after the lockdown and asked questions about mood and sources of stress in their life.
Adam: And what we've found is that for teens as a whole, the average stress level after lockdown didn't go up greatly, but when you break down and look at sources of stress, certain sources of stress went up and certain sources of stress went down. So it turns out that the stress of schooling, for example, actually decreased for teens, because the social stressors and the stressors of schedules of schooling went down. But the stress related to home and health of family and friends and family related stress, went up. And that went up dramatically, particularly for teens from low socioeconomic circumstances. So it's a story of stress changing for teens in terms of the sources and also disparities in stress with lower income teens experiencing much greater stress as a result of the pandemic than higher income teams.
Mills: How did these findings from the Stress in America Survey fit with the long-term trends in teens mental health? I've seen data that rates of depression have been rising overall among teens for close to a decade. Do researchers have any theories as to why that's happening?
Adam: Sure. This trend has been very concerning to researchers for the last decade, it's really become apparent in the past few years. And there's fortunately lots of theories, but no solid evidence regarding what is causing this trend. So, some of the theories include increased social media use among teens, but the evidence has been very mixed on that. There's evidence that for some teens social media is a very positive influence. And for others, it can be more harmful, but it tends to be that the online experience of teens mirror the offline experiences. So teens are doing well already in their interpersonal interactions tend to do well in their online interactions. And those that are having difficulty also have more difficulty with online interactions. And there's also evidence of [inaudible 00:06:25] directional effects so that when teens become more distressed, they might turn to social media sources more. So, it's really hard to get any insights into causality there.
Adam: There's also evidence that sleep has declined for teens, and that's a really possible candidate. Sleep has a large influence on mood and depression. And so with the increases in activities and increases in kind of school-related stressors that the teens are facing, but both maybe one contributor to the increased stress and depression, but also can chip away at sleep, which is something really important for regulating wellbeing. The final hypothesis, and this is one that's really relevant to thinking about stress in America is that increased economic disparities in the family and in schools is contributing to increased stress and depression in teens. And this is where the Stress in America data had me really concerned because there is some pretty good evidence that larger economic downturns, which in turn cause family economic conditions to worsen, in turn has effects on parent mental health and teen mental health. And that there's some possibility that past economic downturns have had long-term effects, have contributed to the increase in depression and anxiety. And then there's some real evidence that this particular economic downturn maybe having effects on teams.
Mills: Going back to sleep, given that so many kids are attending school virtually right now, are they getting more sleep and might we expect to see their stress levels go down at least as long as they're studying at home and not getting up in the morning to catch the school bus?
Adam: Yeah, actually we do have evidence again in the data from my lab, from a study called The Bio Study, that teens are sleeping more post pandemic or during the pandemic, which is something that may account for why teens in particular, aren't showing as high elevations and stress as we expected. So that's something definitely we're running up against relatively rigid school schedules. And the release of the rigidity of those school schedules allows teens to get more of the sleep that they need. And also allows them to sleep at times that they're better suited to sleep. There's a biological rhythm to sleep, and with teenagers actually having a biological circadian pattern where they prefer to go to bed later and wake up later. And the pandemic for many youth is allowing them to live within that biological rhythm that is more natural to them.
Mills: So it's just the parents then who are having insomnia because they're worried about the economy and their jobs, right?
Adam: Absolutely, and those Gen Z young adults as well, yeah.
Mills: You've written that there's this common idea that adolescence is by its nature, a stressful time of life. But you also say that normalizing high stress for teens ignores the negative effects that it can have. What have you and other researchers found out about how stress affects teens health and development?
Adam: Sure. So my research has focused not only on perceptions of stress, but also the implications of that stress for biological systems and for cognition and for health, of both mental health and physical health. And so within my own research and other people's research, there's really profound implications of stress for all sorts of aspects of biology. But the system that I've focused on is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is called the HPA axis for short, or most of you may be more familiar with the hormone that's produced by that axis, which is cortisol.
Adam: And we have done diary research where we text teens at random moments during their day and get them to report on the types of stressors that they're encountering throughout the day, and then link those with levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. And we've identified that throughout the course of the day, this hormone is going up and down as negative mood goes up and down and as teens encounter stressors. And that's perfectly normal to be expected and that's part of what the system is supposed to do. When cortisol goes up, it helps to mobilize energy resources to help individuals cope with the stressor.
Adam: The problem is when you start to get exposure to chronic stress, and so the chronic stress associated with poverty, the chronic stress associated with high levels of exposure to bullying or racial discrimination, or of use within the home or domestic violence. Those ongoing stressors can really cause dis-regulations in the biology, which in turn have implications for physical health. There'd a wide variety of impacts on, not only stress hormones but immune functioning, on early signs of cardiovascular disease. And then as we've been talking about, it has strong implications for emotional and mental health disorders. But the under appreciated impact also is that stress has, and these changes in stress biology, have implications for cognition.
Adam: And so it is, in my opinion, one understudied contributor to disparities in academic outcomes. One thing that stress does to your cognition is it narrows it and focuses your prognition on the stressor at hand, which makes it really hard to focus your attention on things like algebra, which might be what the teacher is hoping that you're focusing on. So a wide range of implications both in the short term, and there's limited evidence in following teens looking at the long-term, but we have every reason to believe that these short-term implications if chronic, can turn into long run disease outcomes.
Mills: What should parents or other caregivers be looking for as the signs that stress is harming their children?
Adam: So stress is hard to detect because in teens, in some senses, because parents have this stereotype that teens will be teens and the kind of moodiness that teens that is a stereotype of being an adolescent, can be dismissed as something that is just normal. I think parents need to be willing to ask their teens how they're doing and regularly do so. It is a difficult thing to do, teens may dismiss parents interest in their wellbeing. But I think ultimately it's important to continue to inquire. There's also changes in behavior. If a teen is sleeping more than usual or less than usual, if their mood seemed more intense than usual, either more sad or more angry, any large changes in behavior, if they stopped going out to see friends [crosstalk 00:13:53] In the pandemic that's hard to assess, but you can assess whether or not they are seeming socially withdrawn.
Adam: Teens are connecting with friends virtually. If they seem to have drawn back completely from reaching out electronically to friends, that would be another sign of distress in teens. And so basically large changes in behavior are something to be on the lookout for, and certainly sadness, crying. Those are signs, but as I said, anger can be also an expression of depression in teens as well.
Mills: You also study interventions like meditation and mindfulness to reduce teen stress levels. What have you found about effective interventions? What have you found that works best?
Adam: Sure. Well, we have several interventions that are underway. So, I hate to draw conclusions about them until all the data are in, but we do have one intervention where we studied meditation in teens, and we found significant reductions in blood pressure among teens who were engaged in the meditation intervention. We're currently launching an app based mindfulness intervention, which is something that we hope will have positive effects. We do know that mindfulness more generally, there's been prior studies that have tested mindfulness in teens and shown positive results. But what we're hoping to do is come up with something that might be a little more scalable, a little more easily accessible to a broad range of teens.
Adam: The other type of stress that we've not touched on in too much detail is the stress of racial discrimination, and that's a big focus in my lab. And so we have specific intervention that is designed to try to buffer teens from the stress of racial discrimination. And that intervention actually focuses on promoting a positive racial, ethnic identity in you. And it's a group-based intervention. We've done it live, we've done it on Zoom. It was designed by Adriana Umana-Taylor at Harvard University, and those initial results from her lab showing positive effects for youth, both in terms of their self-esteem and their emotional wellbeing, as well as some of their academic performance.
Adam: And the idea is that, and this is a more general concept that I think you can take away from this, is that belongingness, feeling included in a group, feeling accepted, is one of the most important things for regulating stress. We are social beings and so social interaction and feelings of belonging, feelings that people care for us and that we're included in a group are fundamental to our human existence. And so anything that threatens that is a fundamental stressor. And so this is why loneliness is a really strong stressor and this is why racial discrimination is a really strong stressor for teens.
Adam: And so this intervention is intended to have youth really explore and connect with their heritage in ways that maybe bolster them against some of the slings and arrows of very unfair treatment on the basis of race or other categories. Although ultimately, of course, we hope to eliminate those forms of stress in teen's lives. In the meantime we're concentrating on also bolstering their ability to respond to those types of stressors.
Mills: Do you know which kind of support helps more, whether that's support from family or friends? Does that vary depending on a child's age?
Adam: Sure, there is some evidence that, and certainly from a theoretical basis, younger children and early adolescents depend more on support from parents. And as you enter later adolescence, support from peers and communities start to become important. But I don't want to diminish how fundamental parents are even to the lives of older adolescents and young adults. So while there's a transition in certainly seeking outside peers for entertainment, for social enjoyment and for some forms of support, parents remain a fundamental attachment figure for adolescents and for young adults. And I think it's important, particularly in these times of threat, that that form of communication and support remains open as much as possible for youth.
Mills: One of the biggest challenges for young people right now is that many high schools and colleges and even elementary schools and middle schools are operating remotely or on a hybrid model. How might this switch to virtual school affect teens and young adults stress levels, mental health and ultimately their development?
Adam: So, this is a place where I'm speculating a little bit and drawing on theory to inform my answer here.
Mills: That's okay.
Adam: The one piece of data that I do have is the data from the Bio study, which does show us that the switch to virtual or hybrid models is allowing teens some relief from the social pressures of school and increased sleep and increased feelings of calm. So we actually looked at mood States of kids before and after the pandemic, and so post pandemic after the school shut downs, teens were lonelier but they were also calmer and less tired. But on the flip side, youth from lower SES circumstances, in addition to feeling calmer and less tired and lonelier, they were also feeling increased feelings of shame and anger.
Adam: And so, those were actually not driven by the schooling, but the other aspects of the pandemic. So, I think that when it just, again, speculating on the impacts of virtual schooling, what's really going to matter is that kids are getting the education that they need, that you know, for the long run they need appropriate content, and teaching needs to be adapted appropriately to deliver that content in a virtual setting. They need appropriate social contact with their peers and with their teachers to the extent that can be facilitated online. You know, it's certainly, at this point, I'm not worried about screen time as much as I'm worried about ensuring that teens have continuity in their education and in their social relationships.
Adam: And so if those social relationships can be provided virtually, I think that matters greatly for teens. So schools need to just get creative about how they're offering their education, but also how they're offering a feeling of connection to teens so that they actually have an experience of a peer group and have an experience of interaction with their teacher. So I think it's too soon to say whether the homeschooling part of it will be devastating. I am more worried about the devastation associated with the loss of loved ones due to how the health crises of the pandemic, and also the negative impact of the pandemic, [inaudible 00:22:11] with the pandemic on the economy.
Adam: So those are the things that worry me more than the virtual schooling. And when you talk about parents, the virtual schooling has been something extremely difficult to navigate. And so we did in the Stress in America Survey, see that parents are also much more stressed than non-parents. And actually when I checked the numbers, if you asked about stress related to the pandemic, the parents are almost as stressed as the Gen Z young adults. So those are the two groups that are really having trouble navigating this pandemic. And I think one thing we've kind of done in this interview so far is broken down all these different sources of stress, but the real problem, or the real crisis associated with this pandemic, is the number of different issues that have piled up and are affecting both adults and teens right now.
Adam: There's stress related to the pandemic and then there's stress related to the economic downturn associated with the pandemic There's stress associated with the health crises of the pandemic. And then there's stress associated with the very real issues of race in this society in 2020, that have been here for generations but the race relations in the country have really come to the forefront, again in 2020 with the shooting and [inaudible 00:23:46] of black individuals at the hands of police. And that was something we did see in the survey that the majority of Americans were concerned about those events. And the majority of Americans are very stressed and concerned about the outcome of the election and the tensions surrounding the election.
Adam: And so, it's the one thing that we know about stress is that one stressor at a time is more manageable than accumulation of stressors. And there's something called accumulative stress model where you essentially add up one stressor, another stressor, another stressor, another stressor. And there is a breaking point for many people where there's just too many stressors handled all at once lead to problematic health outcomes.
Mills: I thought it was interesting that overall what we found in Stress in America was that people felt positive about their future, but there was an exception among the Generation Z. What did they say about their futures?
Adam: Well, you know every generation in the Stress in America Survey said they do feel hopeful for their future when they're asked specifically. But the Gen Z were the lowest on that. I think they were 64% as compared to numbers in the seventies for the other individuals. So they have hope for their future, but the real psychological dimension that I think defines Gen Z in this survey is feelings of uncertainty about their future. Two-thirds of them in the survey said that planning for their future seems impossible, or feels impossible. And this was actually only 51% of Gen Z teens said that. So two-thirds feeling planning for the future feels impossible, it's a really paralyzing state, and uncertainty I said that social exclusion is one thing that's really a powerful contributor to biological stress, the other is uncertainty.
Adam: And so these teens are both socially isolated as well as feeling great degrees of uncertainty about what their future schooling is going to look like and also what their future jobs are going to look like. And I think, you know, that there's real cause for concern about that. I have a colleague, Hannes [00:26:16 Swan] who has actually studied the impact of individuals graduating into a recession, and has found that there is lifelong impacts of graduating into a recession on lifelong earnings, as well as on even things like family formation and health outcomes. And so I think in addition to providing the types of emotional supports that we know are needed by teens and young adults, we also should be thinking really carefully about what kind of economic supports we can provide, what kind of job training programs, what kind of opportunities.
Adam: I was brainstorming this morning and thinking, "Well, what about AmeriCorps?" You know, could we have an expansion of AmeriCorps to just have not only opportunities for teens and young adults that are graduating into this difficult economy, but opportunities that would be helpful for our country as a whole. So, there's other policymakers who can think much more creatively about how to create the types of job opportunities I'm talking about. But I really think that we need to, even though psychology is an important part of what we're talking about, we need to move beyond psychology to policy in order to address the types of stresses that this generation is facing.
Mills: Well, let's hope that there are some important policymakers who are listening to this podcast and are taking this to heart because it's very important.
Mills: So I want to thank you for joining us today, Dr. Adam. It's been very interesting talking with you.
Adam: Thank you very much, Kim.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking Of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That's speakingofpsychology, all one word, @apa.org.
Mills: Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.
An applied developmental psychobiologist, Emma Adam has been with Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy since 2000. She studies how everyday life experiences in home, school, and work settings influence levels of perceived and biological stress in adolescents and young adults. Her work traces the pathways by which stress "gets under the skin" to contribute to youth outcomes. By using noninvasive methods such as diary measures of stress, measurement of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and measurement of sleep hours and quality, she is identifying the key factors that cause emotional and biological stress in adolescents and young adults and the implications of stress for daily functioning, emotional and physical health, cognition, and academic outcomes.
