How does stress affect teenagers?
A health psychologist and a developmental neuroscientist explore the impact of stress on teen learning and development
Adolescents are going through a period of rapid change to their bodies and brains. While a certain amount of stress can help teens navigate the challenges they face, too much can be detrimental. Scientists from two different disciplines draw from their research expertise to explain, from their perspectives, the impact stress has on teenage brain development, mental health, and wellbeing. What does a health psychologist have to say? And what is the neuroscientist’s perspective?
A health psychologist’s perspective on how stress affects teenagers – David Bürgin
Stress is an important part of development and learning. It helps teenagers respond to the changing world around them, learn from their experiences, cope with challenges, and overcome hardships. Stress lets teens continuously evaluate their surroundings so that they can anticipate and handle difficulties that arise.
“Stress lets teens continuously evaluate their surroundings so that they can anticipate and handle difficulties that arise.”
David Bürgin
Normal everyday stresses for teens include speaking up in class, preparing to give a first presentation, taking multiple exams in a single week, going on a school trip, and going to a summer camp alone for the first time. While such situations may be stressful, they need not be. Transitions, in particular, can be difficult for teenagers – enrolling in a new school, starting an apprenticeship, or moving to a new city – as these transitions bring with them not only new roles, expectations, and responsibilities, but also unfamiliar social environments and new peers. Whether young people are facing major or minor stressors, it’s important for caregivers to provide support and guidance. Being overprotective, however, deprives them of opportunities for learning and development.
Stress can have a hugely detrimental impact in threatening situations, or when the body’s stress response system is repeatedly activated over long periods of time. This can happen, for example, when teenagers feel unsafe in their social environments. Perhaps they compare themselves unfavorably with others, or they may be excluded, bullied, or victimized online, or they may be exposed to violence from friends or family. Stress can also be harmful when teenagers lack a robust support network of friends and family.
Stress doesn’t originate in the individual or the environment alone, but in the complex interaction between the two. Teenagers’ responses to a stressful event are shaped by their assessment of the situation, the social support they receive during and after the event, and their ability to harness the resources available to them. Their resilience develops over time as these factors change.
“Stress doesn’t originate in the individual or the environment alone, but in the complex interaction between the two.”
David Bürgin
Adults can help young people reframe, cope with, and heal from social stressors, such as social rejection and isolation. When this support is unavailable at home, perhaps because a family lacks the necessary time or resources, accessible external help can make a difference. School clubs, youth groups, and sports teams can provide teenagers with the social support they need, while school social workers and psychologists can offer any necessary professional support.
It’s important for young people to feel safe in their social environments, as this can have a major impact on their health and wellbeing. Establishing meaningful social relationships helps to protect teenagers from the impact of stressors they encounter.
A developmental neuroscientist’s perspective on how stress affects teenagers – Mirjam Habegger
The teenage years are a crucial period in human development. During puberty, sex hormones are released, inducing major physical, psychological, and behavioral changes. This is a time of heightened neuroplasticity, a time when the brain changes significantly. This openness for adaptation and change offers opportunities as well as risks. On the one hand, it offers a window of opportunity for learning, change, and for positive experiences to shape healthy brain development and promote mental health. On the other hand, it makes the teenage brain particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of experiences, such as stress.
The brain regions involved in experiencing and regulating emotions are still developing during adolescence. Consequently, they are particularly sensitive to stress. As I have learnt through my research, relevant brain regions include the amygdala, which lies deep in the brain and is crucial for processing emotions, including fear and anxiety. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for cognitive control and the regulation of emotions. The amygdala develops earlier than the prefrontal cortex, which continues to mature into young adulthood. This mismatch in development between the brain regions involved in processing emotions and the regions responsible for their regulation may explain the fact that teenagers experience more mood swings and struggle at times to deal with their emotions. The hippocampus plays a key role in memory formation and linking emotions to those memories. Like the amygdala, the hippocampus matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex but it remains highly sensitive to experiences, including stress, throughout adolescence.
Stress hormones like cortisol have numerous receptors in the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus. When a teenager is stressed, stress hormones are released that can affect both the brain’s structure and how it functions. While certain levels of stress and stress hormones are normal and even necessary for humans to survive, excessive or chronic stress can be harmful. Too much stress can overstimulate the amygdala, leading to heightened emotional responses. When stress occurs during adolescence, it can also affect the subsequent development of the prefrontal cortex. This may lead to increasing difficulties in regulating emotions or controlling impulses. Excessive stress is even linked to changes in brain structure, for example reduced size of the hippocampus. Such changes can impair emotion processing, regulation and memory formation and increase the risk for developing mental health struggles.
Importantly, stress affects every teenage brain differently due to individual factors such as genetics, personality traits, or adversities experienced during early childhood. Variability in all these can influence a teenager’s resilience or vulnerability to stress.
“Having good friends can help protect against the negative effects of stress and promotes better mental health and brain development.”
Mirjam Habegger
Social support can serve as a buffer against the effects of stress. Whereas parents are the main source of support for younger children, teenagers increasingly rely on friendships for emotional and psychological support. Social bonds can mitigate the harmful effects of stress on the brain. Having good friends can help protect against the negative effects of stress and promotes better mental health and brain development, especially in teens who have faced challenges early in life.
Footnotes
This article is part of a series on the science of growing up, in collaboration with the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development. BOLD asked the Center’s scientists to answer some big questions about how adults can help kids thrive.
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