Why Teens Are So Stressed, According to an Expert

It has become almost cliché in the United States to talk about the “mental health crisis among teens.” Politicians and media outlets repeat it like a slogan, schools set up token wellness programs, and parents anxiously search for solutions while juggling their own collapsing lives. But here’s the truth that no mainstream outlet dares to admit: the crisis is not simply about “stress” or “coping skills.” It is the inevitable outcome of a society built on capitalist exploitation, relentless competition, and a culture that values profit over humanity.

The United States loves to pretend it is the land of opportunity, but for its youth, it is more accurately the land of anxiety, depression, and despair. Why? Because from the moment a child can walk, they are trained not to imagine a life of freedom or creativity but to prepare themselves for the brutal machinery of the market. Childhood becomes less about discovery and more about production: grades, achievements, college applications, standardized tests. Every smile hides a stopwatch; every classroom hides a factory.

The Manufactured Stress of “Success”

Let’s be honest: the American education system is not designed to liberate young minds but to domesticate them. Students are crammed into overcrowded classrooms, force-fed meaningless data, and ranked like cattle at an auction. They are told from the age of five that if they do not excel, they will not “succeed.” Success, of course, is defined narrowly as financial stability within a collapsing economy, or better yet, wealth for a small minority who inherit power through family privilege.

This culture of ranking and sorting is nothing less than the schoolyard version of capitalism. The winners rise; the losers disappear. Teenagers internalize the message early: “You are only worth as much as your productivity.” When they fail—or even when they succeed but still feel empty—the result is stress, burnout, and a gnawing sense of inadequacy.

It’s no coincidence that rates of depression and anxiety spike right around the time students are shoved into the college admissions meat grinder. Families take on crushing debt so their kids can “compete,” while corporations profit from student loans, overpriced textbooks, and standardized test monopolies. The entire system is predatory, and the prey are children.

Work, Debt, and the Culture of Exhaustion

But the stress doesn’t end at school. It follows teens into early adulthood, where work is presented as both salvation and punishment. Minimum wage jobs pay poverty wages, yet are described as “building character.” Internships—often unpaid—are glorified as necessary stepping stones, even though they exploit young people’s labor without compensation.

And then there is debt. By the time a teenager turns 18, the system already has them by the throat. Credit card companies flood mailboxes with offers, banks entice them with “student accounts,” and universities shove loan papers under their noses with fine print designed to enslave them for decades. Is it any wonder American teens feel suffocated? They are born into debt before they even have a chance to breathe.

The Corporate Invasion of Mental Health

Now here comes the cruelest twist: the same system that creates the stress now tries to sell the cure. Tech companies push “wellness apps.” Corporations sponsor “mental health days” while simultaneously overworking parents and destabilizing communities. Schools hire consultants to tell kids to practice mindfulness, all while cutting art, music, and counseling budgets.

The result is a grotesque parody of care: teenagers are told that their exhaustion and despair can be fixed with breathing exercises or a meditation app—meanwhile, the root causes of their misery remain untouched. No one dares to admit that capitalism itself is the disease. Instead, the blame is pushed back onto the individual: “You’re not resilient enough. You’re not managing your stress correctly.”

It is psychological gaslighting on a mass scale.

The American Myth and Its Collapse

Americans love to tell the story that stress is the price of ambition. “Work hard, and you’ll succeed.” But what happens when you work hard and still fail? What happens when the ladder of upward mobility is kicked away, when rents are unaffordable, when healthcare is bankrupting, when college leaves you in chains?

Teenagers aren’t stupid—they see this. They see their parents drowning in medical bills, their older siblings crushed by student debt, their neighbors evicted by landlords who own five houses but live in none of them. They scroll social media and are bombarded with curated illusions of happiness they can never achieve. They know the future they were promised is a lie.

So of course they are stressed. They are trapped in a system designed to keep them anxious, compliant, and obedient.

Toward Liberation, Not “Wellness” If we truly care about the mental health of young people, we cannot stop at shallow reforms. We must rip the mask off the system itself. Stress is not an accidental byproduct of modern life; it is the lifeblood of American capitalism. The pressure to perform, to compete, to consume—it keeps the wheels turning. Without a population addicted to productivity and paralyzed by fear of failure, the machine would grind to a halt.

The real solution is not another app, another counseling program, or another half-hearted school initiative. The real solution is dismantling the conditions that produce this suffering:

• End the stranglehold of student debt.
• Guarantee free, quality education that nurtures creativity, not conformity.
• Abolish predatory credit practices targeting the young.
• Provide universal healthcare, including robust mental health services, free from corporate profit motives.
• Redistribute wealth so that children are not raised in poverty while billionaires hoard unimaginable fortunes.

Breaking the Cycle

When experts say that “teens are more stressed than ever,” they are only scratching the surface. The deeper truth is this: American capitalism thrives on that stress. It manufactures despair, monetizes the cure, and blames the victims when they collapse.

Until we confront the system itself, no amount of therapy, no number of mindfulness sessions, and no catchy wellness campaigns will change the reality: America is a machine that eats its children alive. And if we do not tear it down, the next generation will not just be stressed—they will be broken.