You likely already know about burnout that impacts overworked adults. As it turns out, burnout can affect teens, too. Modern-day educational environments can be cutthroat and intense, and many teens are spread too thin with the myriad demands of school, hobbies, and pre-college requirements.
Teen burnout can result in serious and lasting impairments in a child’s ability to engage and thrive in daily life. As a parent, it’s easy to feel helpless when it comes to your teen’s functioning in school. However, understanding teen burnout and what you can do when your kid shows warning signs can make a big difference in prevention and mitigation.
Key Takeaways
- Burnout can result in serious and lasting impairments in a child’s ability to engage and thrive in daily life.
- Over 60 percent of adolescents feel intense pressure to get good grades and compete for scholastic awards.
- As a parent, you can help your teen develop useful life skills to prevent and minimize the impacts of burnout.
- Teen burnout is often a sign of deeper underlying mental health issues like depression or anxiety. Knowing the signs and symptoms can help you determine whether treatment is needed.
What Is Student Burnout?
Adolescence is full of growing pains, changes, and challenges. As teens age and learn about themselves, they also must navigate more commitments at school, at home, and with friends. A lot of children struggle with having to juggle so many things at once, like managing a hefty homework load, participating in sports, pre-college requirement pressure, and working outside of school.
Teen burnout, also known as student burnout, is a physical, emotional, and behavioral phenomenon resulting from too much pressure and strain in academics. Competition for college is intense, and teens often feel they have to prove their worth by excelling in everything they do. The pressure to be the best in academics, extracurriculars, sports, and outside jobs takes a toll on mental and physical health. The following statistics illustrate some of the stresses today’s teens face:
- Over 60 percent of adolescents feel intense pressure to get good grades and compete for scholastic awards
- 70 percent of teens consider anxiety and depression to be major problems among themselves and their peers.
- 40 percent of teens report being bullied at school in the last year, and 55 percent of teens worry about bullying.
- Nearly one-third of young people feel overwhelmed by pressure to look “good” by societal standards.
- 70 percent of young people report being unable to stop worrying when something goes wrong in their lives.
Moreover, according to a post-Covid 19 study, other variables that contribute to student burnout include cumulative stresses from peers and classroom disharmony, distress and worries about the future, lack of parental support, and poor math grades. These pressures can cause unsustainable levels of overwhelm and stress in children, ultimately leading to burnout.
Signs and Symptoms of Teen Burnout
Teen burnout includes physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. Here are eight signs your teen may be experiencing burnout.
- Depression: Burnout and teen depression can look quite similar. Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, persistent sadness, fatigue, and isolation from friends and family are warning signs of depression.
- Anxiety: Anxiety can look like consistently high levels of stress and worry about school, work, projects, socializing, hobbies, and other areas of life.
- Irritability: High levels of tension, moodiness, and edginess often crop up as a result of teen burnout. For instance, your teen might snap at you if you ask what they’re working on or suggest they take a break.
- Insomnia: Burnout often results in being unable to fall asleep or stay asleep, despite feeling very tired.
- Fatigue: Teens might complain of being tired all the time, even if they seemingly get enough rest. They may appear to be “tired and wired,” or dealing with a lot of simultaneous stress and exhaustion.
- Illness or pain: Frequent sickness, aches, pains, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, or other persistent health issues are common signs of teen burnout.
- Emotional outbursts: Flares in temper, emotional dysregulation, and extreme mood swings are common occurrences in overworked teens.
- Poor concentration: A decline in concentration, memory, ability to focus, or inability to hold a proper conversation without getting distracted can reflect the cognitive impacts of burnout.
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How to Deal with Teen Burnout
As a parent, knowing how to deal with your teen’s burnout can feel overwhelming. Unfortunately, you can’t control their workload at school. However, you can talk to them about the realities of academic demands and ways to mitigate stress. One of the best things parents can do to prevent burnout is provide a nurturing, caring environment for their teen. You can also help them develop useful life skills to prevent and minimize the impacts of burnout. Here are important skills you can help them develop and tips for ensuring they feel supported and cared for.
Cultivate Open Communication
You can’t know if your teen is struggling if they won’t talk to you. Encourage a culture of open communication in your home so your teen knows they can feel safe to come to you without judgment or retribution. Have frank, open discussions about the demands of academics, and do your best to understand their perspective. Remind them that their range of emotions is okay, and encourage them to talk about their challenges with you. Respond to their problems with compassion and active listening, rather than trying to “fix” their feelings or automatically tell them what they should do.
Help Your Teen Recognize Perfectionism
If your teen tends to be a perfectionist, they might feel the need to perform highly in everything they do, which can lead to academic burnout. However, by discussing the realities and downsides of perfectionism with them early and often, you can help them mitigate the stresses of trying to excel in every area of their life. Remind your teen that grades aren’t everything, and it’s okay not to be in every club the school offers.
Support Healthy Hobbies
Most teens feel overwhelmed by worries and pressure to succeed. Encourage them to spend time seeking out and participating in things they enjoy, not just things they feel they have to do. Help promote a healthy work-life balance by supporting them in doing enjoyable, relaxing hobbies like walking, camping, or photography. Spending time in nature and green spaces is a bonus, as it has consistently shown to lower stress and improve mental health and well-being. Better yet, invest in the things your teen likes to do, and spend time doing hobbies together as a family.
Encourage a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset refers to the attitude that most abilities can be learned with time and practice. This is in opposition to a fixed mindset, in which someone believes their skills are innate and that effort won’t result in improvement. Teens with a growth mindset are more likely to avoid burnout, in large part because they learn that failure or setbacks aren’t indicators of self-worth.
Foster Resilience
Resilience in the face of adversity or difficulty heightens emotional regulation skills, decreases anxiety and depression, and increases a teen’s ability to feel positive, confident, and competent.
Ensure Ample Academic Support
Kids who performed poorly in math classes were more likely to experience burnout, according to a study of preteen students. Furthermore, certain learning disabilities or neurodevelopmental differences, including ADHD, can impact a child’s performance in the classroom. The importance placed on science and math classes at school can make students who struggle in these areas feel extremely anxious about failure and their future, which can snowball into burnout. Getting help in the form of tutoring or accommodations can make a huge difference in dialing down your kid’s anxiety about certain classes.
Show Unconditional Love and Support
Parental support makes a huge difference in whether a child develops burnout. If your teen thinks they have to be perfect or perform to the standards of a parent’s sky-high expectations for them, they’re more likely to push themselves into overwork and burnout. Make sure your kid knows you support and love them no matter how they perform academically or in their extracurriculars. Show them this by openly appreciating and celebrating who they are rather than what they achieve.
When to Treat Teen Burnout
Knowing when to step in to help your teen can be tough. Teen burnout is often a sign of deeper underlying mental health issues like depression or anxiety. It can also lead to bigger problems down the road, including eating disorders, exacerbated mental and physical health problems, substance use, and self-harm behaviors.
Teen treatment may be necessary if burnout is a sign of a mental health disorder, or if their burnout symptoms are significantly impacting your child’s ability to thrive in school and at home. If burnout persists for longer than a couple of weeks or continues to get worse, don’t wait to get help. Talk to your teen about what’s going on in their life, and gauge whether treatment might be helpful.
If they’re struggling with any of the following, treatment is a good option:
- Mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD or trauma
- Behaviors or emotions that feel explosive, out of control, or difficult to regulate
- Unsafe coping skills such as substance use
- Refusal to go to school
- Other behavioral or emotional red flags that feel beyond your ability to manage
For more information about treatment, download our complete guide to teen treatment, including a mental health glossary, resources, questions to ask when researching treatment options, and more.
Teen Treatment at Newport Academy
Newport Academy has a whole-person, comprehensive approach to address each teen’s physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual needs and provide healing from burnout. Newport’s programs for teens help young people address primary mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and PTSD in a therapeutic environment. Guided by expert clinicians, our programs include modalities such as:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Experiential therapy, including equine, yoga and meditation, music, fitness, and adventure options
- Group and peer therapy
- Family therapy
Our clients gain tools to help them flourish, discover healthy coping strategies to manage stress, and uncover and heal past trauma. Additionally, the academic component of our residential and Partial Hospitalization Programs provides strength-based education using accredited curriculums.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources
Youth Right Now, Report from The Boys & Girls Club of America, 2024
Pew Research Center, 2019
Children (Basel). 2023 May; 10(5): 823.
