Teens, Mental Health, and the Cult of Productivity
Survey Sirens
After doing competitive gymnastics for a few years, my 13-year-old is in the minority of her friend group without a sport (or five). She figures out how to get her schoolwork done mostly during the school day, decidedly not spending hours on homework in the evenings. Her favorite ways to spend time are to hang out with friends in our village’s mini-downtown, play with our new puppy, run to Target with me to talk me into buying skin care products, watch Gilmore Girls reruns, listen to music, and yes, scroll on her phone (but less than she used to).
I have found that watching her assume this well-paced daily life causes me some angst about what she might not be doing enough of, especially compared to what feels like every other teen in my orbit.
As I wonder whether she should be “doing more,” I simultaneously shudder from the relentless headlines about teens’ worsening mental health, including the recently released results of the CDC Youth Risk Survey. Conducted every other year, this survey from fall 2021 showed that about 60% of teen girls reported persistent sadness. Just add it to the growing pile of statistics about how teen girls are struggling (important to note: LGBTQ teens are struggling more, and boys are also struggling, but their statistics are slightly less alarming).
While the headlines about worsening teen mental health rage on, I have realized that my own daughter might exemplify one part of the solution we should all look to and learn from: she may just be the model of countering our productivity culture.
The Cult(ure) of Productivity
American parents exist within a capitalist culture that prizes and rewards productivity at all costs. Social psychologist Devon Price, author of Laziness Does Not Exist, traces the “laziness lie” of America back to its puritan roots. Puritan values of work ethic and self-discipline have long been exploited for the sake of capitalism benefiting the wealthy tip-top of our economic pyramid. As just one example of how this history continues to infiltrate modern life, this is why Americans are notoriously terrible at taking vacation time.
We all swim so deeply in this “cult of productivity” sea that we can’t see clearly. Once I excused myself from this way of life (mostly) when I left academic medicine, my clouded vision cleared. And now I can see not just how it had sucked me in, but how it pervades our collective family and teen lives in pernicious ways.
My middle-schooler told me the other day that a girl in her English class does five sports. She listed them. How does that even work? How would those games not conflict? Another family I know shared how their eighth-grade son practices for his travel baseball league until 9 pm on Sunday nights. It’s half an hour from home, so he starts to wind down around 10 pm--the night before his school week starts. And that start would be early Monday morning because he takes a class at the high school at 8 am. These are just two recent anecdotes, but I hear at least one similar tale daily.
We have culturally accepted–and promoted–a way of life for our teenagers that is directly at odds with their mental health and emotional wellbeing. We have lost the benefits of moderation in a culture of extremes. And our children are suffering.
The Bright Red Flag We Ignore: Productivity, Stress, and Mental Health
This is the bright red flag waving frantically over the youth mental health crisis that we seem to be collectively ignoring: our teens have been sucked into this productivity culture. In my work and in my community, I see an increased normalization for teens to constantly do and achieve in an around-the-clock schedule of tasks and activities bookending school days and dominating weekends.
Part of growing up includes trying a range of activities and identities to find purpose and meaning. But doing so for externally-motivated reasons (because it’s what others expect or pressure) undermines the joy, fun, and purpose of experimenting with different ways of spending time. Doing so at a pace that precludes the very foundation of healthy living does more than undermine, it causes damage.
It’s proven that chronic, overwhelming stress contributes to mental health problems. It’s also well-established that sleep, rest, and down time buffer the effects of the stress hormone, cortisol, streaming through the body. In their highly productive schedules, busy teens are producing, performing, and “on” for most hours of the day. This does not allow for enough sleep, rest, or down time, which undoubtedly increases their risk for mental health symptoms.
I searched for data about how much rest and down time teens are getting but I couldn’t find hard numbers. So, it’s responsible to note that my conclusion that many teens don’t get enough of either is based on my own observations of teens in my therapy practice and in my personal life.
But the statistics on sleep are clear. The CDC sleep survey results from 2015 found that almost 60% of middle schoolers are not getting enough sleep and it’s worse for high schoolers at more than 70%. National trends studied by the CDC from 2009-2019 showed that the number of high schoolers getting less than eight hours of sleep a night grew steadily over the decade, with almost 80% of girls reporting this “short sleep duration” (girls were worse off than boys at every time point). A 2017 analysis of the American Time Use Survey data found that for 15-25-year-olds, students who participated in extracurriculars reported an average of almost 70 minutes less sleep compared to those with no extracurriculars.
Not only does a lack of sleep mimic depressive symptoms, sleep insufficiency is a risk factor for developing depression (and anxiety). So, when teen girls are reporting greater sadness, it really could be attributed to being tired. I’m not trying to minimize the other possible reasons teens could be experiencing more depression and anxiety as a population, but I want this possibility thrown into the mix. It’s at least a factor we can consider as we look at what’s happening in our homes, with our families, and in our own teenagers.
Questioning the Premise: “What Is it All For?”
So many families I know spend their weekends zig-zagging around town from one game to another practice, barely having time to eat a meal and co-parents having little time to talk to each other. And that’s when kids stay in town – there’s also the travel leagues taking kids to different states by car or by plane. It’s a lot. As one mother and I sat together watching our third-grade sons practice soccer, she shared her own questioning of family decisions after returning from her middle-school daughter’s travel soccer tournament. In Florida. (We live in Illinois.) She asked, “What is it all for? It’s not like they are all going to end up in Division 1 soccer!” When the stress clearly outweighs the fun, it’s time to question the premise: why are we doing this?
I believe that we are doing our best to be supportive, “good,” caring parents when we expend time and money on nurturing our children’s interests and skills. It has been argued we are biologically wired to do so with evolutionary science suggesting that the parent brain is primed to ensure survival of our children. In this day and age, we translate survival as succeeding in competitive environments. Like travel soccer. But, as the time and money being invested in youth activities keeps intensifying, it’s worth asking: what is it all for? And what are we sacrificing along the way?
From Social Norms to the Individual
As I issue a call to action to examine how much pressure we are placing on our teens being productive, context is important. Each child has a different internal barometer of “too much.” Some children thrive with more to do, so having an active schedule improves their mental health. (It’s also worth pointing out that parents have their own barometer as well – which may or may not match their child’s.) Participating in a range of activities and doing exceptionally well in school can be enriching and part of finding a sense of purpose and identity.
There’s also the type of kid I know well from my therapy practice. These kids happen to often be girls and they are the ones who take on a laundry list of activities and honors classes without complaint. They appear self-motivated, but I can speak from experience that they are responding to external pressures to be a “good kid,” make their parents “happy” or to keep up with a high-achieving friend group. Making parents happy or comparing themselves to high-achieving peers drives their choices rather than doing what feels personally meaningful. This reliance on external motivators has proven to be a recipe for burnout and depression rather than optimal performance and “success.”
The key is to tune in to each of our children’s individual needs and tune out the social pressures and cultural messaging around how they should be spending their time. Our influence may be incrementally more limited with each passing year of adolescence, but our modeling and messaging can still hold special powers.
Family Check-In
So, what can we actually do as we all swim in this so-called “cult or productivity” sea? I encourage every parent to take a step back and take stock. Think about what you see in your home. What kind of rest and down time does each of your kids get, between academics, activities, and sports? What kind of rest and down time does your family have? (This includes you, the parent! What’s your rest and down time like?)
Do a check-in:
Are you satisfied with the amount of quality time you have with each other?
How much rest and down time are part of the schedule?
If you listed all of the activities in the weekly schedule, what is the cost to your child’s/family’s/your stress and sleep?
What are the benefits of each activity to your child and family?
And finally – where does the motivation lie -- how internally driven is each part of your child’s schedule, including excessive time spent on homework?
Come up with your own answers and then pose these questions to your kids and co-parent. Where do answers overlap and where are their different perspectives? Where could you make even small changes in your time use as a family that would offer more rest and down time?
The Confessional
I have my moments of pushing my productivity-deviant daughter to “do” more because she may be sliding a little into the realm of doing too little. But I keep asking myself whose version of “doing enough” am I using? Because when I take a step back and really look at my 7th-grader making her way through the thick of middle school, puberty and all that comes with both, she’s doing pretty well. She’s not holed up in her room as much as she used to be, she shares deep, existential thoughts about where she fits in the universe, she regularly spends time with friends in person, and she’s fairly relaxed and calm most of the time. She even does her chores without complaining!
The truth is I might envy her. As a household of three kids, two dogs, and two parents balancing a few professional careers, my husband and I live in a state of “never enough” sleep, rest, or down time. And it seems we are far less busy than most families we know: our kids have maybe 20 minutes of homework a night if any, my son plays soccer once or twice a week depending on the season, my middle child does the lesser competitive gymnastics option (6 hours of practice a week with local meets about once a month), and we’ve already covered my 13-year-old’s leisurely life.
But maybe my eldest’s life seems so relaxed simply because it has more balance than most teens I know. Maybe I’ve parented around these messages of prioritizing wellbeing and internal motivation more successfully than I realized. Maybe she’s listening better than I am. Maybe more teens and parents could take note from my 13-year-old’s approach of taking her time to find her purpose and meaning, at her own pace instead of dictated by all the cultural forces around her.
References and Resources
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/data-and-statistics/high-school-students.html
Ryan, Patrick F. (2017) "Time Allocation, Sleep, and Academic Achievement in the Student Population," Undergraduate Economic Review: Vol. 14 : Iss. 1 , Article 7
Pressure and Perfectionism in Kids and Teens
Youth Sports in Overdrive: Is it Worth it?
Pressured Parents, Stressed Out Kids, Wendy S. Grolnick, PhD and Kathy Seal
Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports--and Why It Matters, Linda Flanagan
**You can pre-order my book Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.