Teenagers face significant pressures from social media, bullying, exams, relationships, and their appearance. A survey of 40 students at a sixth form college found that 33 said college is their main source of stress, and 39 felt others had expectations for them to achieve. An expert discussed how 81% of teens feel pressure to have a perfect body from social media images. Statistics show that many teens seek help from helplines for issues like exam stress.

1. Script
Social media, bullying, exam stress, appearance, maintaining
relationships. These are just some of the many pressures teenagers
are faced with nowadays.
Today we are at the Sixth Form College, Solihull to look at how stress
affects them as young people in today’s society.
So, what are students really stressed about?
Whilst visiting the Sixth Form College, Solihull, we spoke to an
academic coach to hear how much she deals with student stress.
We conducted a survey which 40 students completed and the results
were surprising.
Only 1 person said that they wouldn’t change anything about their
appearance.
33 people said that college is the main reason for their stress.
And 39 out of 40 think others have certain expectations for them to
achieve.
Natasha Chamberlain from Solihull Council gave us her expert
opinion on young people’s concerns throughout the years.
The ChildLine National Exam Stress Survey collected some
information of their own and this is what they found.
81% said they felt under pressure to have the perfect body and 40%
of these pressures came from pictures on social media.
To give us more information and a better understanding of the
mental affects stress has on our bodies, we got a chance to talk to
Psychology expert, Tom Krawec.

2. In 2011, 884 of the 6332 calls that Young Minds received were from
16-17 year olds and 39% of those were about school problems
including exam stress.
78% expect exam stress to have negative impacts on their
appearance, health or mental state.
But, how do they cope with this?
We interviewed members of the public in Solihull to see if their
opinion differed by asking them who they thought faced more
pressure: teenagers or adults?
Coming up: Kevin Doherty tells us his personal opinion on young
people’s futures.