Childhood anxiety is on the rise for a multitude of reasons Giuseppe Di Bella/Millennium Images, UK
CHILDHOOD can be a time of great anxiety. It is when we learn how to make friends and cope when those friendships go sour, when we first feel the pressures of school work and exams, and when the difficulties of puberty kick in.
But recent research suggests that childhood anxiety is on the rise, with more children feeling anxious today than even just a few years ago. As researchers start to investigate why this might be, a complicated picture is emerging, encompassing everything from the covid-19 pandemic to social media. Thankfully, there are ways to help children to ensure the potential long-term effects are limited.
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Evidence for high levels of anxiety in children comes from an analysis of 29 studies that were published between 2020 and 2021 that included 80,000 young people from around the world. It found that 20.5 per cent of children had clinically significant anxiety symptoms, with girls and older adolescents particularly affected.
Of course, 2020 and 2021 were defined by the covid-19 pandemic, when many people of all ages felt increased anxiety (see “Anxiety really has increased over the past 10 years – but why?“). However, prior to the pandemic the generally accepted prevalence figure for young people was 11.6 per cent, from a study that surveyed 37 per cent of Finnish adolescents aged 14 to 18 in 2015. Signs that anxiety diagnoses were rising in younger people even earlier come from a survey of the parents of around 60,000 households as part of the National Survey of Children’s Health in the US, which found that the proportion of children who had ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder increased between 2007 and 2012, from 5.5 per cent to 6.4 per cent.
Causes of anxiety in children
One cause of the rise in childhood anxiety seems to be climate change (see “What is eco-anxiety and how can we overcome it?”). Another possible driver is that today’s young people are the first generation to grow up with social media and smartphones. The constant exposure to bad news made possible by such tools may play a role, says Jennifer Wild at the University of Oxford. “If you’re getting a lot of notifications, you are primed to threatening situations, and that can increase anxiety.”
Outcomes may depend on how these platforms are used. When Rebecca Anthony at Cardiff University, UK, and her colleagues examined 38,700 survey responses by 11 to 16-year-olds living in Wales, they found that, for most of them, time spent talking to their close friends online was linked to better well-being. “However, speaking with strangers was associated with poorer well-being,” says Anthony. “This was particularly true for girls.”
Anxiety and social media
More research is needed before we can draw solid conclusions about the impact of social media and smartphones on young people, says Wild. It may be that anxiety causes excessive use of social media, for example, not vice versa.
School and the interactions that take place there may also have an effect. “When you look at studies that ask children what they worry about, the most common things that they talk about relate to experiences and the environment at school,” says Cathy Creswell, also at the University of Oxford.
However, when Anthony and her colleagues investigated whether bullying could account for an observed increase in rates of emotional problems, such as feeling nervous, among 11 to 16-year-olds in Wales between 2013 and 2019, they found it couldn’t. Nor could the quality of friendships. Instead, the biggest risk factor was socioeconomic status. “When we looked at trends over time, the rise in symptoms was steeper for poorer families,” says Anthony.
Treatments for anxiety in children
The good news is that there are effective treatments for anxiety in young people, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT (see “Five scientific ways to help reduce feelings of anxiety”). Creswell and her colleagues have been looking into the use of an online platform for CBT, led by parents but in conjunction with personalised phone support from a therapist once a week. In a study of 444 children with anxiety aged between 5 and 12, they found it was just as effective as regularly seeing a therapist for CBT in person. Given one of the main barriers to children receiving support is access to a therapist, this approach could help widen access, according to Creswell.
The key is early intervention. “The average age of treatment is around 35 to 40, but the average age of onset is around 13,” says Wild. “We want to be making interventions accessible for young people, because it’s much better to intervene before it becomes a way of life.”
This article is part of a special series on anxiety.
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