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A perfect storm for Gen Z
19-year-old Sania, a South Asian student at UC Santa Barbara, grew up in the Bay Area. “Bay Area High schoolers struggle a lot,” she said. “The competitive nature of feeling like they’re not doing enough; they’re not doing as much as their peers; like they’re not going to get into a good school; like their entire life is about that. And that was the case for me as well. That was something that was very painful for me to go through.”
“This crisis is not caused by one single factor. It is, in a way, a perfect storm,” said Dr. Ovsanna Leyfer, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and licensed clinical psychologist, Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program, Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. She was speaking at a July 25 discussion hosted by American Community Media about the growing sense of hopelessness and anxiety among young people that has become a part of a larger, nationwide public health crisis.
Data from the National Institute of Mental Health in 2023 showed that more than 22% of Gen Z young adults reported having a major depressive episode, and that 4 out of 10 children reported persistent feelings of sadness.
“The academic pressure of growing up here (Bay Area) and people are just so smart— it’s hard to feel like you’re doing enough and you’re on par with people. The pressure and comparison definitely in high school would really stress me out,” said Sania.
Dr. Leyfer shared a sobering statistic: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that the number of high school students reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness rose 40% between 2009 and 2019. Some of the factors driving this trend include the rise in social media and smartphone use, increasing academic and social pressures, and growing competition in college admissions.
The academic pressure to succeed
Maya, (name changed for privacy), a 20-year-old South Asian student at Columbia University, attended a highly competitive high school in the Bay Area; she told India Currents that despite being academically successful, she struggled to feel a genuine sense of self-worth.
In a conversation with India Currents, Dr. Kani Ilangovan, a psychiatrist and mental health advocate in Princeton, New Jersey, agreed. “I feel like it is much harder than it used to be. “It’s so hard these days to get into the top colleges, it’s so hard to get a job.”
“That’s one of the aspects that I think generates a lot of feelings of sadness, and also, like constant comparison and worry about being judged and labeled — this generates a lot of anxiety,” added Dr. Leena Khanzode, a psychiatrist practicing in Los Altos, California, in an interview with India Currents.
The pressure-cooker environment of achievement that many Bay Area and South Asian youth experience doesn’t end in high school — it continues well into college and beyond.
Dr. Leyfer’s research shows that as competition for college admissions rises, it’s also driving increased pressure in all areas — from academics to extracurricular activities, with expectations growing higher across the board and leading to more intensified parental pressure. “Children and adolescents have less time for free play, for enjoyment of their day-to-day life,”
Sania said she felt genuinely upset about the pressure to achieve.
“You may leave the Bay Area, but the Bay Area doesn’t leave you,” said Sania of her first year in college. “Even if I didn’t really say it out loud, I was kind of always competing with the person next to me, even if they weren’t competing with me. I definitely didn’t like the feeling, and I definitely didn’t want to keep feeling that way.”
Adjusting her perspective took time before Sania realized that “it’s not about being better than other people, but it’s just about being your own best.”
Many accomplished, intelligent teens push themselves hard to get into Ivy League schools, said Dr. Khanzode, focused from high school on reaching their goals, but burning out by the time they get there.
“They land jobs at big companies right away because of their strong records. But after a while, when they’re working at places like Google or Facebook, they start to realize…I don’t have any meaningful relationships or friendships. I was so driven by this whole competition and rat race I was in … I never took time to also look at the balance in my life in other ways.”
When they come to her, Khanzode said, they are fighting depression because “they’ve achieved too many things, too fast, but still feeling like they don’t have it all.”
The future is glum
The current political situation is also a huge stress point for a lot of Gen Z, who worry about their futures, said Sania, whose summer job at a lab was hit by NIH funding cuts.
“I know that after the big, beautiful bill was passed, a lot of people were very, very stressed out because of the student loan cap.” Many of her peers were deferring graduate school. “They can’t afford to spend a quarter of a million dollars on four years of med school without taking out loans but that’s a really frightening reality,” she added.
“A lot of them are scared for their future,” said Dr. Ilangovan. “They are scared about climate change. And they are scared about their jobs because of AI taking jobs. It’s very clear that they’re going through something worse than us.”
Cultural stigma of mental health
Over 34% of young adults report feeling lonely frequently or almost all the time, said Soo Jin Lee, referring to a Harvard Graduate School of Education Study. She is a licensed therapist and the co-director of two mental health organizations, Yellow Chair Collective and Entwine Community.
“Loneliness isn’t just about being alone,” she explained. “It’s actually about being unseen, or being misunderstood. Many youth are carrying a mix of academic pressures, economic anxiety, and constant identity comparison, shaped by social media. And even though they’re told to be authentic (quote-unquote), they’re also constantly expected to perform on social media and in classrooms, and even at home as well.”
Among AAPI youth, systematic racism—like underrepresentation, discrimination, and invisibility—in schools, media, and healthcare also plays a big role in the rising rates of depression and anxiety. When young people rarely see themselves reflected and are only shown through stereotypes, it makes them feel like they don’t truly belong, added Lee.
“For Asian American youth, this is made even harder by the cultural stigma around mental health.”
As a result, Asian Americans are the least likely to access mental health care amongst all racial and ethnic groups, according to a CDC report, said Lee. “So many of us are raised to avoid burdening others. It’s a part of a core belief that a lot of Asian American family dynamics still carry. And we’re taught that sharing emotional struggle is a weakness. And sometimes even viewed as a sense of failure within the entire family households.”
“Always being successful, composed, or to never make a noise.” Because of these messages, young people feel like they can’t show sadness, anxiety, or any vulnerability. So when they struggle with depression or panic, they often don’t realize they need help,” Lee added.
Unfortunately, when AAPI youth do reach out for help, they often encounter therapists who don’t fully understand their cultural background. “Only about 3% of the U.S. Psychologists identify as Asian, according to the American Psychological Association, and unfortunately, the lack of cultural understanding can lead even well-meaning providers to unintentionally cause harm.”
The impact of social media
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media platforms, which he blamed for affecting young adults’ self-esteem and connection with each other. “Social media is one of the key drivers of our youth mental health crisis today,” he said.
Social media amplifies insecurities that people have about their appearance and lifestyle, said Sania. “It’s more magnified because you have people to compare yourself to just on your phone, sitting at home. Girls will just compare themselves to other girls they see on social media, saying, ‘This girl is so pretty.’ Boys are equally affected, she added, because they compare themselves to images circulating on social media platforms. They’ll say, “This guy’s muscles are like this, and I should do this workout to look like him and I should drink this much protein to look like this, and things like that,” she said.
Roopali Rajvanshy of Rcoz in the Bay Area raises awareness and builds acceptance of mental health issues among South Asians through storytelling and community dialogue with experts, According to Rajvanshy, the constant craving for immediate rewards is altering brain chemistry, making it more difficult to focus and stay on task. Frequent phone notifications — checking tweets, monitoring likes — create habitual distractions. Over time, this behavior can distort self-image, especially when social media feedback doesn’t meet expectations.
Social media is very hard on mental health, because people are always afraid of missing out, added Dr. Ilangovan.
Gender & Coping Mechanisms
Teen boys experience mental health issues too, but many are hesitant to admit they’re struggling with anxiety and depression, said Dr. Khanzode. “They often try to hide their emotions, and it’s usually only when they begin failing in school or after a major incident that the underlying issues come to light.” Cultural expectations around stoicism and emotional suppression contribute to making it harder for boys to seek help or be recognized. As a result, many boys go unnoticed while quietly struggling beneath the surface.
Boys often resort to substance use, vaping, smoking, or finding ways of self-medicating, which adds another layer of stress, explained Dr. Khanzode, while girls find other methods to convey their distress, like self-harm. She is also seeing teens of both genders presenting with eating disorders.
Healthcare practitioners say that though they see higher rates of suicide ideation among girls, the rates of suicide deaths among boys are higher.
“That carries out across most racial ethnic groups, and it’s partly thought to have to do also with boys using more lethal methods in a suicide attempt,” said Dr. Kiara Alvarez, Assistant Professor of American Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The gender gap has gotten smaller, but unfortunately, in the wrong way — suicide rates are rising among girls.
Alvarez added that there is strong evidence showing that youth with multiple marginalized identities — such as those who are both LGBTQ+ and part of a racial or ethnic minority — often experience very high rates of negative outcomes. “These can be directly linked to the way society mistreats and marginalizes them for being part of more than one disadvantaged group.”
Treatments for the Gen Z mental health crisis
“The numbers are very serious, and the causes are complex. But there is one… piece of good news. There are treatments out there that work,” said Dr. Leyfler.
The gold standard treatment for anxiety and depression – cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) – is one of the most evidence-based therapies for treating anxiety and depression. According to Dr. Leyfler, CBT is a structured, skill-based form of psychotherapy that helps youth and adults to recognize and challenge unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more adaptive thoughts, and encourages people to engage in behaviors opposite of their negative emotional experiences. However, CBT requires trained providers, engaged youth and families, and access, which can be a hurdle for most families.
In the U.S., disparities in access to mental health care is a persistent trend added Dr. Alvarez. “And so we really see very consistently over multiple decades that Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous youth have less access to mental health care than white youth.”
Sania, who has struggled with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) since age 14, has been on medication and therapy to manage her stress and anxiety. “The best thing for me is just taking a break… I’ll take a walk, or I’ll talk to a friend. I just take a small kind of break from the stressor. Those, like small breaks really help to kind of clear your mind a little bit.” She finds that exercising by going to the gym or on a run also helps. “It’s really important to have some movement in your day.”
For Maya, getting medication and therapy to cope with undiagnosed ADHD was really helpful, as is music and playing her guitar. “Certain songs have become like my comfort, calm down song,” like Maine by Noah Khan, she added.
“By giving your child a therapist, you’re giving them an advantage in the world because you’re going to help them with their social skills, you’re going to help them with their insight and developing intuition about other people’s behaviors,” said Dr. Ilangovan. “You’ll help them become more psychologically minded. She suggests families in her practice figure out a way to do off-screen things together, instead of isolating with screens in separate rooms. “Maybe board game nights or nature walks. Figure out what gives you joy, and figure out a way to do it together. Build the alternative.”
This article was written with support from the American Community Media Fellowship Program.
