Growing up in the 21st century is not the same as growing up in the early 2000s. The world is a lot more advanced and complex for teenagers these days. One of the big issues at hand is the amount of homework given to young people in school. The large amount of school assignments kids get can cause many problems, one of them being stress, and poor mental health. This century also brought higher societal educational standards, with a college degree becoming an expectation of every student. Growing up in the 21st century is a lot harder than growing up 20 years ago because of the overwhelming amounts of homework, school standards, and mental illness.

According to Society19 (an online magazine), students in the 21st century spend 7.5 hours a week more at school than kids did 20 years ago. Students’ lives today are consumed by school and all of the work, with athletics and extracurricular activities making balance even tougher to achieve. On top of this, different teachers give different or unpredictable amounts of homework, yielding frustration in students.

As time has passed, standards for students in school have raised. On top of all of the stress coming from school, students feel obligated to immediately continue onto a 4-year college rather than taking a gap year to discern their career or entering a lucrative 2-year program. According to Statista, in 2018 19.6 million students enrolled in either private or public colleges. In 2000 there were 15.3 million students enrolled in public or private colleges. This is a very big difference in numbers. Some students who dream of things other than college are pressured into this big decision, while others enter university because they don’t know what else to do.

All of this added stress put onto teenagers leads to depression and other mental illnesses, making it more dangerous for today’s teenagers than ever before. According to Healthline, “In 2013, research conducted at Stanford University found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance in their lives, and alienation from society. When it came to stress, more than 70 percent of students said they were “often or always stressed over schoolwork,” with 56 percent listing homework as a primary stressor. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.” As the world is growing and becoming more complex, teenagers are struggling to still be kids.

Adults often argue that they had similar pressures and workloads and figured it out fine. This cannot be true because there is clear evidence that kids living in the 21st century receive more homework than students did 20 years ago. A few students say that amount of homework isn’t too much, but the variability from teacher to teacher is the issue. Some students receive more amounts than others. If a student gets lucky with teachers who don’t give a lot of homework, they don’t have to deal with the stress and anxiety that comes with trying complete all of it on time.

The world is getting more complex and challenging for everyone, especially students in school. We need to actively fight the stress, homework overload, and societal pressures by giving kids tools in school to help mitigate the stress, mandating no-homework weekends, and encouraging our college counselors to talk with students about options outside of 4-year college.