With the summer winding down and school districts all over the country gearing up for a school year different than the Zoom-heavy pandemic academic year of 2020, a new survey shows teens are nervous.
One third of the more than 500 teens who took part in the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health poll said they’re nervous about getting back to in-person learning, and 48% said they’re worried about experiencing social anxiety as they re-enter “normal life.”
The data from the Alliance was compiled in collaboration with the Morgan Stanley Foundation and non-profits including the Child Mind Institute, The Jed Foundation, the Steve Fund, New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, and the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry.
The survey also revealed 43% of teens say they’re worried they’ve fallen behind academically because of lockdowns and all that remote learning, and a further 43% say they’re concerned about mental health challenges as a result of the pandemic.
Forty-two percent say they’re opening up to others about mental health, with two-thirds feel optimistic they’ll rebound from the pandemic.
That said, some groups are suffering worse than others. The survey showed 64% of Black teens and 52% of Hispanic teens were more nervous about experiencing social anxiety as life returns to normal, compared to 44% of white teens. Moreover, Black teens are twice as likely than white teens to say that they don’t feel comfortable speaking to anyone about their mental health.
The poll also noted that 33% of teens say they have access to mental health resources but do not utilize them, and 22% do not have access to these resources at all.