You likely already know about burnout, which impacts overworked adults. As it turns out, burnout can also affect teenagers. Modern-day educational environments can be cutthroat and intense, and many teens are spread too thin with the myriad demands of school, hobbies, and pre-college requirements.
Teen burnout can result in severe and lasting impairments in a child’s ability to engage and thrive in daily life. As a parent, it’s easy to feel helpless when it comes to your teenager’s academic performance. However, understanding teen burnout and knowing what to do when your child shows warning signs can make a significant difference in prevention and mitigation.
What You’ll Learn
- What exactly is student burnout, and how is it different from ordinary stress?
- What warning signs and symptoms signal that a teen may be experiencing burnout?
- How can parents help teens manage pressure from school, sports, and activities?
- What strategies build resilience and protect teens from perfectionism and overwhelm?
- When does teen burnout require professional treatment and support?
Quick Read
Burnout isn’t just an adult issue; it can affect teenagers, too. Today’s teens juggle heavy academic workloads, extracurriculars, jobs, and the pressure of preparing for college. Over time, this constant strain can lead to teen burnout, a combination of emotional, physical, and behavioral exhaustion that affects a young person’s ability to thrive.
Warning signs often look like depression, anxiety, irritability, fatigue, or declining concentration. Some teens may also experience frequent illness, emotional outbursts, or changes in sleep patterns. Recognizing these symptoms early can help parents step in before stress turns into lasting mental health concerns.
While parents can’t control every aspect of school or social pressure, they can help reduce the risk of burnout by encouraging open communication, modeling a healthy balance, and supporting hobbies outside of academics. Offering unconditional love and seeking professional support when needed can make a critical difference in helping teens recover and build resilience for the future.
What Is Student Burnout?
Adolescence is marked by significant growth, changes, and challenges. As teens age and learn about themselves, they also must navigate more commitments at school, at home, and with friends. Many children struggle with juggling multiple responsibilities, such as managing a heavy homework load, participating in sports, meeting pre-college requirements, and working outside of school.
Teen burnout, also known as student burnout, is a physical, emotional, and behavioral phenomenon resulting from too much pressure and strain in academics. Competition for college admission is intense, and teens often feel they must prove their worth by excelling in all aspects of their lives. The pressure to excel in academics, extracurricular activities, sports, and outside jobs takes a toll on both mental and physical health. The following statistics illustrate some of the stresses today’s teens face:
- Over 60 percent of adolescents feel intense pressure to get good grades and compete for scholastic awards
- 70 percent of teens consider anxiety and depression to be significant problems among themselves and their peers.
- 40 percent of teens report being bullied at school in the last year, and 55 percent of teens worry about bullying.
- Nearly one-third of young people feel overwhelmed by pressure to look “good” by societal standards.
- 70 percent of young people report being unable to stop worrying when something goes wrong in their lives.
Moreover, according to a post-COVID-19 study, other variables that contribute to student burnout include cumulative stresses from peers and classroom disharmony, distress and worries about the future, lack of parental support, and poor math grades. These pressures can cause unsustainable levels of overwhelm and stress in children, ultimately leading to burnout.
Signs and Symptoms of Teen Burnout
Teen burnout includes physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. Here are eight signs your teen may be experiencing burnout.
- Depression: Burnout and teen depression can look quite similar. Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, persistent sadness, fatigue, and isolation from friends and family are warning signs of depression.
- Anxiety: Anxiety can look like consistently high levels of stress and worry about school, work, projects, socializing, hobbies, and other areas of life.
- Irritability: High levels of tension, moodiness, and edginess often crop up as a result of teen burnout. For instance, your teen might snap at you if you ask what they’re working on or suggest they take a break.
- Insomnia: Burnout often results in difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, despite feeling extremely tired.
- Fatigue: Teens may complain of being tired all the time, even if they appear to get enough rest. They may appear to be “tired and wired,” or dealing with a lot of simultaneous stress and exhaustion.
- Illness or pain: Frequent sickness, aches, pains, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, or other persistent health issues are common signs of teen burnout.
- Emotional outbursts: Flares in temper, emotional dysregulation, and extreme mood swings are common occurrences in overworked teens.
- Poor concentration: A decline in concentration, memory, ability to focus, or inability to hold a proper conversation without getting distracted can reflect the cognitive impacts of burnout.
How to Deal with Teen Burnout
As a parent, knowing how to deal with your teen’s burnout can feel overwhelming. Unfortunately, you can’t control their workload at school. However, you can discuss with them the realities of academic demands and ways to manage stress. One of the best things parents can do to prevent burnout is to provide a nurturing and caring environment for their teenager. You can also help them develop valuable life skills to prevent and mitigate the effects of burnout. Here are essential skills you can help them grow, along with tips for ensuring they feel supported and cared for.
Cultivate Open Communication
You can’t know if your teen is struggling if they won’t talk to you. Encourage a culture of open communication in your home so that your teen knows they can feel safe coming to you without judgment or retribution. Have frank, open discussions about the demands of academics, and do your best to understand their perspective. Remind them that their range of emotions is normal, and encourage them to discuss their challenges with you. Respond to their problems with compassion and active listening, rather than trying to “fix” their feelings or automatically tell them what they should do.
Help Your Teen Recognize Perfectionism
If your teen tends to be a perfectionist, they may feel the need to excel in everything they do, which can lead to academic burnout. However, by discussing the realities and downsides of perfectionism with them early and often, you can help them mitigate the stresses of trying to excel in every area of their life. Remind your teen that grades aren’t everything, and it’s okay not to be in every club the school offers.
Support Healthy Hobbies
Most teens feel overwhelmed by worries and pressure to succeed. Encourage them to spend time seeking out and participating in things they enjoy, not just things they think they have to do. Help promote a healthy work-life balance by supporting them in pursuing enjoyable, relaxing hobbies such as walking, camping, or photography. Spending time in nature and green spaces is beneficial, as it has consistently been shown to reduce stress and enhance mental health and overall well-being. Better yet, invest in the things your teen enjoys doing, and spend time together on hobbies as a family.
Encourage a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset refers to the attitude that most abilities can be learned with time and practice. This is in opposition to a fixed mindset, in which someone believes their skills are innate and that effort won’t result in improvement. Teens with a growth mindset are more likely to avoid burnout, in large part because they learn that failure or setbacks aren’t indicators of self-worth.
Foster Resilience
Resilience in the face of adversity or difficulty heightens emotional regulation skills, decreases anxiety and depression, and increases a teen’s ability to feel positive, confident, and competent.
Ensure Ample Academic Support
Kids who performed poorly in math classes were more likely to experience burnout, according to a study of preteen students. Furthermore, specific learning disabilities or neurodevelopmental differences, including ADHD, can impact a child’s performance in the classroom. The importance placed on science and math classes at school can make students who struggle in these areas feel incredibly anxious about failure and their future, which can snowball into burnout. Getting help in the form of tutoring or accommodations can make a massive difference in dialing down your kid’s anxiety about certain classes.
Show Unconditional Love and Support
Parental support has a significant impact on whether a child develops burnout. If your teen thinks they have to be perfect or perform to the standards of a parent’s sky-high expectations for them, they’re more likely to push themselves into overwork and burnout. Make sure your child knows you support and love them, regardless of their academic or extracurricular performance. Show them this by openly appreciating and celebrating who they are rather than what they achieve.
When to Treat Teen Burnout
Knowing when to step in to help your teen can be tough. Teen burnout is often a sign of deeper underlying mental health issues like depression or anxiety. It can also lead to bigger problems down the road, including eating disorders, exacerbated mental and physical health problems, substance use, and self-harm behaviors.
Teen treatment may be necessary if burnout is a sign of a mental health disorder, or if their burnout symptoms are significantly impacting your child’s ability to thrive in school and at home. If burnout persists for longer than a couple of weeks or worsens, don’t wait to seek help. Talk to your teen about what’s going on in their life, and gauge whether treatment might be helpful.
If they’re struggling with any of the following, treatment is a good option:
- Mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD or trauma
- Behaviors or emotions that feel explosive, out of control, or difficult to regulate
- Unsafe coping skills, such as substance use
- Refusal to go to school
- Other behavioral or emotional red flags that feel beyond your ability to manage
Regardless of the circumstances, if you feel that your loved one requires additional support, seeking professional guidance can be one of the most beneficial decisions you can make for their overall well-being and future.
Teen Mental Health Support at PrairieCare
PrairieCare takes a whole-person, comprehensive approach to address each teen’s physical, emotional, and relational needs, helping them heal from burnout. Our full continuum of care for teens helps young people address primary mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and PTSD in a healing environment with a compassionate team of experts.
Our patients gain tools to help them flourish, discover healthy coping strategies to manage stress, and uncover and heal past trauma. The best time to get support for your child is always now. Contact our team today to find a mental health program that fits their needs at 952-826-8475.
Sources
- Youth Right Now, Report from The Boys & Girls Club of America, 2024
- Pew Research Center, 2019
- Children (Basel). 2023 May; 10(5): 823.