Rising Pressure: The Impact of Academic and Social Competition on Chinese Teenagers’ Mental Health

As the development of time in China, the world view of people of successfulness has shifted from having a lot of offspring to having a lot of material property. However, with the significant amount of population in China and such little opportunity to be rich, this has caused some huge pressure among teenagers. These pressures can come from teenager’s parents, which expect this generation to be successful so the parents can move onto a higher class as their offspring gets richer. Also, the pressure can originate from inside, in the world today teenagers are more like competitors rather than friends. They are all fighting against each other in order to have a grip on these rare opportunities for them to be economically or academically successful. These pressures can have some of the most fatal impact on teenagers, for example the major increase in the teenage population that has depression and suicidal tendencies.

Teenagers’s mental health are having major trouble. This situation has expanded and in Chongqing China there are a 29.60 % of student are depressed not including other mental illness in a random interview of 1269 middle school students. This is horrifying number of mental illnesses. It almost reaches 30% of student. In a high pressure of stress either from parents or themselves is taking bad process of their mental health. Study showed the pressure of academic pressure has negative impact of happiness and daily life experience. In my opinion, it makes me wonder about the reason why this pressure is passed down to student.

Due to the pressure of academic pressure, the transition of college and job is facing pressure and people aren’t founding more job. The official number says that the rate of non-job graduate is about 20% but it turns out almost 40% of people are not founding a job, which is about 48000000 people. There are too many people competing for one job at a time which cause people doesn’t found a job after graduates. This data is in 2024 so the situation now might have slight difference between the past.

Overall, the academic pressure is having major impact on teenager metal health causing large increase of mental illness. In some places where the competition of opportunities is even higher than other places. There are many negative outcomes. Also, the overwhelm of job market is causing people jobless. There are just too many competes for just one job.

BINGYUAN LI