We are hearing more and more teenagers committing suicide by jumping down from the height to free themselves from this traumatically stressful world. They must have been experiencing extremely intense stress that made them resort to the stupid method. We have got to look into the issue thoroughly before it finally spreads over our city.
The most direct source of stress seems to come from parents. Parents and children usually hold different expectations towards the same task. The former are always eager to pave the way which sounds reasonable and convenient for their children. As a result, they always expect their children to outperform. If they fail to do so, the parents will tend to induce pressure to their children by some latent means, and they are so latent that even the parents themselves do not notice. When the juveniles find themselves incapable of meeting the goals as expected, there will be severe shortcomings. They will feel struggled that they are useless in the eyes of their parents. Also, the lack of communication between the parents and the children aggravates the problem as they have no way to adjust each body’s expectation and these finally result in the accumulation of stress.
The stress of teenagers can be attributed to society as well. Recently, the social norm has shifted to producing more elites, but not typical students. The phenomenon is so obvious. Nowadays, even the toddlers in kindergarten are trained to speak and write fluent and proper English. What is more, the influx of the mainland students has led to fiercer competition in the academic area. If Hong Kong is concerned about elitism, it means that the mainland students may have an edge as they are said to be more diligent, well-trained and thoughtful. This further troubles many teenagers in our city. Under the competitive and cruel circumstance, teens’ stress is surging to its peak.
The final factor coming to play is the teenagers themselves. I am not saying that the teenagers create their own stress, but they cannot find the channel to unleash their pressure. No doubt, there must be stress in every modern city as the average education standard is higher and competitions are more common. Under this stressful condition, teenagers must locate their interests and relieve their stress by doing their favourite things! Yet, many teenagers’ schedules are fully packed with too many extra-curricular activities; their stress has no sign of being alleviated. What they are doing may not be their real interests and they are blinded by the trend to join as many activities as possible. Without considering their real interests, these activities are nothing but great burdens.
All of the above just make Hong Kong like an incredible pressure cooker, and the teenagers are being cooked inside. So it is vital for us to stay strong. As a teen myself, I do have my ways to stay strong.
First of all, I am clear what exactly I am after. Having a target is very important as this provides me with tremendous energy to complete certain tasks. The path to success may be difficult and demanding, and of course stress will stand in the way. At the moment, I need an ever shining and glittering goal to guide me. This goal can be my dream, my ideal occupation, my future partner, anything. The things that matter are I have to find my goal and overcome the obstacles using the power of will.
Blindly setting a goal will not do me any favour. So I will always pragmatically set an achievable goal. Once it is accomplished, I will start working on other things that I am interested in. For instance, I am a robot fanatic, as well as a diligent student. So I will first set a goal for myself to study what is taught during the week, followed by building robots for competition. In this way, my goals are separated into phases and are more achievable.
To adopt an optimistic attitude is also magical. When I sometimes encounter setbacks, I tell myself that this will not last very long. I hold a strong sense of confidence deep in my heart. I believe that I am able to solve the puzzles and this belief will not betray me.
The life of a teenager is bitter-sweet and stress is a part of it. Never lose heart! Press on!