Anxious for Attention

“… [W]hen girls cut themselves, they are getting a release of endogenous opiates-they’re actually getting high.” Such extreme ideas as this are shown in the article “Inside the Dangerously Empty Lives of Teenage Girls” by Maclean’s magazine. Dr. Leonard Sax is a Ph. D. psychologist and a medical doctor who has studied the lives of young adolescents today compared to adolescents lives decades before. His three main ideas are that anxiety is an escalating problem with teenage girls, the use of alcohol and self mutilation are a problem in both boys and girls and lastly, parenting should be taken seriously and limits should be set for the modern teenager.

Today, “…the average teenage girl is more anxious than the average girl admitted to a psychiatric unit for in-patient treatment 50 years ago.” Girls today are bombarded with the media’s ideas of how a teenage girl should be; girls have too many expectations to meet whether it’s what the media is telling them to be, to which university to enter. Dr. Sax is correct when he says that psychologically girls are “…frantic about whether [their] going to get into the university [they] want to go to.” Contrasting a boy that “… eats a whole pizza for supper and doesn’t bat an eye…” Girls think about every problem equally and do not prioritize problems as important or minuscule. Clearly, anxiety is the problem growing in the minds of many young women.

Another problem among teenagers is alcohol, It’s the drug of choice “… for decades, but girls’ use [is] increas[ing] and research shows that about 55 percent of university students [in treatment] for alcohol abuse are female.” To expand on an earlier point, a reason for young women drinking is anxiety; alcohol for the time being relieves the feeling of being anxious. Another issue that is rising in both males and females is self mutilation. A study two years ago in Victoria shows that young people in the age range of 14 to 21 are using self mutilation, roughly 16 percent. The interesting fact is that successful girls use self mutilation “The girls themselves tell you, ‘I cut myself because it’s real, it’s not fake.’” These girls are performing for society and get a sense of relief when they cut themselves, literally, “… they are getting a release of endogenous opiates.” Not only alcohol, but also self mutilation are the drugs of choice for teenagers today.

So where are the successful teenage girl’s parents when she is drinking or cutting herself? Some parents have the idea that teenagers today will learn from their mistakes and it won’t happen again. This idea is obviously not working, parents need to take initiative in setting limits for their children, Dr. Sax gives examples such as “‘No more than 30 minutes on [the computer] on school nights.’” A parent’s job is to protect their children and not to always be their friend. New forms of bullying exist such as, cyberbullying and if a parent is not playing an active role in distinguishing rules, their children could become “…the girl in Massachusetts who recently committed suicide after cyberbullying…” Parenting should be approached in a new way, to avoid more young deaths over cyberbullying.


Dr.Sax’s three main ideas of: anxiety escalating in young women, the problems with alcohol and self mutilation, and limits being set for teenagers today are all realistic and his views seem to be very accurate to what is becoming normal for most teenagers today. Unfortunately, these problems are not easy to fix but hopefully new approaches to dealing with these problems will emerge and help teens overcome their challenges.