This week, our Journalism students were assigned with the task of creating a single question survey, having 100 students take it, and then writing a short article based off of their responses. As a student writer who focuses on the real life struggles of teenagers and students alike, my survey question was, “As a teenager in high school, which area do you struggle in the most?”

The students who took part in the survey were given four options to choose from: Academics, socialization, financial responsibility, and mental health. 

Seeing as the people who took the survey were high school students, it seemed to be appropriate to include academics and socialization, due to the fact that those are both things that generally come along with the high school experience. Many students have jobs, or know other students that have jobs, which is why the financial responsibility option was added. As a writer, I’ve made the importance of mental health blatantly known in at least one of my articles, which was why I deemed it fit to include that topic, as well. 

Out of all of the students who took the survey, 46.9% of them chose mental health as their most common struggle. Based off of my most recent article that I wrote, where I talked about the importance and seriousness of mental health issues in teenage high school students, I had expected this response. Many students are too focused on keeping their grades up and being successful in general to take the time they need to really take care of themselves mentally.

The second most common response kind of feeds into the mental health aspect, with socialization coming in at 27.2%. Typically, students who struggle with socializing with their peers only do so due to social anxiety or a fear of rejection. While social anxiety stems from regular anxiety and is labeled as a mental health issue, a fear of rejection oftentimes comes from a lack of self esteem or self confidence, which is also commonly caused by mental health issues.

With 17.3% of students who took the survey voting for financial responsibilities, there are many different ways why this would be true. For example, a student who struggles with financial responsibility doesn’t necessarily have to be a student without a job. It’s extremely difficult for most teenagers to save their money, and they oftentimes end up spending on things they want and don’t necessarily need.

Considering the fact that the global pandemic just recently ended, I expected more students to struggle academically. In any case, it’s hard to have really small expectations placed upon you and not have to do very much in person work, and then be expected to pass every single class you’re enrolled in once things go back to normal. However, only 8.6% of students said that they struggled academically, and while I was a bit surprised, I was not disappointed in the slightest.

Based off of the survey and all the new people I interacted with in order to actually have a successful survey and a good article, it’s clear that while students may be struggling with a copious amount of different things, they are not allowing that to get in the way of their success.