Do you believe highschool students are being overworked? Well I’m here with statistics and logistics to show you that the answer is, indeed, yes. There is a common misconception that teenagers procrastinate and wait until late to do their homework, or just skip doing it due to laziness. While that may be true for some, there are other kids who don’t start their homework until the late evening due to sports and other extracurricular activities. When you have hours of reading, analyzing, writing, studying, and wracking your brain to do, you will obviously be lacking the standard amount of sleep you need. Students are often put under the understanding that their grades are most important and 72% of students have felt pressure from their parents or teachers to drop their extracurricular activities to fully focus on their academics.

According to William Crain, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at City College of New York and the author of Reclaiming Childhood, “Kids are developing more school-related stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, and depression than ever before.” These problems are due to being glued to their desks for 7-8 hours, making time for their extracurricular involvements, possibly a job, and having hours of homework on top of that. Not only that, but students also face a lot of anxiety in school amongst their peers. When we are constantly providing students with more and more homework, there will be kids that benefit from it, and others that don’t. When a kid sees that the person sitting next to them is already done with their assignment, while they’re still stuck on the first problem, it is going to create a competitive aspect that is only toxic and unbeneficial.

Competition provides a lot of stress for matters such as college. This leads many to increasing study time, eliminating sleeping hours, more tutoring lessons, and extra curricular activities. By the end of the day, we are not just mentally exhausted but physically as well as emotionally due to being suffocated by the work load and constant stress of not being “good” or “smart” enough in comparison to our peers. All of these factors prove that students are generally overworked, and it is bad for them mentally and physically.