On Sep. 4, NBC News published a feature about East Carolina University’s efforts to help its students cope with anxiety because of the rising number of cases of student anxiety. In the piece, ECU’s vice chancellor of student affairs, Virginia Hardy, stated that part of the reason for the influx of college students with anxiety is their millennial upbringing. According to Hardy, because we were constantly rewarded as children — for example, we were given awards for participation when we didn’t win events —we, therefore, don’t understand what failure feels like and therefore can’t cope with the emotions that accompany it.
Although I’m not a mental health professional, I am a millennial and have some authority to disagree with Hardy.
I have no doubt that anxiety among younger generations is increasing because we talk about it all the time. I can’t count how many friends I have who have suffered from anxiety from a very young age. I remember talking to my friends about what could be argued as signs of anxiety when we were as young as sixth grade. Restlessness, racing hearts and trouble breathing were commonplace topics for us. It wasn’t until we hit high school that we realized there was a label for what we’d been enduring for years.
Through the years, I’ve heard a lot of theories from older generations as to why their children are so different from them. My parents didn’t seem to have a plethora of knowledge on anxiety and eating disorders when they were 13 like I did. I don’t doubt that my peers and I are more vulnerable to anxiety as a direct result of the environment we grew up in. However, I resent the idea that the environment produced over-confident fools that don’t know how to deal with negative emotions. I resent the idea that it’s somehow the millennial generation’s fault that we weren’t given permission to fail.
Hardy was right when she suggested that being over-rewarded and receiving participation recognition affected the college generation’s psyche. It made it more difficult for us to realize when we’ve succeeded. I remember being rewarded for science fairs, field days and whatever you can think of. I knew, just like many of my peers, that the praise was empty. Kids aren’t stupid, and they know when they’ve done their best or when someone else did a better job. When we were growing up, we, the millennials, knew when we deserved praise. The way we were brought up has skewed that.
Since then, I’ve noticed that it’s difficult for anyone in my generation to believe that they are doing a good job. We just can’t take a compliment. It seems like we can’t be smart enough, pretty enough, tough enough, etc. I see it as a friend, I see it as an editor and I see it in myself. It’s hard to believe that we’re succeeding because we’ve never been told the truth about when we weren’t.
There are undeniably more reasons that colleges are seeing a spike in students with anxiety. But they all tie back into how we were raised, something we didn’t get to choose. It’s great that ECU is taking the steps it needs to support its students who are struggling with anxiety and other mental health issues, but older generations need to stop blaming the problem on millennials. It’s not our fault that we were brought up with skewed representations of success and didn’t become the confident fools everyone thinks we are. If anything, the millennial generation should be praised for fighting through the negative mindset we were given and did not ask for. But, thanks to our upbringing, we probably wouldn’t think that praise was sincere anyway.
