Social Anxiety in Adolescent
Natalie Mirenda
Institutional Affiliation
Social Anxiety in Adolescent
The adolescent stage is mainly associated with many challenges that affect the teen’s social life. Social anxiety is one of the challenges that is linked to teens, which is associated with personal, intense fear to carry out different tasks. It mainly affects the social and academic performance of a person as the confidence level of the affected individual is usually decreased raising the negative perspectives.
There exist different intercultural communication concepts such as norms and values, which are closely correlated to social anxiety disorder. These concepts regulate how different individuals carry out their activities within a subculture. Moreover, the concepts have also been attributed to be the causative agents of social anxiety disease to many youths in the world. The disorder is associated with gender roles, socialization, and the individual’s stereotypes that one is expected to undertake. The paper will present an annotated bibliography discussing the social anxiety in adolescents applying different concepts relating to intercultural communication.
Coles, M. E., Ravid, A., Gibb, B., George-Denn, D., Bronstein, L. R., & McLeod, S. (2016). Adolescent mental health literacy: Young people's knowledge of depression and social anxiety disorder. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(1), 57-62.
The main symptoms associated with social anxiety in the youths consist of consistent worry before attending a social gathering or performing a duty. According to Coles et al., 2016, the main symptoms associated with this disorder is that the victims are found to cry, cling and avoid social situations as their confidence level is always very low. This is usually an inner fear, which is attributed to different sociological living conditions. In addition, Coles et al., 2016, states that different intercultural communication concepts are associated with social anxiety in youths. This has well been described below.
i) Social norms and values
Social norms and values are mainly associated with a particular people’s subculture. Notably, the values have been found to be higher contributors to social anxiety due to the main rules that the values and norms provide to be followed by the people. Coles et al., 2016 hypothesized that cultural norms concerning social conduct might clarify the connection between social qualities and social anxieties. To address this issue, these authors built up an imaginative measure that utilized social vignettes to assess social standards for the worthiness of socially connected values and its consequences if not followed.
The authors directed a vast, diverse investigation that thought about individualistic and collectivistic nations and found that collectivistic nations such as Japan and Spain had a higher level of young youths associated with social anxiety disorders. The research indicated elevated amounts of social anxieties and more prominent acknowledgment towards socially hesitant and cultural practices on a social dimension than did individualistic nations such as Australia and the USA. These outcomes recommend that in collectivist nations, strict social standards intended to guarantee social norms and values may bring out social anxieties due to set consequences set if the youths may not follow the set rules and norms. The values are mainly set to ensure that the society has specific values that guide the people. However, such rules have been found to be causative agents of social anxieties.
ii) Positive and negative social controls
Also, the author's exploration likewise bolsters the thought that social anxiety is related with fears of a positive and negative assessment, a result that mentally sound people would probably conceptualize as a constructive influence improving background. This point of view is by proof that socially on edge people stress that constructive assessment of their execution raises the social benchmarks by which they will be assessed later on, even though they do not trust that their normal execution will improve.
This is mainly because the youths always need a significant level of attention, which may be failed due to such a limitation. The first evaluation of doing good or right affects the psychological emotions of the youth. For instance, if an individual performs a certain action and the following social consequence affects his or her confidence the effects may have a long-lasting effect on their lives. The tension that is associated with whether a person needs to do right or wrong may also increase the anxiety of the youths. This endangers the social living of the youths leading to anxiety disorder. The main risks that have been associated with social anxiety are low academic performance and low self-esteem among the youths.
Causes of social anxiety
Stein, M. B., Fuetsch, M., Müller, N., Höfler, M., Lieb, R., & Wittchen, H. U. (2001). Social anxiety disorder and the risk of depression: a prospective community study of adolescents and young adults. Archives of general psychiatry, 58(3), 251-256.
Different stereotypes among the people have also been attributed to be causative agents of social anxiety in youth. This is well explained by Stein, Fuetsch, Müller, Höfler, Lieb, and Wittchen (2001), in their study to investigate the effects of stereotypes on social anxieties to the youths. The authors led an exploration among the young people in Germany to collect more information on their subject study. Moreover, the authors’ information originated from a planned, longitudinal epidemiologic investigation of teenagers and youthful young people in Munich, Germany. The impact of social nervousness issue at the pattern on the hazard, course, and qualities of the difficult issue was built up from the study.
The research found out that certain stereotypes attributed to most of the social anxiety in most of the youths. This was mainly due to how the youths view different life aspects such as dating and relationship during the adolescent age. In most cases, when youths are rejected their inner feeling is affected leading to social anxiety.
In addition, Stein et al., 2001 argue that peer crowd affiliations, which may either, be high or low status, constructive characteristics in companionships, and the cohesiveness of dating relationship affects the inner confidence of a person leading to social tension. The existing stereotype determines this that an individual has toward a relationship. This is mainly common in youths as their expectations are always very high. Conversely, alliance with a high number of public relation managed some security against relationship stereotype’s effect. These relations may be social exploitation, and negative characteristics of best companionships and emotional connections anticipated negative qualities. Some directing impacts for ethnicity were watched.
Effects of social anxiety
Early, M. C., Biggs, B. K., Makanui, K. P., Legerski, J. P., Van Allen, J., Elledge, A. R., & Whiteside, S. P. (2017). Specificity of peer difficulties to social anxiety in early adolescence: categorical and dimensional analyses with clinical and community samples. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 30(6), 647-660.
To investigate the main effects of social anxiety among the children, I choose this article as it clearly outlines the influence of the disorder. The article stipulates that many of the youths who are affected by the disorder be unable to express their views leading to low self-esteem. This may affect the personal life of a child making it challenging to be able to relate to other people. A personal relationship with other people enables a person to be able to express his or her views, which is not mainly met when one is diagnosed with social anxiety.
According to Early, Biggs, Makanui, Legerski, Van Allen, Elledge, & Whiteside, 2017), youths diagnosed with social anxiety disorders, always feel an inner fear that makes them to continually feel uneasiness which always makes the child keep a far distance from the rest of the people. Such effects mainly make the affected person to feel an existing gap between him and her with other people. Moreover, the disconnection also makes the individuals feel rejected or not worthy to be associated with other social beings. In many occasions, such children have been found to commit suicide due to the low un expectancy level of their confidence.
Communication structural hierarchies also have been found to be a causative agent of social anxiety disorders in youths. Notably, this has significantly affected most of the societies due to the structural hierarchies of communication, which affects the communication between the people. For instance, if a particular community have a specific pattern of communicating with their elders, this may upset a child who may not clearly understand the procedure. This is because there are always strict repercussions, which result from failure to observe the laid structure hierarchy. In most cases, such effects may make the youths to hate their cultural practices thus not accepting his or her origin.
The disorder may also escalate leading to other severe disorders in youths. According to Early et al. 2017, such disconnectedness, in turn, may lead to health disorders such as anorexia nervosa, which mainly affects the youths. Moreover, the researchers also argue that youths may also try to engage in the use of drug abuse in an aim to reduce their social anxiety impacts. Such effects may prompt the affected person to engage in drug use of the youth.
Schohl, K. A., Van Hecke, A. V., Carson, A. M., Dolan, B., Karst, J., & Stevens, S. (2014). A replication and extension of the Peers intervention: examining effects on social skills and social anxiety in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44(3), 532-545.
Gender roles also contribute to social anxiety among the youths. According to Schohlet.al 2014, social gender role contribute to social anxieties among the youth. The study-explored contrasts between people with and without social anxiety disorders in instrumentality and expressiveness, identity characteristics generally connected to the male and female sexual orientation roles. Given trans-formative and self-error speculations, the researches theorized that people with social anxieties disorders had difficulties in performing their roles. This was mainly because of the low social esteem associated with such people. The research used thirty patients with social anxiety disorder and thirty people who had no disorder as a control experiment of the research.
Consequently, the results upheld the speculations and gave the first proof that a perfect instrumentality might be connected to social anxiety, grief, and lower personal satisfaction. There were also significant distinctions between gatherings in expressiveness as the healthy individuals were found to have low expressiveness of their problems when compared to other people. The authors concluded that youths with social anxiety tend to find themselves insufficient and not able to carry out any role as other people who do not have the disorder.
Remedies to social anxiety
Hofmann, S. G., & Otto, M. W. (2017). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder: Evidence-Based and Disorder-Specific Treatment Techniques. Routledge.
Indeed, a significant number of challenges affects adolescents who are diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. This ranges from the academic to social relations of individuals. Therefore, there exists a need to provide a solution to people suffering from the disease. According to Hofmann & Otto, 2017, social anxiety disorder is a treatable disease, which enables an individual to gain more confidence to carry out different roles.
The primary recommended role in treating the disorder is the use of cognitive behavioral therapy and medical treatment. The recommended therapy sessions that an individual is required to attend to gain his or her proper confidence ranges between 16 and 18 sessions. The main aim is usually to build firm and proper confidence in performing different skills that scare the affected person. Teamwork is also strategic between the affected person and the therapist who works together to remove the negative ideologies that affect an individual and view it positively. Such remedies provide the most efficient way to eliminate social anxiety disorder.
Personal interview
I also interviewed a mother who had a child suffering from social anxiety disorder. The mother is known as Maria, and she has three children. She acknowledged that her son’s disorder was mainly caused by their cultural norms and values of their subculture. Notably, Maria argued that his son used to cry a lot when he knew that he would meet social gathering. This prevented him from attending school affecting his educational performance. This confirms with Stein et al., 2001 finding on effects of social anxiety in youths.
According to Maria, gender roles, socialization, and stereotype contributes to social anxiety disorders. The primary health effects that Maria acknowledged was that the disorder prevents the youths to be able to interact with others due to social fear. Moreover, the school performance is also affected, as the children are not able to express their feeling to other people due to the inner fear of embarrassment.