Welcome to Gaia! ::

I think that if a teenager gets too stressed out than they become less and less happy. Too much stress can lead to depression.

Personally I don't think teens know what real depression is.They don't understand it...and really it's becoming a trend now-a-days.Im a teen adn Im not depressed.
That's because I realized 'Yeah,my life is messed up but there are people with worse lives than mine,so what am I complaning about?'
Really it's all a matter of maturity and understanding.

I think what she meant (at least the way I understood it) is basically what's already been said. true depression is a medical condition.. and yes, a lot of people (in general, not just teens.. true depression doesnt go away once someone reaches adulthood) do have it. but the vast majority of kids today are simply stressed and bummed out. and if someone acts suicidal or always talks about killing him/herself, well.. it's been my experience (among others too) that those people are looking for attention. the ones who truly WILL commit suicide (which is a symptom of true depression) wont talk about it. and I agree, this emo crap tends to be a fashionable trend.. much like being bi seems to be. people adopt that 'way of life' because it's in at the time.

I'm not saying that's EVERYone, just the vast majority.

Lots of adults say that teenagers these days are more depressed and have more problems.
But in their teen years, their parents would say the same thing.

Teens are ALWAYS the same... since the monkeys started to talk, a million years ago. dramallama

I am still young and I am not too far from my teens so I know I can answer this truthfully from what I have seen, heard, talked to, and lived through just 2 years ago. One way for teenagers to become depressed is where teens think that they are adults so they should be able to do what they want thus creates what everyone calls rebellion.

I, myself, felt this way a couple of times but I stuck to the rules. Teens get a rush out of defying parents but don't understand that they are not showing them how "adult" like they can be but how childish they still are and needing to grow up. I know we all heard this but we do not know what really goes on in the world we just think that we do. When teens rebel from their parents and do what they want they go out and drink, do drugs, have sex, everything that they believe is cool, they were pressured into, or they believe that their parents do. Yes hormones run high during the teen years but that's no reason to start sleeping around. Becoming pregnant is not high on any girls list but they don't think about that they just want the pleasure that comes with it.

But then again are the guys really staying true to their girlfriends or are they just as high on the sex and are only trying to get as much as they can? I've seen many teens fight just because they will not stick to one partner and believe me, the sex is not worth any of this. So now the teen is stuck with the baby or decides to take the easy cowardly way out and have an abortion.

Then there is where teens always need to feel that they fit in with their peers so in every school there is a hierechy. All girls look to the most popular, in which they consciously vote on in their minds, and do anything to get her attention or to join her group. Almost the same with guys. They look to the most popular then try to show off or to show to them that they are strong or they are not afraid of anything just so they can join them on certain events.

Picking on other teens everyone in their mind dubs as the lowest in the pyramid is constantly picked on because it shows how they are in charge and that it is their right, or so they believe, to "peck" on the lowest on the chain. Thus creating more drama that doesn't need to exist. Boys do the same but they take it so far that a fight will break out and they will all gang up on the one kid that was constantly picked on creating school shootings and suicides.

Then comes the drinking parties and crack. Since they are so cool they should be doing things that they are not old enough to do yet or they know they shouldn't be doing. Rather a parent introduces it to them or they watch other people do it, others are pressured into doing it or they would loose their spot in the group. Then you have teens dying left and right because they over dosed or they were killed by drinking too much, drunk driving accident, etc. etc. It really doesn't hit them in the face until someone dies but sometimes even then it doesn't stop them.

The only teens that are not effected by depression are the ones that stay out of this self made hierchy. They stick with their little groups, they don't listen to other teens crap, they stay safe, and they don't do the other stuff that their peers are doing. They just don't care and they know its wrong.

So in the end its teens themselves putting themselves into these situations or they stand to the side not doing anything. The hierchy needs to stop but it will not do so anytime soon. Also the health classes that used to be in existence need to come back to help teens understand what they are doing to their bodies and to stay away from crap like this.

but in reality, that's the way it's been in a lot of families through out the centuries. sure, in todays world education takes up more of a kids life, but that just means that it replaced some other aspect or demand in the life of a kid 100 years ago like helping on the farm or being expected to grow up and take on grown up responsibilities at an earlier age. there is always something. and parents today are no different in actions or expectations than they were back then. and kids have always been cruel. the world has never been without bullies. it's like someone else said in a post, no matter what generation someone is in it's always 'harder' but really it's pretty much the same.

Stress, pressure, fear of the future, insecurities. Pick one, they all attribute to the depression we're in.

I have been a teenager for several years and I can say that I have plenty of good reason to be depressed but I don't want to be because that puts a drain on my friends. That in itself could be a cause of depression. People have friends who are depressed and it rubs off onto them and they start searching for little reasons to get depressed. Then it rubs off on their friends, and so on and so forth.