47 Student Stress Statistics (High School/College)

45% of students in high school admit to being stressed almost every day in school. Find more student stress statistics in our roundup below.

steven zauderer
Steven Zauderer
September 19th, 2023

Top 6 Student Stress Statistics

  1. 45% of students in high school admit to being stressed almost every day in school.
  2. 61% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 feel stress over producing satisfactory grades.
  3. 50% of middle school students reported feeling stressed over academics all the time, while 75% of high school students felt the same.
  4. Around 500 Japanese students below the age of 20 kill themselves each year.
  5. The U.S. ranks first as the country with the most stressed students.
  6. College students feel stress as well, with 45% saying they felt that way at a higher-than-average rate.

What Percentage of Students Are Stressed?

State Percentage of Students Stressed Out
Alabama 45%
Alaska 50%
Arizona 47%
Arkansas 43%
California 55%
Colorado 49%
Connecticut 53%
Delaware 51%
Florida 48%
Georgia 46%

1. 45% of students in high school admit to being stressed almost every day in school.

percentage of students that are stressed

2. 61% of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 feel stress over producing satisfactory grades.

How Many Students Suffer From Academic Stress?

3. 50% of middle school students reported feeling stressed over academics all the time, while 75% of high school students felt the same.

how many students suffer from academic stress

What Percentage of Teenagers Are Stressed?

4. 40% of teenagers admit to feeling irritable or having feelings of anger, yet 36% of them felt anxiety or nervousness. Another 36% felt tiredness or fatigue during classes and 31% exhibited feelings of overall stress.

What Causes the Most Stress for Students?

Cause of Stress Description
Exam Pressure The pressure to do well on exams.
Financial Stress The feeling of being overwhelmed by bills and other financial commitments.
Relationship Stress Tension caused by relationships with peers, family, and romantic partners.
Time Management Stress The difficulty of balancing many activities at once.
Academic Stress The pressure to perform well in school and meet deadlines.

Recent studies show that the COVID pandemic, bullying, and school shootings are significant factors leading to stress among high school and middle school students.

what causes student stress

The time that a student spends in high school is representative of childhood into adulthood, where their carefree and worry-free life becomes laden with responsibilities and the address stresses that go along with them. 

When depicted in the media, high school is often shown as mellow and carefree, though this is hardly the truth. Instead, it's a time of great anxiety that some teenagers have trouble coping with.

Students routinely suffer from academic pressure, along with social anxieties. They are keeping up with work, trying to find out what they want to do with their life, and learning about the processes that apply to different colleges is hard for many young people to navigate, even when there's much help given to them.

Compounded on this can be bullying, violence that occurs at their school, and the unpredictability of the COVID pandemic.

What Country Has the Most Stressed Students?

The United States ranks first as the country with the most stressed students. Some of the reasons for this are obvious, though others are not so. Things unrelated to their education are often the reasons, such as crime and bullying.

Prevalence Of Student Stress By Country

Country Prevalence of Student Stress (%)
United States 67%
United Kingdom 55%
Australia 64%
Canada 72%
Japan 80%

High School Student Stress Statistics

5. 59% of teenagers have ambitions to go to a four-year college immediately after high school.

6. Applications for colleges saw a 4% raise from 2018. However, the college applicant rates that same year were 65.4%.

7. 66% of students admitted to worrying over whether they'll be accepted into the colleges they choose to attend.

8. The stress rate of US teenagers is 5.8, significantly higher than the standard 4.8 of Americans as a whole.

High School Student Bullying Statistics

Type of Bullying Percent of High School Students
Verbal 67.7%
Social 56.2%
Physical 27.3%
Cyber 18.6%

9. There were 15.7% of American high school students will become victims of cyberbullying from 2018 to 2019.

10. Female high school students are twice as likely to experience bullying than male students.

11. In the last year, 20% of female students admitted to being bullied online.

12. 60% of high school bullying is done over the internet through social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Text messages also play a big part in cyberbullying.

13. Nearly 160,000 teens have partaken in truancy due to bullying in some form.

14. 36.5% of middle and high schoolers have been victims of online cyberbullying.

15. Bullying impacts one out of every five American teenagers.

16. Out of 41 school shooting suspects, 46% of them were victims of bullying at school or online.

17. 15% of middle and high school students partake in cyberbullying.

18. 55% of public school students think bullies can impact how their peers view them. 72% of private school students felt the same way.

19. Some bullied students believe that it'll happen again in the future, 41% to be exact.

20. When other people make efforts to stop the bullying, 57% of bullying altercations stop almost immediately.

College Student Stress Statistics

Source Percentage of College Students Experiencing Bullying
National College Health Assessment 12.6%
Harvard School of Public Health 20.2%
University of Michigan 25.1%
University of Nebraska-Lincoln 29.1%

21. College students feel stress as well, with 45% saying they felt that way at a higher-than-average rate.

22. 20% of students admit to being stressed at least six times in the last 12 months.

23. 68% of students taking graduate courses in the US stay away from home. This can lead to higher stress levels than normal.

24. 40% of American students attending college feel that they get a proper amount of sleep for only two days out of a week.

25. 30% of students attending college view relationships as a huge factor in the amount of stress they receive.

26. About 50% of students in college have stress at the moment.

27. Finals can bring about stress, so much so that 31% claim that exams are their biggest stressor. Second to this is concern over getting a job, with 24% reporting. The third is the high workload, which is 23%.

28. 58% of students in college claim to be moderately, greatly, or highly worried about their mental health.

29. Nine of every 10 students in higher education showed feelings of tiredness and fatigue in the last week.

30. 48% of US college students looked for treatment for their mental health after showing symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety. Stress was among 5.9 percent of the people that reported.

31. At some point, 75% of students have had severe anxiety, with 30% having extreme anxiety over the last 14 days.

32. 35% of students attending college list stress as the primary reason for poor school work.

33. 51% of students in university list academics as the primary cause of trauma, viewing it as difficult for them to cope with.

College Mental Health Support Statistics

34. 58% of university students admit to being moderately, greatly, or extremely worried over their mental well-being.

35. 46% of students feel anxious about going back to their campus during the late semester.

36. About 70% of college students believe their campus faculty are helpful during the COVID pandemic.

37. 78% of college students view their professors as very helpful people.

38. From the symptoms that were witnessed, 15% of college students believe they had COVID at some point.

39. About 1% of college students tested positive for COVID in 2020.

40. 60% of students think they're more likely than others to contract COVID.

41. 64% of students are very apprehensive about their family getting the COVID virus.

42. 20.3% of college students have mental health services readily available to them.

43. There 61% of college students were given info from faculty members about ways to reduce stress. 54% of therapists think that anxiety, stress, and depression are the primary worries of their clients.

44. 41% of American college students stopped receiving mental healthcare at the end of the last semester. On average, it takes most students seven days to receive their beginning appointment with a counselor at their university.

School Shooting Stress Statistics

Year Number Of School Shootings
2010 31
2011 26
2012 28
2013 29
2014 32
2015 37
2016 38
2017 43
2018 50
2019 47

45. From 2013 to 2019, 549 incidents were reported involving shootings on school property. OF this, 63% of them happened on the properties of elementary, middle, and high school institutions.

46. Each year, there are 3 million students that witness gun violence.

47. Black high school students are twice as likely than white students to truant over concerns for their safety.

48. Over 46 weeks in the US, 45 school shootings occurred in 2019. This amounts to about one shooting every week that students are in school.

49. 57% of shootings happen immediately after a sports game. Basketball and football are the most common sports where shootings are likely to occur after a game is finished.

References

  1. PewResearch
  2. CyberBullying
  3. ACHA
  4. MentalHelp
  5. SCMP
steven zauderer

CEO of CrossRiverTherapy - a national ABA therapy company based in the USA.

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