Students are under a lot of pressure at a younger age to prepare for a career, she said. Since stress can cause illness and depression, Twenge found there will be more and more cases of physical manifestations of stress and anxiety. Those include asthma, irritable bowel syndrome and substance abuse. Both parents and students have said young adults are doing too much. There's too much pressure that gives them too much stress.
Nobody stops to smell the roses anymore.
Shannon Songco and Andrea Denham both agree that they have gotten sick more frequently since entering college. Songco said she has been getting sick a lot more since senior year of high school. Sharon Kirkland, a staff psychologist at the Counseling Center, said students are overloaded and overextended. The job market is competitive, so students are constantly on, constantly working. He has also seen an increase in students saying they feel lonely and isolated.