Stressed-Out Kids

Children and teens seem more anxious today than they were 50 years ago. What you can do

I'm usually fairly skeptical about any research study that concludes that Americans are either happier or unhappier or more or less certain of themselves than they were 50 years ago. While any of these statements might be true, they are practically impossible to prove scientifically. Still, I was struck by a report that appeared last week in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, comparing decades' worth of scores on tests that measure the level of an individual's day-to-day anxiety. The study's author, research psychologist Jean Twenge of Case Western Reserve University, concluded that today's children are significantly...

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