Understanding Teens with Social Anxiety: A Guide for Parents

Imagine this: Janet spends all day at school terrified about talking with other kids. She just knows they will hate her. Her preoccupation with (potentially) being disliked makes her withdraw and avoid other classmates…even ones who would genuinely like her. None of us would want this for our kids. Yet research shows that nearly 10% of all adolescents aged 14-15 experience this type of social anxiety.

Social anxiety & parenting

According to the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships*, “Social anxiety refers to the intense and persistent fear and avoidance of social situations and an excessive preoccupation with the fear of being rejected, criticized, or embarrassed. When experiencing social anxiety, common concerns include the fear of blushing, of appearing anxious, boring, or incompetent.” Social anxiety is related to poor adjustment and a low sense of well being.

Kids with high social anxiety have fewer friends, poor quality friendships and romantic relationships, and are more often the victim of bullying.

One factor tied to social anxiety is overparenting. Overparenting, previously known as helicopter parenting, is demonstrated by a high level of protection, given the age of the child. Basically, these parents are over-protecting their children. At some point, kids need to be able to experience the world, with all its consequences. The best solution is to allow them to experience the world in the safety of our embrace. When we do this we also teach them coping strategies for when situations go awry.

Emotional regulation

The study also found that teens experiencing overprotective parenting tend to rely on emotional dysregulation as a strategy to regulate their feelings of anxiety. Dysregulation includes being more sensitive, having a poor understanding of emotions, demonstrating negative reactions to emotions, and poorly managing of emotions. These teens tend to feel overwhelmed and have difficulties when confronted with feelings of anxiety. When mothers are overprotective, teens tend to report suppressing their emotions, or not allowing themselves to feel what they really feel. 

What does this mean for parenting?

In short, the findings from the resarch mean two things.

First, we need to calm down and allow our kids to experience the world – the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to allow them to fail and be hurt within the safety of our loving embrace. We then teach them to to cope and deal with consequences.

Second, we need to teach our kids how to identify and relate to their emotions. This article does a great job of teaching parents how to teach emotional self-regulation.

We need to give our kids freedom. Freedom to be themselves, to experience their own feelings, and learn to cope with consequences. When we do this we are providing them a solid framework to be productive adults. with less social anxiety.

With love,

🌸 Andrea

*Mathijs, L., Mouton, B., Zimmermann, G., & Van Petegem, S. (2024). Overprotective parenting and social anxiety in adolescents: The role of emotion regulation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 41(2), 413-434. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075231173722

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