Some teenagers  struggle with social anxiety  during their everyday lives. Many people hold misconceptions about what it means to live with social anxiety.

“I feel like social anxiety is something that wasn’t as big before and it’s grown in a lot of people now and it’s like one of the biggest burgeoning problems because a lot of people have it and it’s  not super easy to overcome and that can affect their future negatively,” Junior Carlos De Jesus said.

Furthermore, social anxiety can worsen because of an unpleasant experience or when something happens to them where someone puts them in an extremely uncomfortable position. Due to past experiences, a person with social anxiety may not want to talk to someone they do not know, and their preexisting anxiety can worsen when trying to speak to someone new.

“Before it used to be bad like I’ve outgrown it a lot of sense then but before I did not want to talk with anyone new or that I didn’t know,” Carlos said.

In addition, Social Anxiety can turn bad for a person that has it and because of this, being put in an uncomfortable situation can cause their anxiety to increase so much that it can become into a panic attack or anxiety attack. Same with environment it can also cause more distress for this person because there might be a lot of people present and this person can feel very uncomfortable.

“I feel like I don’t have it as bad as other people do because I feel like everyone has it to a certain extend but the way it affects me is that it’s harder for me to talk to new people because I don’t really know them like there is no reason for it it’s just fear and nervousness,” Carlos said.

Also, because of social anxiety it can cause fear and nervousness to talk or communicate with new people you do not know like it happened for Carlos and sometimes there is no reason for this fear, it is just there.

“I didn’t have bad social anxiety like my brother, but I feel like social anxiety should be talked about more and it’s an important topic and it affects everyone in many ways like for me I can talk to people I don’t know but not very well because I get anxiety so then I overthink anything I say,” Sophomore Anthony De Jesus said.

Social anxiety is different for every person and a lot of people deal with it in many ways. Although mental illness is stigmatized, if these issues are not addressed these problems have the potential to harm students in the future.

“One piece of advice I would give to someone who is also struggling with this is that you’re not alone and you shouldn’t be ashamed of your social anxiety just don’t care what other people think, I feel like that’s the best thing I could say,” Anthony said.