Anxiety rising among children
Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2009, are predicted to be one of the most technologically aware, globally connected and best-educated age groups ever.
But it could also be one of the most anxious, with schools and health professionals reporting an increase in children who are generally fearful about the world.
Telethon Kids Institute and University of WA professor Steve Zubrick said that a national survey under way of the emotional health of 6000 children aged between four and 17 would provide hard evidence on anxiety levels for the first time.
Anxiety had been included in the survey because doctors, families and schoolteachers had raised concerns about the levels they were seeing in children.
"We're uncertain if the internet is playing a role in this," Professor Zubrick said.
"We are uncertain if just the daily demands and expectations on families and children are also raising levels of anxiety in kids. The 24/7 news cycle brings some pretty confronting events into our homes."
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Child psychologist and author Michael Carr-Gregg said more children were experiencing worries out of proportion to the issues in their lives.
"I think that part of the problem is many people see the world as a more frightening place than perhaps it is, and they are transmitting that unwittingly to their kids," he said.
Diet could also play a role, with recent research showing strong links between eating highly processed foods and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Increased pressure from schools and NAPLAN tests could also be a factor, Dr Carr-Gregg said.
"I never, when I first became a psychologist, had children vomiting and getting head- aches and tummyaches and wetting their pants over the fact they had to do a test at school," he said.
"Now, NAPLAN has definitely created a level of anxiety I've never seen before."
He said that flowed through to Year 12 and heightened anxiety about final exams.
Perth author and teacher Di Wilcox, who runs resilience programs in schools, said the rise in anxiety levels had prompted her to devise a visualisation program called the "magic coat", with five pockets filled with different strategies for children to draw on when they were worried.
"Kids walk around all the time with these huge worries on their shoulders, and then we're expecting them to focus academically," she said.
'Many people see the world as a more frightening place than perhaps it is.' " Child psychologist and author *Michael Carr-Gregg *
