How Chronic Stress Impacts Teen Behavior

Adolescence is often regarded as one of the most significant stages of life. During this time period, you go through different physical, mental, and social changes as you transition from childhood into adulthood. During this process, the brain goes through significant growth as it develops cognitive skills that help ensure success and form an identity to figure out who you are in the world. Adolescence is also a stressful period for many, as you are exposed to new experiences and need to navigate through them. Acute stress is very common during adolescence, and usually doesn’t have any negative setbacks. However, prolonged stress can impact teen development, causing more serious and long-lasting effects. Chronic stress during adolescence can have significant impacts on behavioral aspects, such as decision-making and emotional regulation. 

Chronic stress impacts adolescent decision-making by limiting the ability to make unique choices when exposed to new and unfamiliar scenarios. This also limits adaptability to change and can make it harder to adjust when given situations involving pressure. Walden University reports a study:“Participants who were subjected to the stress of preparing for a medical selection exam tended to make decisions out of habit, whereas participants who were not under the same stress were able to make new decisions, adapting them to the situation at hand and the perceived consequences” (Walden University, 2024). Making decisions from habit requires less cognitive demand, which is what most people resort to under stressful situations. Teens are more likely to form habitual decisions rather than new ones due to discomfort. Choosing familiar decisions provides comfort in stressful and uncomfortable scenarios, however habitual decisions may not be the best decisions, as they limit the ability to adapt to new scenarios for the better. New decisions help us learn and adjust in different scenarios,helping us find the best course of action. Stress limits cognitive demand, which prevents teens from adapting to unfamiliar scenarios and causes them to make habitual decisions, which can have negative consequences. 

Chronic stress also impacts adolescent decision-making by affecting how teens analyze and remember details previously seen. Glutamate receptors, which play a key role in learning and long-term memory formation, have a role in remembering certain details and specific events. The University of Buffalo conducted a study involving the loss of glutamate receptors in response to constant stress, and found that “ loss resulted in a significant impairment in the ability of the adolescent animals to remember and recognize objects they had previously seen” (Goldbaum, 2012). Glutamate receptors assist the prefrontal cortex in functioning, and loss of these receptors can cause issues in working memory and higher-level decision making. This can cause serious effects when the cortex is not fully developed, as seen in teens. Glutamate plays a critical role in plasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change and adapt based on exposure, especially in new experiences. This role of plasticity is crucial in decision making as it uses newly acquired details to figure out the best action at that moment.  Being unable to remember those details can lead to poor decisions rather than beneficial ones. Cognitive fatigue can lead to impulse decisions and favor low-effort choices with instant gratification, rather than beneficial choices that have a greater impact. Glutamate is important for cognitive control over decisions, and chronic stress can lead to depletion of these receptors. This can have an impact on remembering and recognizing details that assist these decisions, creating  severe consequences in the long run.          

Another way in which chronic stress impacts teens is through emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is defined as the ability to manage and control one's emotional state. According to Bold Science, “the brain regions involved in experiencing and regulating emotions are still developing during adolescence. Consequently, they are particularly sensitive to stress” (Bold Science, 2024). Emotional regulation is a skill that many people have however some are not as good at suppressing their emotions as others, and that mainly includes teens. Through the study of Bold Science, teens are more sensitive to stress. Combine that with the fact that a teen’s amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions, is more dormant and is more relied on than the pre-frontal cortex, leading to a disaster. Teens with chronic stress will lash out more and experience harder-to-control emotions than an adult who is also dealing with chronic stress. This can lead to teens making decisions that they haven't thought out, landing them in an unfavorable position and exposing them to more stressors. This could cause them to shut off and not express their emotions at all, which leads to another problem, “expression suppression is negatively related to psychological resilience, reduces positive emotions, and increases negative emotional experiences during everyday stress” (Frontiers in Psychology, 2025). Suppressing emotions leads to negative emotional experiences, which can directly cause depression. During depression, stressors are much more deadly. Every negative emotion when depressed gets amplified, which leads to more stress. This can cause long-lasting results as teens who are depressed, shutting themselves off from the world,leading them to have a lack of people to express their emotions to. Having a social life is crucial for development; not having a social life, especially during the most important time of your life, can lead to accelerated cognitive decline, affecting aspects such as thinking, remembering, and reasoning negatively. These are all crucial abilities to have for emotional regulation, and having a decline in those, especially during adolescence, is deadly.

In conclusion, adolescence is one of the most important stages in your life, especially since the brain is developing the most at this time. Due to this, people going through the adolescence stage are susceptible to acute stress and chronic stress at this time, due to hormonal changes. Acute stress usually doesn't have any downsides; however, in adolescence, if you are chronically stressed, it can have adverse effects, such as limiting the ability to make new decisions in new scenarios and negatively affecting emotional regulation. One way teens can manage stress is by getting active, whether it be weight lifting or running. Getting active releases the happy chemicals in your brain that boost your sense of well being. Another way teens can alleviate stress is by connecting with others. Not only does connecting with others distract you from something stressful, it also makes you happy. When you spend time with someone it releases oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that is attached with feeling comfortable with someone and feeling attached, due to this it makes you feel more calm.  Ultimately, teens figuring out a way they can manage stress is paramount, or else it can have very negative long-term consequences that affect brain development and how they function and thrive in the future.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Works Cited

Goldbaum, E (2012) What Does Chronic Stress in Adolescence Mean at the Molecular Level? Buffalo.edu. Published March 7, 2012. Accessed July 1, 2025. https://www.buffalo.edu/alumni/at-buffalo/story.host.html/content/shared/university/news/news-center-releases/2012/03/13246.detail.html

Walden University. How Stress Impacts Decision Making. www.waldenu.edu. Published 2024. https://www.waldenu.edu/online-masters-programs/ms-in-clinical-mental-health-counseling/resource/how-stress-impacts-decision-making

Habegger, D.B. and M. (2024) How does stress affect teenagers?, BOLD. Available at: https://boldscience.org/how-does-stress-affect-teenagers/

Yu Z, Liu W. The psychological resilience of teenagers in terms of their everyday emotional balance and the impact of emotion regulation strategies. Frontiers in Psychology. 2025;15. doi:https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1381239/full