As teenagers enter high school the most repetitive thing heard is “get involved”. Although true, students are under more and more stress because of homework and then mixing it with extracurricular activities. As teens hear more and more often to get involved but stay on top of homework, it will add stress to life. Do teenagers have enough time?

Teenagers today do not have enough time.

As parents, friends or school leaders continue to say “get involved”, this will only add more stress. If people tell teens to do more and more to get the most out of high school, what should students focus on? Do they focus on the extracurricular activities or school work? After school sports, play practice or club meetings are supposed to be fun. When the hard curriculum gives us hours of homework. This, of course, is not a bad thing to give students homework, that is not the problem, the problem is deciding on what to focus on.

Some teens also have an after school job. Often times, parents want students to help pay for their own car insurance or other things that can take payments. Therefore making money is a must for some kids. With after school jobs, homework, and extracurricular activities, it makes it hard to focus on those fun times and even homework. Being able to make money is obviously something high school boys love, but they also love theater, sports, etc. It is hard to balance between homework, jobs, and activities.

Again, giving a lot of homework is not a bad thing, it is crucial to development, but the question is how to do teens focus on after-school activities if we have so much homework and also maybe have a job.
Opposers may say that time management is key. Most students who believe this often do not have after school jobs where they can do homework, or sports practice or games that end at 7. Opposers might also say that teenagers should limit what they are involved in. This would be easier to comprehend and do if other students, parents and teachers were not always saying to get involved in something. 78% of students, according to Teenhelp.com, said that the main cause of stress in their life is the overwhelming amount of things they have to do. The leading “thing” is homework. The second is family with 68%. If schools preach to be involved, help each other and focus on homework, we need more time.

A solution to this can be either not preaching so hard to be involved and limit students to a couple of activities to dedicate time to. Limiting students to activities may help the increasing amount of stress in teens lives. Another solution could be giving less homework but more classwork. Classwork is just homework you work on in class. So if we give students more time to do the homework in class, kids will have more time to do activities and jobs to help their own future.