by David Arango
Sports are a big part of many teenagers lives nowadays, and can affect their mental health significantly. There are many positive and negative effects that sports have on a teenager’s mental health.
Some positive effects are teens that play sports usually have lower rates of stress, anxiety and depression. Additionally, sports can help them later in life on how to solve problems and can influence the way they think. Sports can boost a teens self esteem and confidence. This is very important since building up confidence can be hard to do. Finally sports create good leaders and team workers that are not only useful on the pitch but also in everyday life.
There are a lot of positives in a teen playing sports but there are also some negatives. For example, sports in general can be very time consuming, especially for a teenager. With so much of the day being used for school, sports teens can be mentally exhausted by the end of the day.
While it is true that sports can release stress, it can also create it by either being put through too much pressure by coaches/parents or pushing yourself to the limit. Finally, in some sports, a teen needs to weigh a certain amount to be able to participate, this could cause eating disorders and can impact them in the long run both mentally and physically.
To sum everything up it’s important to see the pros and cons on what sports can do to a teens mental health but the outcome is different for every teenager.
