Key Takeaways

• Nearly 1 in 10 teenagers live with social anxiety disorder, a mental health condition that causes excessive fears of public judgment or humiliation.

• You can support your teen with social anxiety by encouraging them to take on small social challenges, like saying hi to a friend.

• Social anxiety therapy for teens can also help teach your teen evidence-based strategies for overcoming social anxiety and developing rich and satisfying relationships in their lives.

Many teens are self-conscious. In this developmental stage, it’s normal for them to worry about what their peers think of them and try hard to impress others.

But for teens who have social anxiety, these worries can become extreme and get in the way of their everyday lives.

Social anxiety disorder is a mental health condition that causes excessive fears about being judged or humiliated in front of others.

It’s more than just shyness or introversion, and it can affect your teen’s everyday life. Around 9% of teens in the U.S. have social anxiety disorder.

It can be hard to watch your teen go through social anxiety, but there are ways to support them in building a healthy social life. Teen therapy can also help.

Signs Your Teenager May Have Social Anxiety

It can be difficult to tell the difference between “normal” social worries and social anxiety, especially when it comes to teens.

The key difference is that teens with social anxiety disorder have such severe worries that it gets in the way of developing healthy relationships. 

It’s not just about being shy; social anxiety has severe impacts on teens’ everyday lives.

Some signs that your teen may be experiencing social anxiety include:

• They avoid social situations whenever possible. This could mean skipping school, refusing to participate in class discussions, or avoiding large family gatherings.

• They experience intense fear or distress before social events. Even small interactions, like ordering food or speaking to a cashier, might cause them overwhelming anxiety.

• They excessively worry about being judged or humiliated. They assume others are constantly criticizing them, even when there’s no evidence to support this.

• They struggle to make or maintain friendships. They might want to connect with others but feel too anxious to initiate conversations or participate in social activities.

• They show physical symptoms when faced with social interactions. Social anxiety can cause sweating, nausea, shaking, blushing, dizziness, or even panic attacks.

• They excessively rehearse or overanalyze social interactions. They may spend hours replaying past conversations in their mind, and worry they said something wrong. Or they might over-rehearse conversation strategies because of their fear.

• They rely on avoidance strategies to cope. This could include using their phone to avoid eye contact, getting drunk or high to cope, only communicating via text, or clinging to a “safe” person in social settings.

Ways to Help Your Teenager Cope with Social Anxiety

While social anxiety disorder in teens typically requires treatment, you also play a big role as their parent.

There are things you can do to help your teenager cope with social anxiety and build healthy and supportive relationships.

Validate Their Feelings Without Enabling 

Validation is key for any emotional difficulty that your teen is going through. Remember, it may not seem like a “big deal” to you, but it’s serious to your teen. There are ways to validate their emotional experiences without agreeing with or supporting their irrational thinking patterns.

Try to avoid jumping straight into giving advice.

For example, even if you know that avoiding social situations typically makes social anxiety worse, it can alienate your teen to immediately jump into lecturing them about why they shouldn’t avoid them.

Instead, focus on validating their emotions without enabling them.

You can say something like: “That seems really scary — it’s only natural that you wouldn’t want to go if you feel that way. It sounds like there’s a part of you that knows these thoughts aren’t really true, but it’s still hard to shake the fear.”

Encourage Small, Manageable Social Steps

Your teen doesn’t need to go to the year’s biggest party to be able to overcome their social anxiety.

It’s important that they take steps forward, but also that they don’t feel so overwhelmed and flooded with anxiety that they get turned off of social situations altogether.

Collaborate with your teen to set small, manageable goals that will challenge them just the right amount.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of fear and anxiety, choose goals that cause around a level 2 or 3 of fear. For example, could they say hello to a classmate? Could they make eye contact with someone as they’re speaking to them?

When your teen does reach these goals, celebrate it! This can help your teen feel much more encouraged to take further steps in the future.

Teach Anxiety-Reduction Techniques

There are simple relaxation techniques that can help your teen reduce their level of anxiety while they’re taking small steps toward their goals.

These include deep breathing techniques and muscle relaxation.

Social anxiety can trigger a fight-or-flight response in teens.

The idea is to teach them strategies that can activate the parasympathetic nervous system and calm their stress response. These relaxation strategies can also reduce the physical symptoms of social anxiety, like flushing or sweating. 

Limit Avoidance Behaviors

If your teen has social anxiety, then they’re likely to want to avoid any situation that triggers their fears.

So they might always decline social invitations or refuse to join any clubs or extracurricular activities. 

However, avoidance has been shown to only make social anxiety worse. Avoiding their fears keeps them trapped in a never-ending cycle of social anxiety.

They never get the chance to understand that they can overcome their fears, so social situations build up to seem scarier and scarier in their minds.

Although it may be tempting, try not to allow your teen to “give in” to social anxiety and avoid their triggers altogether. 

Help Them Find Supportive Friendships

Teens need to have supportive friends in their lives. Social support has been found to help teens be more resilient against mental health problems like depression. Help your teen find healthy ways to meet supportive friends.

Offer to drive them to events and activities that interest them.

Encourage them to explore hobbies or extracurriculars where they can naturally connect with like-minded peers, whether that’s a school club, a local sports team, or an online interest-based group.

Don’t worry too much if, initially, your teen seems to find solace in online communities.

This can be the case for many teens, especially depending on how well they “fit in” with their local community.

Lead by Example

Social anxiety disorder is partly genetic. So it’s possible that if your teen lives with social anxiety, then you do too.

Either way, try to set a good example for your teen. Challenge your fears, even when it feels difficult. Speak to yourself kindly. Build healthy relationships in your life.

Take care of yourself. Leading by example is one of the best ways you can support your teen through social anxiety.

When to Seek Professional Help

Social anxiety is a common experience that most of us have felt at some point in our lives. It’s normal for teens to feel nervous about meeting new people or worry about being judged by their peers. 

But when social anxiety starts to seriously affect relationships or everyday life, then it could be a sign of social anxiety disorder — a mental health condition that requires treatment. 

It may be time to connect with a therapist if:

• Your teen requests to see a therapist

• Your teen has been experiencing social anxiety for over 6 months and it hasn’t gotten better

• They frequently avoid essential social situations, including skipping school, refusing to participate in class, or withdrawing from friendships

• Their anxiety is causing physical symptoms like nausea, headaches, or panic attacks

• Their distress is so severe that it affects their ability to function in daily life

• They talk about hurting themselves or other people

Takeaway

Social anxiety can make it difficult for teens to fully engage in their lives, but it doesn’t have to hold them back forever.

With the right support and encouragement — both from you and a professional — your teen can build confidence in social situations and learn to manage their anxiety. 

At Emora Health, our teen therapists specialize in helping young people overcome social anxiety.

They’re specifically trained to work with adolescents and understand how to create a safe, supportive space for your teen to build confidence and learn effective coping strategies.

Reach out today to find a therapist who fits your teen’s needs.

Sources

1. Krypotos, A., Effting, M., Kindt, M., & Beckers, T. (2015). Avoidance learning: a review of theoretical models and recent developments. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00189

2. Social anxiety disorder. (n.d.). National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/social-anxiety-disorder

3. Stein, M. B., Chen, C., Jain, S., Jensen, K. P., He, F., Heeringa, S. G., Kessler, R. C., Maihofer, A., Nock, M. K., Ripke, S., Sun, X., Thomas, M. L., Ursano, R. J., Smoller, J. W., & Gelernter, J. (2017). Genetic risk variants for social anxiety. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 174(2), 120–131. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.32520

4. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). (n.d.). Table 16, DSM-IV to DSM-5 Social Phobia/Social Anxiety Disorder Comparison - DSM-5 Changes - NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t12/