Yes, you read that right. Yes. Yes. YES.
This is bad news. A recent report by the Institute for Work and Leisure Research at San Diego State University found that teens who work on average 20 hours a week are more likely to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.
I know, I know. So much for a healthy work-life balance. I wonder if the reason is that the more work a teen puts in, the more likely he is to develop mental health problems. I’ll tell you why. The more hours a teen works, the more likely he is to have a job that is physically demanding and he becomes more likely to have to give up time to care for himself.
Teenagers who work 20 hours a week or more are also more likely to be obese and overweight, and are more likely to smoke, drink, and use drugs (that’s why we’re even monitoring our teens for these things). Of course, this is a study that was conducted a few years ago, and so it’s difficult to determine how much this is true today. I know for a fact that my teenage son is a model of self-control and a model of discipline.
I’m glad to see that this study is not only accurate but something that helps people with their lives. Being able to control your own body is extremely important for your mental health. However, I think we can all agree that a lot of teens today are spending too much time working and not enough time with their friends and family. It’s possible that this work-related stress is one of the reasons why today’s teens are so easily influenced by their peers.
In the world of self-control, there is a huge difference between working hours and not working hours. Working hours are when you work, and when you don’t work, you are working. However, working hours are most often associated with people who work an extremely strenuous job, like in the military, because military personnel are constantly being deployed.
Working hours have been studied for decades, and the data shows that the average American works a little over 20 hours of a week. For those of us who work, we often feel it’s a form of slavery and that the work we do is somehow “wrong”.
There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that it is hard to do anything during the work hours (i.e. you can’t go hang out with your friends or do any of the other things you would usually do). The other reason is that you are working too many hours. You need a lot of sleep to function during the work hours, and you spend the majority of your days working.
When you think about it, that isn’t so much a bad thing, it is a good thing. During the work hours, you can go out and socialize with friends and do other things. During the non-work hours, you can go to work, sleep, eat, and watch TV.
It is also a good idea though to realize at least one of these things for both the work and non-work hours.