(JESHOOTS-com, 2018)

By Dr. Michelle Bianco

This blog post examines the rising anxiety among college students through the work of Jonathan Haidt’sThe Anxious Generation (2024), which attributes escalating mental health challenges to the digital “great rewiring’ of childhood. Drawing on research by Pennebaker and Smyth (2016), Ramadhanti et al. (2019), and Vidrine-Isbell (2025), this post highlights how expressive writing and metacognitive practices can transform student anxiety into cognitive resilience. The piece argues that integration of emotional regulation, reflective writing, and scaffolded classroom structures equips anxious students to engage confidently in an academic setting.

A cluttered digital desktop of unfinished drafts and a blinking cursor that feels like a heartbeat of failure. Decreased motivation and resilience among youth appear to have been replaced by rising rates of anxiety and depression. Haidt (2024) refers to this phenomenon as “the great rewiring,” arguing that technology and social media fundamentally altered the way youth grow, learn, and relate to the world. Between 2010 and 2015, reports of classic depression symptoms among U.S. teenagers surged by roughly 150%, making mental illness about two and a half times more prevalent (Haidt, 2024). The suicide rate for young adolescents in the United States increased by 167% from 2010 to 2021. By 2022, nearly half (46%) of U.S. teens were online “almost constantly,” nearly double the rate from 2015 (Haidt, 2024, pp. 294-302). Understanding this generation is imperative.

Anxiety-driven doubt is causing a growing number of students to question all information presented in their classes. Many appear gripped by fear and hesitant to begin an assignment, let alone write freely or take creative risks. In The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt (2024) describes the resulting mental health crisis or “tidal wave” (p. 25) that resulted from a cultural shift from play-based, real-world lived experiences to smartphones and a life lived on screens. Today’s students were raised in a digital ecosystem that rewards passive consumption, constant comparison, and algorithm-driven validation. The anxious student is not only distracted by the barrage of content in their daily lives but also developmentally unprepared for the stress of learning.

To effectively engage these students, educators should leverage the benefits of expressive writing (Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016), support metacognitive development (Ramadhanti et al., 2019), and implement educational practices that promote emotional regulation and cognitive growth. Academic writing, a cornerstone of higher education, demands metacognition. Metacognition is the process of thinking about one’s own thinking (Vidrine-Isbell, 2025). This is a critical aspect of learning that allows students to plan, monitor, and evaluate their cognitive processes. Haidt’s (2024) concerns follow that the digital age prioritized immediacy over introspection. The constant online feedback provides short-term satisfaction, which undermines the persistence needed for deep learning. Students accustomed to instant interactions may find academic writing slow, uncertain, and frustrating. This intensifies feelings of anxiety and avoidance.  While Haidt diagnoses the problem, researchers Pennebaker and Smyth (2016) encourage engaging students in an act of metacognitive reflection to translate emotion into language, thereby transforming anxious feelings into narratives. The authors use activities that easily translate into college courses, such as assigning journal writing that asks students to anticipate their goals for an upcoming essay and compare predictions with outcomes. Students develop a habit of pre-writing reflection and post-writing evaluation, key metacognitive skills for revising and overcoming anxiety.

Expressive writing, pioneered by Pennebaker and Smyth (2016), is a therapeutic technique that invites individuals to pour their unfiltered thoughts onto paper for 15 -20 minutes, focusing on trauma or emotional experiences. The psychological tool rewires neural pathways, and for the anxious student whose mind is locked in battle for perfectionism, the practice will transform fear into confidence. Building on these principles, Bonnie Vidrine-Isbell of Biola University led a workshop at the 2025 International Writing Across Curriculum Conference, where she introduced innovative pedagogies rooted in social neurosciences that mitigated anxiety and depression. Vidrine-Isbell (2025) emphasized educators’ capacity to use the composition classroom with metacognitive practices to foster environments where anxiety yields to discovery.

Rather than viewing mental health as separate from academic performance, instructors can guide students through healthy processes of cognitive growth that engage both hemispheres of the brain. Haidt (2024) distinguishes between discovery mode and defend mode, emphasizing that students must be encouraged to embrace discovery in their writing rather than self-protection. A structured classroom environment that models a safe zone of discovery with clear expectations, constructive feedback, and opportunities for peer collaboration can counteract the paralysis of anxiety. Scaffolding- a core principle in higher education-is the perfect vehicle for this shift.  

So why not incorporate metacognitive activities in scaffolding exercises that focus more on their own processes rather than gradebook feedback?  

Ramadhanti et al. (2019) identify a holistic framework in which writing is a versatile anchor of wellbeing. Feedback loops that build self-awareness and activities that meet the brain’s need for joy and positive engagement can cultivate confidence and resilience in student writers.

The anxious student embodies the complexities of education, with its unlimited access to information but limited capacity for reflection. Haidt (2024) reveals how technological and cultural shifts have rewired young minds for hyper-connection and hypervigilance, while Pennebaker and Smyth (2016) and Ramadhanti et al. (2019) clarify pathways toward healing through reflection, writing, and metacognitive awareness. By integrating emotional and cognitive strategies, educators can guide students not only toward academic success but toward healthier, more intentional lives.

References

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.

Jeshoots-com. (2018, January 18). Laptop, woman, education [Photograph]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/laptop-woman-education-study-young-3087585/

Pennebaker, J. W., & Smyth, J. M. (2016). Opening up by writing it down: How expressive writing improves health and eases emotional pain (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Ramadhanti, D., Ghazali, A. S., Hasanah, M., & Harsiati, T. (2019). Students’ metacognitive weaknesses in academic writing: A preliminary research. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 14(11), 41–57. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v14i11.10213

Vidrine-Isbell, B. (2025, July 17). Integration Station: Writing, learning, and the happy brain [Conference workshop]. International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, Fort Collins, CO, United States. https://iwac.colostate.edu/program/complete/

Dr. Michelle Bianco is a faculty member in the English and Rhetoric Department at Purdue University Global. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition: College Composition I and II, CM 801 Doctoral Writing & Research, and serves as the course lead for CM 780 Applied Research Methods and Communication. Bianco is an avid equestrian and rescues wild Mustangs.  She is a published author with academic research that specializes in quantitative analysis.  Publications