For many students nowadays, stress has become a part of everyday life. Between the tests and many projects that we are doing in school, we as students are constantly trying to maintain a good social life, as well as constantly being under pressure. One of the biggest causes of that pressure is actually homework overload! While homework is supposed to help students learn and apply the practice in real life, it can cause the opposite effect as well. Instead of helping students succeed, a crazy load of homework can lead to the most common stuff like lack of sleep, stress or even anxiety.
During my research, I found interesting stats about us, teens! According to the American Psychological Association, about 56% of teens consider homework to actually be a primary source of stress! Researchers from Stanford University also found that excessive amounts of homework can negatively affect students’ health and sleep. In one of their studies, researchers found that students in high-performing schools experience higher levels of stress and even excessive physical health problems because of heavy homework loads. Even some of the students reported sleeping less and feeling more exhausted. And the pain – students did not have time to get into their hobbies, or even spend time with their family!
High school students often spend a lot of hours every night trying to finish assignments from a lot of different classes. Many students also take a chance to participate in any extracurricular activities or exercise after school, which obviously puts homework in the background, and the homework will be done late at night. And as a result, students lose a lot of sleep trying to keep up with their expectations. Another report that I found out about students is that teens are getting less sleep than they ever had before, partly because of homework, as well as school pressure. Sleep is the number one thing for physical and mental health, however, nowadays students are forced to sacrifice other things, just to hit that deadline assignment on time.
When I recorded interviews, I found out that our students have something to say on this topic! During multiple interviews, many shared that homework indeed feels overwhelming rather than helpful at the time. One student even mentioned to me, “Sometimes I get home after practice at 7, and then I still have at least 2-3 hours of homework to do.” By the time I finish, it’s the middle of the night already.”
Another student told me that homework makes them feel more stressed than tests, because the load of new stuff to learn seems to never stop! Different students told me that they rarely even relax on the weekends, because schoolwork takes over their entire time, after being done with chores.
However, not every student has the same opinion. Some of the students say that homework can still be useful if only teachers gave reasonable amounts of time to complete it. One student I interviewed mentioned: “Homework helps me review what we learned in the class, but there should be a limit to it. Too much info makes me feel confused, and frustrated”. This genuinely made me think that the problem actually may not be the homework by itself, but the amount of it being assignments and deadlines that are pushing over the line.
On the other side of the story, teachers face the same situation, but just in a different way. Many teachers want students to practice those important skills they teach outside the classroom, especially in things like math or English. Homework can redirect the lesson and even improve responsibility when it is being used correctly. But students often have a lot of teachers assigning work at the same time, which causes an overload that no single teacher may realize. What seems like a small assignment from one class can stack up when it is being combined with work from every other period a student has.
Another big thing that I found is that mental health is heavily connected to homework overload. Students today already face the pressure from grades, social media, and obviously, the family expectations. Excessive homework adds even more pressure to a student who already feels stressed in their personal environment. The studies that I researched showed that high levels of stress do indeed increase anxiety and the “burnout: feeling in teens.
