In 2009, a year before he passed at age 98, my father compared growing up in the 1920s and ‘30s with how he saw youngsters growing up in the first decade of the 2000s. His conclusion: Millenials at age 12 were already more worldly than his Greatest Generation was at age 25. He wasn’t being judgemental, rather noting how relatively innocent and parochial life still was in the Depression Era of the 1930s versus the depressive 2000s. 

“We didn’t grow up in cities,” he once told me. “We grew up in neighborhoods.”

In America of 2023, kids grow up in virtual communities even faster than they did in 2009. And with so much social media so readily available, kids get bombarded by so much, so early, by so many, from so far. How could it all come without cost?

Today, the burdens of life require more than physical strength to carry, and increasingly, society is not equipping everyone to the task. Is it any wonder we see so many young athletes coming apart under the pressure of fame and public scrutiny?

At the same moment athletes may reach a physical performance peak, they often find themselves still forging their full suit of emotional armor. Thrown into the bright light of an Olympic flame or major competition’s media glare would be enough to unsettle anyone, much less a young person still navigating the rocky shoals of fame, fortune, and others’ expectations.

In part because of her debilitating psychological experience at the 2020(1) Tokyo Olympics, Time magazine named USA gymnast Simone Biles 2021 Athlete of the Year.

It’s a delicate issue, I know, one I write about cautiously because of the same cancel culture forces that produce this level of anxiety in young performers.

But every performance environment has an element of psychological pressure. In school, it’s test anxiety. In acting and public speaking, it’s called stage fright. But according to the literature, stage fright is not a mental disorder. Instead, “it is a normal reaction to a stressful situation.”

By definition, “mental disorders are conditions that affect your thinking, feeling, mood, and behavior. They may be occasional or long-lasting (chronic). They can affect your ability to relate to others and function each day.”

Performance anxiety affects thinking, feeling, mood, and behavior, too, but is specific to the performance, not to everyday functioning. Major athletic competition is definitely not everyday life. Plus, discovering who can perform under the bright lights and added pressure is central to the outcome of any elite-level competition, right?

In addressing the pressures of athletic performance, I wonder whether we have conflated a normal part of high performance with clinical disorders, as if sporting anxiety fell somewhere between schizophrenia and bipolar disease? Does performance anxiety belong in a clinical setting and only now is being addressed properly?

Yes, the challenges of life (and sport) are many and formidable. But some of those challenges are of our own design, too, as media attention is a double-edged sword. We help create the monster that looms before us by accepting the attention and rewards that go along with that level of media scrutiny. Athletes receive significant money from sponsorship endorsements. Then we bemoan the slathering giant’s presence as he feeds on our doubts and hobbles our resolve.  

“Pressure is a privilege” is the Billie Jean King quote tennis players see as they walk out onto center court at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York for the U.S. Open each summer. The quote is another way to contextualize the strain of high-level athletic performance. 

“If you want to take some pressure away, probably the best way to do that is not to be on social media to start with,” said tennis professional Daniela Hantuchova after four-time grand slam champion Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open in 2021 saying she didn’t want to attend press conferences as they had a negative impact on her mental health. “Without the media, we wouldn’t be earning the amount of money we do. It’s as simple as that. “

But is it that simple? On one hand, we expect athletes to build and maintain robust social media platforms to fulfill sponsor obligations. But those same platforms also spew hate and toxic judgments like they’re handing out Halloween candy when the athlete doesn’t perform up to our expectations.

Remember the old line, “for everything gained, something is lost?”  

Back in the Depression-era of the 1930s, when my dad was a young man, there was no government safety net, no government handouts. It’s part of what made the Great Depression so devastating. The only social safety nets came from church groups and social organizations like the Elks Club, the Lions, the Shriners, the Masons, etc. 

But once Congress passed FDR’s New Deal legislation between 1933 and 1939, the government became the benefactor and protector of our financial futures and down-times. Slowly, the fabric of locally based social agencies began to fray. Go look at all the magnificent Masonic temples – and churches, for that matter – that stand empty these days.  

The government takeover of the social safety net is not too dissimilar to how today’s social media has replaced family, neighbors, and friends as the incubator of our emotional well-being. Rather than growing up within a protected cocoon – “neighborhoods, not cities” – before venturing into the wider world with a capacity to manage themselves, today’s generation is spat out into the yawning maw of social media at birth. There, insidious outside forces tell them who they are and how much they are worth. Even the most talented and successful young athletes aren’t immune to the pressures of that spreading virus. 

The likelihood that modern society will slow down or become less judgmental in the coming decades is negligible. All we can do is wish our young athletes well and hope society finds a way and new leaders who can restitch our frayed social fabric. Each of us deserves to discover our sense of worth beyond what’s to be found on 3″ x 5″ smartphone screens.

Yes, pressure may still be a privilege, but today it comes with an even heavier load, especially in a world where growing up happens faster and has fewer supports than ever before. I think Pop would have understood. A most happy Father’s Day to one and all.

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