Phones, failure and fear: What is pushing young people to the edge?

As cases of youngsters being pushed to the extreme are increasingly reported from around the world, the question arises: what causes them to take such drastic steps? Recently, in India, an 18-year-old boy threatened to jump from a cliff after an argument over his iPhone instalment. His father's attempt to pull him back ended in tragedy for the entire family.

In February 2026, three minor sisters, aged 16, 14, and 12, jumped from the ninth floor of their apartment building in Ghaziabad following a confrontation with their father, who took away their phones and deleted their social media accounts. In both cases, the immediate trigger might have been phones, but later investigations revealed more to them than met the eye.

Cutting off access to devices or being scolded by parents over excessive screen time has led to tragic outcomes in many cases. Besides phones, young adults and children also go to extreme lengths when faced with bullying, failure in exams, social comparisons and more. It is aggravated by social media, where exposure adds to their mental distress.

Are the youth today less resilient to social pressures? Have failure and the feeling of not being good enough taken over their lives more than they should?

Comparisons, exposure, and social media

Dr Munia Bhattacharya, Senior Consultant Psychologist, Marengo Asia Hospitals, Gurugram, says, "I would not call today's youngsters a 'weak generation'. In fact, I think that is an unfair way of looking at it. Young people have always faced pressure. What has changed is the nature of that pressure. Today there is almost no psychological escape from comparison." The problem, according to her, begins when they constantly see others doing better than them on social media.

"They can feel inadequate about money, appearance, relationships, possessions or popularity and be reminded of it every time they open their phone. There is a constant feeling of being watched, compared and measured," Dr Bhattacharya says. They can feel the “pressure to perform, to fit in, to look a certain way, to have what others have, to keep up with friends, to satisfy parents, to succeed in relationships and, increasingly, to appear successful online.”

Learning to cope with emotions

Damini Grover, a therapist and life coach, says many of them tie their worth to material things and good scores in exams. When they fall short in these areas, they find it hard to process their emotions because they don't know how to.

"Self-worth can become tied to academic achievement, physical appearance, relationships, way of life and even material possessions. The fear is not that this generation is inherently less resilient, but that so many youngsters may be under enormous emotional stress, without having developed proper coping skills or safe spaces to process distress," she says.

Mugdha Pradhan, a functional medicine practitioner, agrees and says it is crucial to help them learn about failures and how to live with them. “Many children today have grown up with more comfort, convenience and parental protection than previous generations. That is not inherently a bad thing, but when they rarely experience disappointment, failure or discomfort, they are not getting enough opportunities to develop the ability to cope when life eventually becomes difficult.”

How to make the youth more resilient?

Dr Bhattacharya says dismissing such reactions as simply being oversensitive or lacking resilience is not correct. They might be too young to have the emotional distance to say, "I have failed this time, but I can recover." She adds that, in a moment of intense distress, "the mind can become very narrow. The problem in front of them feels enormous and the possibility of tomorrow becomes difficult to see."

So it is important to prepare them for failures and disappointments, and to make them understand that everyone is living their own lives. How do you do this? Grover says, simply telling young people to "be resilient" will not help fix the problem. You need to build emotional resilience.

Dr Bhattacharya agrees, saying that resilience is not something they can magically have. They need to be taught to experience disappointment without letting it define them. "It develops over time. It comes from relationships, from learning that failure is survivable, from being allowed to make mistakes, from having people they can talk to and from gradually learning how to manage difficult emotions."

Pradhan adds, "What we need to build is not a generation that never experiences pressure, but one that knows how to move through it. Young people need emotional connection, meaningful relationships, boundaries, responsibility and age-appropriate exposure to challenges."

Parents and educational institutions have a huge role to play here. Grover says they must be alert to changes in emotions and behaviour early and foster environments where seeking psychological support is normal rather than something that occurs only when a crisis has already occurred.

Preparing the youth for the world

Keeping our youth safe is a collective action. They are growing up in a world where they are exposed to fashion, big careers, huge amounts of money, lavish lifestyles, etc. Pushing them head-on into this world to figure it out for themselves can overwhelm them. Trying to protect and shield them isn't the answer either, since it won't make these things go away.

What is needed is to support them as they tackle these pressures in the outside world. Failures are bound to happen; no one can be the same; not everyone can have all the material possessions is what children need to be prepared for. What they need is the ability to cope with pressure without believing that one difficult moment defines their entire future. Because sometimes what looks like a small trigger to an adult may be the point at which a much larger emotional burden finally becomes visible.