The Cost of Caring: Why Youth Burnout Is a Global Issue

There’s a kind of exhaustion that settles in when you care too much about a world that seems to be falling apart. It shows up at 2 a.m., when you can’t fall asleep because your mind keeps replaying another crisis you read about.

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It appears in the middle of a casual conversation, when someone asks, “How are you?” and the honest answer  “I’m carrying too much”  feels both too heavy to say and too familiar to ignore.

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This exhaustion has a name: burnout.

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But it’s not just an individual mental health issue, something you fix with better time management or a few “self-care” routines. Youth burnout is telling us something much deeper, something about the way we’ve built our societies, our movements, and even our ideas about who is supposed to create change.

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The Weight of Awareness

Young people today are growing up with an awareness that previous generations never had to carry. Climate change isn’t a far-off threat; it’s in the fires that burn through our forests, the floods that destroy our cities, and in the air that feels heavier every year. A 2021 global survey engaging more than 10,000 young people found that 84% are at least moderately worried about climate change, and nearly half said it negatively affects their daily lives.

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Social injustice isn’t something you read about in history class, it’s happening in real time, on our screens, in our schools, in our own stories. Add political instability, economic precarity, mental health crises, displacement, technological disruption, and the long shadow of the pandemic, and it starts to feel like there’s no space left to breathe.

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And here’s the hard part: this awareness isn’t optional. It’s not “being dramatic.” It’s simply paying attention.

Studies in The Lancet Planetary Health found that 75% of young people think “the future is frightening,” and 83% believe “people have failed to take care of the planet.”

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Telling young people to just “log off” or “think positive” is asking them to develop the same apathy that created these crises in the first place. Their anxiety isn’t the problem, it’s proof of their awareness.

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The poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, “When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”

The same goes for young people who speak honestly about what they see. The problem isn’t that they feel too much, it’s that the world often doesn’t know what to do with their honesty.

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Because once young people recognize the scale of the problems around them, the message they often hear is:
“You are the future. You’re going to fix this. We’re counting on you.”

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It sounds inspiring, but in practice it becomes a form of surrender.It places the responsibility for transformation on those with the least structural power to achieve it, while the same institutions and corporations that caused the damage keep operating as usual.

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The Architecture of Burnout

Youth burnout doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It’s the outcome of overlapping pressures that keep building until something breaks.

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1. The Urgency–Power Gap
Young people can see what’s wrong with extraordinary clarity. But sometimes we lack the power, resources, and access to make change happen at the pace it needs to. More than half of students in the US report experiencing some level of academic burnout, and over 20% show severe symptoms.

It’s a cruel paradox: you know what’s broken, you even know how to fix it, but every path forward is blocked by systems that still don’t take you seriously because of your age.

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2. The Individualization of Collective Problems
We live in a culture obsessed with personal responsibility. Can’t afford college? Work harder. Struggling with mental health? Try a meditation app. Worried about climate change? Change your shopping habits. This logic turns systemic problems into individual failures, which is not only ineffective, but deeply exhausting.

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3. The Professionalization of Care
Caring has become a kind of unpaid labor. Young activists are expected to protest, educate, organize, post, stay informed, all while keeping up with school, jobs, family, and their own growth.
A 2024 Common Sense Media study found that 81% of American teens feel negative pressure, mainly around achievement, appearance, and their future.

So “saving the world” becomes another item on an impossible to-do list. And when you fall behind, guilt piles on top of exhaustion.

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4. The Absence of Intergenerational Solidarity

Many young people feel alone in their care. Instead of intergenerational movements where older generations show up to share knowledge and carry weight, they often encounter two reactions: abandonment (“it’s your problem now”) or condescension (“you’ll understand when you’re older”).
 

Mental Health UK’s 2025 report found that trust between young workers and their managers dropped from 75% to 56% in just one year. The very people who could mentor, support, and guide them are often checked out, or defensive.

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5. The Always-On Culture
Digital life has erased the line between being informed and being overwhelmed. Every morning brings new headlines, new disasters, and new calls to action. The algorithm rewards outrage, and young people are left to navigate this endless flood of information without a map for how to care without collapsing.

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What Burnout Actually Looks Like

Burnout isn’t just being tired. It’s a state of depletion, that shows its symptoms on an emotional, physical, and existential level.

Studies show that in some regions, over 70% of adolescents experience academic burnout. The symptoms go beyond fatigue:

• Compassion fatigue: feeling emotionally numb, not because you don’t care, but because you’ve run out of fuel.
  
  
• Cynicism: shifting from “things can change” to “nothing matters”, a shield against disappointment.
  
  
• Physical symptoms: chronic tiredness, insomnia, headaches, weakened immunity.
  
  
• Cognitive impacts: brain fog, indecision, forgetfulness.
  
  
• Social withdrawal: distancing yourself from the very communities that once gave you meaning.
  
  
• Loss of purpose: questioning whether your effort matters, or if you even do.
  
  

These are the signs of someone who’s been running on empty for too long without real support.

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The Stakes Are Higher Than We Think

When young people burn out, we don’t just lose energy. We lose potential, the leadership, innovation, and creativity that could have shaped what comes next. We lose movements that could have grown, art that could have changed perspectives, solutions that could have shifted history.

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And something deeper happens too: burnout changes people. When you burn out from caring, you build walls to protect yourself. You detach, you withdraw, you stop believing your actions matter. It’s not weakness, it’s survival. But it comes with a cost: the world loses a generation of people who once believed change was possible.

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Burnout also doesn’t hit everyone equally. Young people facing racism, poverty, disability, immigration struggles, or discrimination are more likely to both suffer from systemic problems and burn out from fighting them. In 2022–2023, nearly 1 in 3 youth in the U.S. faced a mental, emotional, or developmental issue, with higher rates in marginalized communities. They’re surviving their circumstances, supporting their families, and still trying to change the systems that created those conditions. The load is simply too heavy.

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What Collective Care Actually Means

So what’s the alternative?

If caring deeply is non-negotiable, because these crises are real, how do we care in ways that don’t destroy us?

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1. Intergenerational Movements
Change happens when generations work together. Adults need to show up not as saviors, but as partners, using their power, access, and experience to open doors, while letting young people lead with vision and courage.

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2. Redefining Rest as Resistance
In a culture that worships productivity, rest becomes rebellion. But rest isn’t laziness, it’s what keeps movements alive. Sustainable change takes decades, not days. Rest needs to be built into the system itself, modeled by leaders, celebrated instead of shamed. As Tricia Hersey reminds us: “Rest is resistance.”

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3. Building Care Infrastructure
Activism should include mutual aid, mental health resources, and emotional support, not as “extras,” but as core strategy. Care work is movement work.

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4. Practicing Collective Boundaries
Not every crisis can be treated as a five-alarm fire. We need collective wisdom to set limits, pace ourselves, and decide what truly needs urgency. Sustainability isn’t a lack of passion, it’s discipline.

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5. Celebrating Diverse Contributions
Not everyone has to be on the front lines. Some people organize, others create art, others rest and recover so they can return later. We need to broaden our definition of impact to include all the invisible forms of care that keep movements alive.

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6. Creating Spaces for Processing
We also need places to simply feel. Spaces where young people can reflect, grieve, share, and make sense of what they’re experiencing, not just intellectually, but emotionally and physically.

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Education’s Role in This

Schools and universities can’t stay on the sidelines. If we’re teaching young people to care about the world, we also need to teach them how to care sustainably.

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That means:

• Teaching the real history of movements, that change is slow, messy, collective work, not instant heroism.
  
  
• Embedding collective care into classrooms, not as workshops, but as part of how communities function.
  
  
• Making space for emotional processing, because learning about the world’s problems is heavy work.
  
  
• Modeling healthy boundaries, showing that commitment and rest can coexist.
  
  
• Connecting analysis to realistic action, so students can act meaningfully without drowning in despair.
  
  

At YouthxYouth, we’ve seen that when young people have tools for sustainable engagement, spaces to rest, communities that share the weight, they don’t burn out, they grow stronger. They become the kind of leaders who can last, who adapt, evolve, and stay in the work for the long haul.

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Redefining Success

Maybe what really needs to change is how we define success. Right now, success in activism often looks like overwork: the number of hours you give, the events you attend, the sacrifices you make. That mindset doesn’t build movements, it builds martyrs.

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What if success looked different?
What if we asked instead:
Are people staying engaged?
Are movements actually shifting power?
Are communities becoming healthier, more connected, more humane?
Are people becoming more themselves through the work, not less?

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If we redefine success, we redefine what we make possible. Because when “grind” is the goal, exhaustion is the outcome. But when care and sustainability become the standard, the work itself starts to change.

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The Invitation

Youth burnout isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of choices, which means we can make new ones. This isn’t about young people caring less. It’s about building systems where care can last.

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Where responsibility is shared, not dumped.
Where rest is seen as part of resistance.
Where showing up doesn’t mean falling apart.

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The world needs young people, their imagination, their defiance, their creativity, their tenderness. But it needs them whole, not hollowed out. It needs them for the long run, not just for a brief burst before they burn out.

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Because real transformation isn’t a sprint. It’s a practice, one we build together, across generations, sustained by care and fueled by hope that’s earned through action.

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And when young people say, “I’m exhausted,” the answer isn’t “try harder to rest.” It’s “You don’t have to carry this alone.”

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References

Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., & van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12), e863–e873.

Lewandowski, R. E., Clayton, S. D., Olbrich, L., Sakshaug, J. W., Wray, B., et al. (2024). Climate change distress among US youth. The Lancet Planetary Health, 8(11).

Mental Health UK. (2025). Burnout Report 2025 reveals generational divide in stress and work absence.

Crown Counseling. (2024). 30+ Eye-Opening Student Burnout Statistics That Demand Attention in 2024.

Common Sense Media, Center for Digital Thriving (Harvard Graduate School of Education), & Indiana University. (2024). Unpacking Grind Culture in American Teens.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2025). Youth Mental Health Statistics in 2024.

National Center for Biotechnology Information. (2025). Student Burnout: A Review on Factors Contributing to Burnout Across Different Student Populations.