Relationship between adolescents social anxiety or avoidance and subjective happiness and wellbeing

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is described as a feeling of constant anxiety in various social situations. For adolescents having social anxiety disorder (SAD) can severely burden daily life and negatively affect their social life, wellbeing and health. The goal is to find connections between social anxiety of boys and girls and happiness and well-being. The research was conducted in 2018. Older teens, 15-19 year olds, who are in high school and belonging from 9th to 12th grade, were chosen for the research. 1605 teens participated in the research. The Social Anxiety and Avoidance Scale for Adolescents, SAASA (Cunha et al., 2008) was chosen to measure social anxiety. The scale consisted of two parts: Anxiety (cronbach = 0.951) and Avoidance (cronbach = 0.935). To estimate the subjective teen happiness and wellbeing the research used two questions: the participants were asked to evaluate their well-being by answering the questions. It was estimated that there is a significant statistical difference between social anxiety levels among boys and girls. Girls manifested higher levels of anxiety and avoidance in all chosen subscales (p = 0.005). It was estimated that older teens (17-19 years old) are more likely to demonstrate avoidance of social situations in formal gatherings, as opposed to younger teens (15-16 years old). Evaluating the relationship between teen social anxiety and happiness proved to have statistically significant differences in all anxiety and avoidance subscales (p = 0.005). Similar results occurred when estimating the relationship between social anxiety and wellbeing or health. It was estimated that teens which described their wellbeing as mediocre or poor have higher levels of social anxiety or avoidance in all subscales (p = 0.005).[...].