TITLE:
Trauma and Grief in Teenagers and Generation Z: Exploring Experiences, Coping Mechanisms, Help-Seeking Behaviour and Pathways to Healing
AUTHORS:
Oluwakemi Babarinde
KEYWORDS:
Trauma, Grief, Bereavement, Adolescents, Generation Z, Coping, Help-Seeking, Social Support, Mental Health, Social Media
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.16 No.11,
November
13,
2026
ABSTRACT: Trauma, bereavement and other adverse experiences can affect emotional wellbeing, relationships, education and everyday functioning. Responses vary, and self-reported exposure or symptoms should not be equated with a clinical diagnosis. This cross-sectional study explored reported experiences of trauma or bereavement, perceived disruption, recent trauma- or grief-related symptoms, coping, help-seeking, formal and informal support, and social-media effects among 78 respondents aged 13 - 28 years. The dataset was analysed descriptively using frequencies and percentages, with multiple-response items treated as overlapping categories. Exploratory Spearman rank correlations were calculated for selected ordinal-coded measures using pairwise complete observations. Fifty-two respondents (66.7%) answered yes to having experienced a traumatic event or bereavement in the previous five years; 20 (25.6%) answered no and six (7.7%) preferred not to say. Thirteen respondents (16.7%) were aged 13 - 17, while 65 (83.3%) were aged 18 - 28, limiting the extent to which the findings can be described as evidence about teenagers specifically. On the recent-symptom item, 42 respondents (53.8%) selected “Once or twice”; 21 (26.9%) selected weekly, several times a week or daily responses. Twenty-five respondents (32.1%) reported that formal support had been helpful, while 25 (32.1%) reported no formal support and 13 (16.7%) reported support that was not helpful. Social media was reported to make coping easier by 39 respondents (50.0%), have no effect by 20 (25.6%), have mixed effects by 17 (21.8%), and make coping worse by two (2.6%). The findings are descriptive and exploratory. The sample’s recruitment channels and geographic scope, complete questionnaire anchors, skip logic and ethics procedures of the original study were verified using the original study documentation. The paper concludes that accessible, confidential, developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive support merits further evaluation, without inferring causal pathways from cross-sectional data.