A New study by the British government has discovered the mental well-being of the country's teen

A New study by the British government has discovered the mental well-being of the country's teenage girls has deteriorated.

The survey, which included 30,000 14-year-old students in 2005 and 2014, showed 37 percent of girls with psychological stress, up from 34 percent in 2005. British boys' stress level was actually seen to fall over the same time period, from 17 percent to 15 percent.

The report’s authors pointed out the “advent of the social media age” could be a major contributing factor for increased stress among teenage British girls.

“The adolescent years are a time of rapid physical, cognitive and emotional development,” Pam Ramsden, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, wrote in a recent blog post. “Teenagers interact with people in order to learn how to become competent adults.

In the past, they would engage with parents, teachers and other adults in their community as well as extended family members and friends. Now we can also add social media to that list of social and emotional development.”

Throughout adolescence, girls and boys develop characteristics like confidence and self-control. Since teenage brains have not completely developed, teens don't have the cognitive awareness and impulse control to keep from posting inappropriate content.

Furthermore, this content can easily be circulated far and wide with disastrous implications.

Social media can also feed into girls’ insecurities about their appearance, Ramsden said. These sites are often filled with images of people with body type unattainable to the normal person. However, these images and the messages tied to them creep into societal standards.