A major new study analyzing data from more than 82,000 college students finds that perfectionism has climbed steadily since 1989 — and the drivers may surprise you. Fear of failure and social judgment are rising fastest, with serious implications for student mental health.
College students today face a greater internal pressure to be perfect than any previous generation, according to a sweeping new analysis published in Psychological Bulletin by the American Psychological Association. Researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science and York St. John University reviewed 35 years of data from more than 82,000 students in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, finding that self-reported perfectionism has climbed consistently from 1989 through 2024.
The findings carry a serious warning for campus mental health: higher perfectionism is reliably linked to greater rates of depression and anxiety. Lead author Thomas Curran, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, called it a systemic threat, urging policymakers to look beyond individual behavior.
“Perfectionism is a public health risk – it’s associated with increased depression and anxiety,” Curran said in a news release. “If we want to tackle the youth mental health crisis, we need to focus on these cultural and economic factors.”
Two Faces of Perfectionism
The study, which pooled data from 307 individual research projects conducted between 1989 and 2024, measured perfectionism along two distinct dimensions. Researchers distinguished between what they termed “perfectionistic strivings” — the drive to set impossibly high standards and grind toward them — and “perfectionistic concerns,” which capture fear of failure, indecisiveness and anxiety about being judged negatively by others.
Both dimensions have risen over time, but they haven’t moved in lockstep. Since the early 2000s, perfectionistic concerns have grown at a noticeably faster rate than perfectionistic strivings, suggesting that today’s college students are not simply more ambitious — they are more afraid. The gap between wanting to succeed and dreading what happens if they don’t appears to be widening with each passing decade.
Economics, Not Just Algorithms
Much of the public conversation about student mental health has centered on smartphones and social media platforms. But the researchers push back on that narrative with a pointed observation: the upward trend in perfectionism was already well underway before Instagram, TikTok or even Facebook existed.
“Phones and social media have received a lot of the blame, but the rise in perfectionism predates social media. This research study suggests something deeper is at work,” Curran added.
That deeper force, the data suggest, is economic. The researchers mapped perfectionism rates against macroeconomic indicators across time and country, uncovering two distinct patterns. Slowing GDP per capita — the kind of stagnation that has characterized much of the post-2008 era — was associated with higher perfectionistic strivings. Rising income inequality, meanwhile, tracked with steeper growth in perfectionistic concerns.
Curran explained the logic this way.
“When there’s a lack of economic opportunity, young people seem to compensate with striving,” he said.
The connection between inequality and fear is similarly intuitive.
“And when inequality grows, what you see is that fear and worry about making mistakes and other people’s opinions starts to become a more central feature of young people’s psychology,” added Curran.
In other words, the more unequal a society becomes, the higher the perceived stakes of any single failure — and young people internalize that arithmetic.
Why It Matters for Students Today
For current college students navigating a competitive job market, mounting student debt, and uncertainty about the future, these findings resonate with lived experience. The research suggests that the relentless pressure many students describe — to maintain a perfect GPA, build an impressive resume, and never stumble publicly — isn’t simply a personal quirk or a generational weakness. It reflects real structural pressures baked into the economy students are inheriting.
Curran noted that “These findings provide additional context for recent debates about youth mental health,” situating the perfectionism crisis within a broader conversation that too often focuses on individual screen habits while overlooking the social and economic scaffolding underneath them.
Critically, the link between perfectionism and mental health symptoms held steady across all 35 years of data the team examined. That stability means perfectionism’s psychological toll is not softening over time, even as the trait itself becomes more common. As rates of perfectionism continue to climb, its contribution to rates of depression and anxiety among young people is likely to grow alongside it.
What Comes Next
The researchers argue that addressing the youth mental health crisis requires more than apps that track screen time or campus counseling centers — important as those resources are. Structural interventions targeting economic inequality and expanding opportunity for young people may be just as essential to bending the perfectionism curve downward.
For students, recognizing that the pressure they feel is, at least in part, a product of the world they were handed — rather than a personal failing — may itself be a meaningful first step.