Teens and parents agree on at least one thing: kids had it easier 20 years ago than they do today.

A whopping 69% of parents who have kids ages 13 to 17 say growing up is harder today than it was in 2004, according to Pew Research Center. And 44% of people between ages 13 and 17 say the same.

What they don't totally agree on is why it's more challenging to navigate adolescence now compared to back then. Parents blame social media, but kids name "more pressures and expectations" as the culprit.

'The biggest effects of social media happened during puberty'

In his best-selling book "The Anxious Generation" NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says smart phones and social media have damaged teens' mental health. Haidt focuses on people born after 1995 in his book.

Zach Rausch, lead researcher to Haidt and an associate research scientist at NYU-Stern School of Business, told CNBC Make It that having a phone while going through puberty can be especially damaging.

"The biggest effects of social media happened during puberty, especially early puberty," he says. "Ages 9 to 15 is where the most significant harm seems to be the clearest."

One reason is that online conversations don't often lead to in-person connections, which are crucial to increasing and sustaining happiness.

"We used flip phones to connect with each other in order to eventually meet in person," Rausch says. "The online world is kind of the opposite. We connect in order to stay there. And our argument is that that's not sufficient."

Haidt also says that extensive social media use can change young people's brain chemistry.

"Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness," Haidt wrote for The Atlantic.

In his 2023 report "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also warned about the dangers of social media.

"Several examples of harms include technology that displaces in-person engagement, monopolizes our attention, reduces the quality of our interactions, and even diminishes our self-esteem," Murthy wrote. "This can lead to greater loneliness, fear of missing out, conflict, and reduced social connection."

Parents tend to agree with this assessment: 41% say social media is why it's harder to be a teen and 26% point to "technology in general", according to Pew Research Center.

'There aren't a lot of vehicles to build wealth'

While one in four teens cite social media as the reason life is harder today, more, 31%, say that pressures and expectations are why they feel strained.

Kids are aware that they might not be able to do as well as their parents financially, Jennifer Breheny Wallace, author of "Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It," told CNBC Make It.

Still, they feel the pressure to replicate their parents' success, something Wallace calls the "encore effect."

"One student I interviewed said to his mother in 8th grade, 'If I wanted to be an architect, where would I live?' She said, 'You can live anywhere.' He said, 'I Zillowed our house and I can't afford it,'" she says.

The housing market is a key example of how wealth-building is more challenging for young people today than it was for their parents and grandparents.

Last year was the worst year for homebuying, according to a report from Redfin. The median price of a home in 2023 was $408,806. A person earning the median U.S. income, which is just under $80,000, would need to spend 41.4% of their earnings on monthly housing costs to afford that home.

While social media might exacerbate some stressors, the problems teens are facing are much more nuanced.

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