The Hidden Cost of Overcommitment
By Emma Zande
Fall 2025 Intern
College applications have always loomed like a guillotine blade—but social media has sharpened the edge. Now, every scroll reminds students of what everyone else is doing: the internships, the clubs, the research projects. The result? Crushing pressure and an endless race to do it all, often at the expense of real passion.
While we may feel like we need a laundry list of accomplishments before stepping into adulthood, overloading on extracurriculars can leave students burned out and struggling with real mental health consequences. So how do we balance the benefits of involvement against the risks of overcommitment?
The Benefits of Extracurricular Activities
Participating in extracurricular activities is often an important part of student life—in fact, about 70% of students are involved in at least one extracurricular activity. They can provide students with fun outside of their education, but they can also help build important skills like discipline,
determination, commitment, and communication. In addition to building lifelong skills, participation in extracurricular activities can have positive impacts on student mental health. When children participate in organized activities, it can help build their self-esteem, resiliency, and academic performance. They are also less likely to engage in risky behaviors, which leads to more success in adulthood.
Extracurricular activities come in various formats, and there are unique benefits to each. Academic and intellectual extracurriculars, such as academic clubs, debate teams, and STEM-focused organizations, can provide hands-on learning that allows students to delve deeper into specific interests and form social connections around their shared interests. Volunteer, fundraising, and community-service extracurriculars have been shown to improve students’ mental health, increasing their sense of social-connectedness and belonging. Creative extracurricular activities, such as theater, band, or writing clubs, help students to develop self-expression, problem-solving, and creativity. Leadership extracurriculars, such as student government, can increase students’ decision-making, public speaking, and teamwork skills.
Likewise, participating in athletics can help students gain important skills and improve their mental health. Sports teach students time management, self-discipline, patience, perseverance, and decision-making. Being a part of a team also helps to boost students’ sense of community and belonging. Research has also shown that participating in sports is correlated with lower rates of depression in students.
The Dark Side of Extracurriculars
Participating in extracurricular activities is not just a surefire way to boost college applications—it can teach students lifelong skills and greatly benefit their mental health. However, there is such a thing as too much. Too many enrichment or extracurricular activities have actually been found to have harmful impacts on student mental health—and with research finding that 1 in 5 students are struggling with mental health, it is important to consider the harmful impacts that too many extracurriculars can have.
There is a threshold where the negative impact of an overloaded schedule outweighs the positive impacts of extracurricular activities. In fact, research has found that engaging in too many extracurricular activities can lead to heightened stress and anxiety. When students are overscheduled, they won’t have time to spend on developing the “soft skills” necessary to properly relax and socialize.
Striking the Balance
The key is striking a balance between academic responsibility, extracurricular activities, and free time—no, chess club doesn’t count as free time. With so many activities and interests to choose from, this can be really difficult, especially with the weight of college applications hanging over the heads of students and parents alike. However, there are a few pointers that can help you find the sweet spot:
- Prioritize academics: Ensure you’ve set aside enough time to realistically be able to complete your homework and assignments. As students enter high school, their outside-of-school workload often gets much larger, which may mean cutting back on a few clubs, and that’s okay!
- Choose extracurricular activities that are important to you: If you do need to pare back, make sure that you’re choosing to prioritize the activities that you’re genuinely passionate about, and not just the ones that you think will look good on college applications.
- Set limits on your commitments: Don’t be afraid to say no! Spreading yourself thin is more harmful than choosing a few things to invest your time and effort into.
- Look out for warning signs of overextension: Academic decline, stress and burnout, lack of downtime, and a loss of interest may be signs that you’ve overcommitted to extracurriculars. It’s okay to take a step back and give yourself time to focus on schoolwork and mental health.
- Take care of yourself: Make sure you’re eating healthy, sleeping enough, and exercising regularly. These strategies can help you manage your stress and mental health, which is necessary to focus on academics and engage in extracurriculars in a balanced and healthy way!
Publishing Solutions Group
At Publishing Solutions Group, we know that education is constantly evolving—and the materials that support students and teachers should evolve with it. That’s why we stay tuned in to the latest research, classroom trends, and real-world challenges facing today’s learners. Our work isn’t about producing content in a vacuum; it’s about understanding what schools truly need and creating resources that meet those needs with clarity, accuracy, and impact.
But we see ourselves as more than content creators. We’re strategic partners. Whether we’re developing assessment items, crafting curriculum materials, or conducting in-depth research, our goal is to bridge the distance between educational theory and classroom reality. Every project is grounded in the question: How will this help teachers teach better and students learn better?
In essence, Publishing Solutions Group builds connections—between research and practice, between client goals and student outcomes, and between today’s challenges and tomorrow’s solutions. Because when those connections are strong, learners thrive. And that’s the future we’re committed to supporting, one carefully crafted resource at a time.
Photo by Andrej Lišakov for Unsplash
