How Surfing Impacts the Mental Health of Young Adults

Art Credit: Cannon Rock, Winslow Homer

Sami Syed is a current freshman at Chapman University. During his senior year of high school, he conducted a survey with USC and Chapman University surf teams to evaluate the mental health benefits of surfing.

How did you become interested in surfing?

As a kid, I was always captivated by the beach and later the thrill of surfing. I was about 11 years old when I had my first surfing lesson offered free to anyone through a Kaiser beach day in Manhattan Beach. And I was so pumped because it was my first chance to learn how to surf, which then became another reason why I love the beach so much! There’s just something so invigorating about diving into these crashing waves and experiencing the raw power of the ocean. It's a feeling of rejuvenation that never gets old.

How did you discover the connection between surfing and mental health?

Surfing has this ability to uplift my spirit and provide a sense of peace and clarity. I made this connection as I got older and school got harder in 10th and 11th grade. And I began to cope with this rigorous coursework by surfing a little more often. And I began to notice something.

I felt there was a connection between mental health and surfing. So in the beginning of my junior year, I started brainstorming a project of what I could pursue. I was inspired by my sister who was in college at the time and had formed a club for mental health support. So I began to think about how I could relate this to surfing.

How did you get started with your project?

With the help of Miss Tanya Malik, a master's student in psychology at Columbia University, I found studies that displayed that surfing had mental health benefits. Things like increased strength and balance, improved focus and also, the best one: good quality sleep. 

But I was tired of reading and I wanted to get some action. My project explored whether surfing is an effective way to improve mental health for young adults. I considered factors like sleeping, genetics, social support, and many others by surveying surfers and non surfers.

How did you implement your survey?

Well the most difficult part was getting data from surfers to conduct my survey. In fact, my project almost failed.

I didn't know where to go because I reached out to high schools with surf teams and I didn't get a response. Then, I reached out to my lead director at my school to send an email on my behalf. And still, no luck.

But I didn't give up because I needed data for the surfers to for the project to actually work or else what would be the point of the project right? So with that said, I gave my low and last shot and using Instagram I DMed two college serve teams (well, l DMed a lot of colleges but only two answered back). To my surprise I got a positive response from Chapman University and University of Southern California. And I got valuable responses with insights from their surf team sewing, surfers, attitudes, behaviors for my project.

What was your data? How did you determine your results and what did they conclude?

I had 25 male and 20 female participants ranging from 15 to 25 years old and we excluded five so that we ended up having an equal number of 20 surfers and 20 non-surfers. I had a survey methodology consisting of 25 questions assessing mental health and I had a scale of one to five one being our lowest value and five being our highest value.

Some of the prompts included things like: How is your quality of sleep? How is your mood during the day? How anxious are you at school? How often do you participate in physical activity? How much energy do you have to get active? And there were 20 others.

I then put my data on a graph and determined which results were statistically significant. This meant that the differences in responses between surfers and non-surfers wasn’t just based on luck or chance. This included questions with a statistical significance greater than 0.3.

Some of the statistically significant results were…

1. Surfers were much more comfortable in competitive situations (∆ 0.97)

2. Surfers were more competent under pressure (∆ 0.81)

3. Surfers reported better moods during the day (∆ 0.48)

4. Surfers were much less anxious at school (∆ 0.43)

5. Surfers reported more energy and increased activity (∆ 0.36)

6. And surfers reported better sleep quality (∆ 0.31)

What did you gain from this experience? What was the most rewarding part?

I gained many research skills such as analyzing data, and administering questions to huge groups and knowing what I need to get out and showing what is statistically significant as I mentioned before.

And I'd like to point out that the most rewarding part of this experience was collecting data from those surfing teams. Because without that, it didn't give me that surge of determination to finish the project and execute what I needed to be done.

Because I feel like it's true in a lot of projects. You know, you're moving forward and then obstacles hit you. So this was one of my obstacles here. And after looking at all the data there, it made me feel that everything fell into place and it made me push for that goal.

What do you hope others can take away from this experience?

Find an activity or hobby that boosts your confidence and your sleep. Maybe grab a surfboard and paddle out to those rejuvenating ocean waves. And if you don't have a surfboard, grab a boogie board. 

If you do that, you can reach out to my email at sami.a.syed06@gmail.com and send me a picture!

And thank you, let's hit the beach, guys!