Social phobia is a personality disorder that prevent an individual from having a healthy social life due to unreasonable excessive fear of being judged by others, being seen, scrutinize or any activity that requires social interaction.

Although there is no scientific proof of the real causes of social phobia, we know that there are people with certain characteristics and personality that are more vulnerable. There are also specific circumstances that can trigger social phobia in a person.

There are different causes and many risk factors especially in the childhood and adolescence, but lets take a look at the most common causes.

There are tree main underlying causes of social phobia that have been identify in most cases:

• Heredity causes
  In many cases individuals and child where they parents have social anxiety tend to have social phobia too due to their genetic code, but this does not mean that disorder have to persis for life, it can be overcome with proper treatment especially at an early age.

• Environmental Causes
  When we are child we are very vulnerable to the environment in which we live, we acquire our values, behaviors and beliefs that in some cases are wrong. If a child live in a family where they avoid social activities, where they dont let the child give his opinion or parents are too protective and they are shy too, then it can cause social phobia in the child.

• Neruological causes
  There are also many cases in which a chemical unbalance in the brain causes social phobia, this is due to the imbalance distribution of serotonin in the brain cells. When this happens a normal social situation can be seen as frightening by the individual.

There is also the idea of amygdale being social phobia cause according to some scientist, this is because the amygdale regulates the response to fear, so if it is over reactive you will develop social phobia.

I would say that the main three causes of social phobia in adolescents are this:

Negative Experiences

• When a teenagers has an embarrassing experience at school or someone humiliate him for their performance at something or his body image, he might acquire social phobia. Those negative experiences can become a trauma that provokes anxiety in front of people and fear of being scrutinize again by others.

• So you should be aware of it and be careful who you are with adolescents are very vulnerable to self image criticism and anything else that can embarrass them in public.

The Environment

• As i have discussed above the family environment can play an important role in the develop of the personality of a child and teen so its important to encourage social relationships to avoid social anxiety.

Genetics

• Some people inherited the problem from their parents so, in this cases teens need to follow a treatment with psychotherapy and medications to be able to control it and overcome it.

Those are the most important perspectives and causes of social phobia, but the most important thing is that you find help for your self or the individual that suffers from it. There are severe consequences in people that dont treat their phobia, some people get severe depression and even engage in alcoholism addiction to cope with their symptoms.

Experts agree that psychotherapy is the safest and most effective way to recover from social phobia, it requires some persistence and to follow through but the results will be positive for the rest of your life.