In the UK, more 15-year-olds report low life satisfaction than anywhere else in Europe, amid what experts are calling a “happiness recession” for British teenagers.
The group is at the bottom of the European rankings in terms of life satisfaction in 27 countries, analysis revealed by the Children’s Society. In the UK, 25% of 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age – the lowest level of all the countries surveyed.
British girls are particularly affected, as are children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Food poverty is seen as a major reason for the poor welfare figures.
“Alarm bells are ringing,” said Mark Russell, chief executive of the Children’s Society. “British teenagers are facing a recession in happiness, with 15-year-olds reporting the lowest life satisfaction of 27 European countries.”
The report found that children aged 10 to 15 had significantly lower average scores for their satisfaction with their lives as a whole, as well as with their friends, appearance, school and schoolwork, in 2021-2022 than in 2009-2010.
Levels of low life satisfaction are at least twice as high among 15-year-olds in the UK as among peers in Finland, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia and Hungary. The study uses data from the 2021-22 UK Longitudinal Household Survey and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022.
The findings come amid growing concerns about school absenteeism, long NHS waits to receive mental health support and rising living costs as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, pushing more families into poverty.
“Children and young people deserve better,” the report said. “Decisive action and national leadership are needed to reverse the decline in children’s well-being. We know that these experiences do not occur in a vacuum… The pandemic, rising poverty levels, concerns about young people’s safety, the climate emergency and other stressors have put pressure on young people’s lives and may undermine the experience of a happy and fulfilled childhood.”
Dutch teenagers have been among the happiest in the world for years. They have supportive parents, little inequality, teachers who are not authoritarian but accept the feelings of the students and they have a high degree of self-determination – for example by cycling to school and being allowed to decide for themselves when they come home.
Last weekend, TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp sparked a debate over whether parents who restrict the freedom of teenagers are “infantilising” them, after she was contacted by social services after she allowed her then 15-year-old daughter to travel interrail independently across Europe.
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“Being trusted, being confident, makes you feel better about yourself and happy,” she said. “So our children are anxious because we are anxious, we hold them back and it leads to depression?”
On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that more than 500 children are being referred to NHS mental health services every day in England for anxiety disorders, more than double the number before the pandemic began.
The Children’s Society research, published on Thursday, also found that the biggest gap in life satisfaction between the most and least deprived 15-year-olds was in the UK.
The charity found that many parents struggle to provide their children with basic necessities. Just over one in five parents and carers struggle to afford a hot meal every day, almost a quarter can’t afford a warm winter coat and just over a quarter struggle to produce fresh fruit and vegetables every day.