More 15-year-olds in the UK report low life satisfaction than any other country in Europe, amid what experts are describing as a “declining well-being” among young people in the UK.
Analysis by British Children's Society puts this group at the bottom of 27 European countries in terms of life satisfaction: 25% of 15-year-olds in Britain said they had low life satisfaction, while in the Netherlands the figure was 7% – the lowest of all countries surveyed.
Girls in the UK are particularly affected, as are children from disadvantaged backgrounds, with food insecurity highlighted as a key reason behind the poor well-being figures.
“The alarm bells are ringing,” said Mark Russell, chief executive of the British Children's Society. “British teenagers are facing a slump in well-being, with 15-year-olds now, on average, reporting the lowest life satisfaction levels across 27 European countries.”
The report found that in 2021-22, children aged 10-15 recorded average scores for happiness in life overall, friends, appearance, school and academics, all of which were significantly lower than in 2009-10.
A graph showing low life satisfaction among 15-year-olds in Europe.
Low life satisfaction among UK 15-year-olds is at least twice as high as that of their 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 concern about school absenteeism, long NHS waiting times for mental health support and rising living costs leading to more families falling into poverty in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis.
“Children and young people deserve better,” the report states. “Decisive action and national leadership are needed to reverse the decline in child well-being. We know that these experiences are not lived in a vacuum… The pandemic, rising poverty, concerns about young people's safety, the climate crisis and other stresses are putting strain on young people's lives and preventing them from having happy and fulfilling childhoods.”
Dutch teenagers have been ranked among the happiest in the world for several years now, thanks to supportive parents, low inequality, less authoritarian and more accepting teachers, and greater self-determination, such as the ability to cycle to school and decide their own home time.
Over the weekend, TV presenter Kirsty Allsopp sparked a debate about whether parents who restrict the freedom of teenagers are “infantilising” them when she was contacted by social services after allowing her then 15-year-old daughter to go on a solo Interrail trip around Europe.
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“Being trusted and confident makes us feel good about ourselves and makes us happy,” she said. “So is it our fear and holding them back that makes them anxious and depressed?”
The Guardian reported on Tuesday that more than 500 children a day in England are being referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety disorders, more than double the rate before the pandemic began.
The Children's Society research, published on Thursday, also found that England has the widest gap in life satisfaction between the most and least deprived 15-year-olds.
The charity found that many parents are struggling to provide basic necessities for their children, with just over one in five parents and carers struggling to buy a hot meal each day, almost a quarter unable to afford a warm winter coat and just over a quarter struggling to provide fresh fruit and vegetables each day.
