The unhappiest children in Europe

By Christine Kinnear

As young people head back to school, a sobering thought is that we have the unhappiest children in Europe.

25% of the 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, considerably higher than the European average of 16.6%, in the recently published Children Society Report.

When you look behind the headline figure, the causes are well known.  Nearly one in three children live in households that are below the poverty line.  In a bid to keep our children innocent of real world nasties, we’ve exposed them to a virtual trap where social media plays an increasing role in shaping their experiences and perceptions of themselves.   Additionally, our children are growing up in a world where climate change, economic instability, and a housing crisis dominate the headlines.  The result? A generation that is more anxious, self-critical and less resilient.

Sadly, we have embraced disparaging language like snowflakes, work shy and entitled as if the ills of our young are an active choice rather than an inevitable consequence of the environment in which we live.

I think that mindset serves no one.

A Fresh Outlook

If we want the best for and from our children, then we need to take a moment to see the world through their eyes.  For instance, parenting in the UK is now much more hands-on with children given far less opportunities to explore boundaries and learn how to navigate the social dynamics of life unsupervised.  Imagine then how daunting the transition to independent university at living is!  With 56% of students having to work to make ends meet at university, is it fair to judge their CVs for not including student society membership or summer internships (many of which are still unpaid) when they didn’t have the financial ability to do either?

A Culturally Sensitive Response

There’s been much said about children's ailing mental health.  A Prince’s Trust nationwide study of 55,000 Gen Zs found that 73% of them were anxious about their futures because of the cost of living crisis and over two-thirds believed they would never be financially secure.  Understanding how to ease this mental and emotional strain it key and requires cultural empathy.

Black and brown cultures are not so open to talking about mental health.  I put it down to a ‘grin and bear it’ mentality but whatever the reason, our unwillingness to engage often means that we’re at crisis point before we ask for help.  Normalising conversations about mental health, setting up structures that proactively check in with young people and increasing the ethnic representation of mental health practitioners would go a long way to tackling this issue.  Organisations such as Black Minds Matter UK, Rethink Mental Illness and the Black Students mental health project all do great work in this area.

Addressing the Crisis

Despite their challenges, our wonderful young people continue to strive.  I have the privilege of regularly interacting with students who hold onto the belief that they will accomplish their goals.  They remain hopeful, exhibiting a resilience that generations before them rarely had to tap into.

We desperately need a holistic solution, one that touches on economic, social, and emotional dimensions of life to ensure that this optimism isn’t misplaced.