Last Updated on 05/09/2024 by Arun jain
Children and young people in the United Kingdom are unhappier and have lower life satisfaction than others in their age group in the rest of Europe, a report published by a British charity has revealed.
According to The Good Childhood Report 2024, published According to The Children’s Society, 11 per cent of children between the ages of 10 and 17 said their health was poor, while one in six young people in the age group living in households affected by the cost of living crisis had poor life satisfaction.
We look at possible reasons why children in the UK are becoming less happy than previous generations:
Why are UK children so unhappy?
The report, compiled from three different surveys, including a 2024 survey by The Children’s Society, revealed that two in five children and young people were worried about rising prices in the UK.
More than 14 percent of children reported being unhappy at school, according to the latest annual report, which was first published in 2009.
Life dissatisfaction is particularly prominent among girls in the UK, and British children in general have become unhappier over the years, the report said.
“This is without a doubt the most shocking report,” the charity’s chief executive Mark Russell told Al Jazeera.
Since the 2009 report, children’s overall happiness in terms of life in general, friends, their appearance, school and school work has declined significantly. His happiness largely remained unchanged in terms of his family alone.
During 2021-22, children were most happy with their families and least happy with their appearance.
Russell attributes this to the increased use of social media. “Kids are seeing a lot of images and they’re comparing themselves to other young people.”
More than 50 percent of parents and caregivers surveyed said they could not afford vacations away from home, and more than two in five said they could not pay for their children’s extracurricular activities.
Why are UK children the unhappiest in Europe?
Factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and social media “have had a massive impact on children’s lives, but also on all 27 other countries”, Russell said.
So, why are teenagers in the UK doing worse than others in the rest of Europe?
About 25 percent of British 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7 percent of Dutch 15-year-olds.
“Proportionately, we have more children in poverty than any other European country,” Russell pointed out. According to Save the Children, 4.3 million children in the UK, or 30 per cent of British children, are in relative poverty.
According to the UK charity Child Poverty Action Group, a child is said to be living in poverty if they live in a household with an income below 60 per cent of the median income.
In the Netherlands, 12.7 percent of children were living in poverty by 2021.
British children are doing worse than in other European countries as in the UK as a whole Facing financial difficultiesYears of austerity measures introduced by the previous Conservative government made matters worse economists And A A case study By Oxfam in 2013. These measures, which essentially cut the budget, reduced public funding to schools and the health sector.
This shuts down places that provide people with community, social enrichment and knowledge such as libraries, community and youth centres, Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. informed In 2018.
Furthermore, the UK education system “doesn’t work for all children”, said Russell.
“Many children feel a lot of pressure because we test and test children more than countries like Finland and Holland,” he said.
“We need to value vocational education as much as academic. All schools should prioritize emotional and social development alongside academic progress, to ensure that the wellbeing of all pupils is at the heart of school life.”
Girls are disproportionately unhappy in the UK
The report said that during 2021-22, girls were “on average significantly less happy than boys with their lives as a whole, their family, their appearance and their school”.
One of the data sources used to analyze this report, compiled in 2022 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), found that in the UK, 20 per cent of boys and 31 per cent of girls reported low life satisfaction.
“Girls’ suffering needs to be looked at more so that it can be understood and addressed,” the report said.
“I would also say that we’ve seen the effect of certain influencers online, how they talk about girls has a real impact on how guys talk to girls,” Russell surmised.
He added that there needs to be a dialogue on “how we help reduce the spirit of toxic masculinity”.
The report and Russell pointed out that the girls’ unhappiness calls for further investigation. More research is needed to investigate the reasons behind girls’ distress.
How is happiness measured?
There is currently no nationwide database containing information on children’s subjective well-being in the UK. The Children’s Society, which works among children facing abuse and neglect, has called on the government to produce comprehensive data.
This year’s report has been prepared by combining information from three sources.
- Understanding Society – UK Longitudinal Household Survey, completed by 1,766 children in 2021-22;
- The Children’s Society’s annual household survey, to which 2,056 children responded in 2024;
- The OECD’s Program for International Student Development surveyed 12,972 students in the UK in 2022.
The last available data from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey and the OECD program was for 2022, which is used in the report.
Chris Coates, research impact and project manager at Understanding Society, explained that the UK Longitudinal Household Survey includes a questionnaire for children aged 10-15, which includes “some questions on personal well-being, how they feel about life as a whole, and questions about . Family, friends, appearance, school and schoolwork”.
He explained that respondents answer on a scale of one to seven from “completely happy” to “not at all happy”.
What are the recommendations?
In addition to the report, the UK charity published a document urging the government to tackle the crisis of grief among UK teenagers. Some of these policy recommendations include:
- Introducing the National Scale of Child Well-Being.
- Assigning mental health professionals to every school in England. In December 2023, Keir Starmerwho became Prime Minister of the UK in July 2024, posted X promised that his government would “provide access to mental health professionals in every school to cut the NHS [National Health Service – the publicly funded healthcare system] Waiting Lists”.
- Improving the well-being of girls by understanding why through research and communicating well-being with each other.
- Introduction of legislation directed at removing financial disadvantage among children.
- Repeal of two-child limit and benefit cap. The two-child limit prevents households from receiving additional universal credit or child tax credits for a third or subsequent child. According to the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), around 1.6 million children in the UK are affected by the two-child limit by April 2024.
- Improving school systems by tackling bullying and enabling better assessment methods than testing.
- Creating more opportunities and ways for children to engage in play and socialising.
Russell reflected on the charity’s work, saying it shows that young people need trusted adults in their lives, who are not teachers or parents.
“For many children, those safe spaces, are no longer there for them. In its absence, they turn to social media for their advice and counsel,” he said.
“I think we need to invest in spaces where young people can talk and be heard.”
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