UK teens the most unhappy in Europe

Oh dear, what's wrong with being a hairdresser?! The beauty industry is massive, and consistent. Seems a dated, snobbish comment. We have snobbish attitudes in the UK which is another issue. Not everyone is going to be a lawyer or an accountant.

@Snippit No they don’t, it’s 38%. 50% of the workforce has a degree but that’s including all adults and immigrants. Cornwall has a different economy in that it’s 30% tourist based, so it’s very dependent on others. Plus he’s wrong about professional roles. They exist in the nhs and schools and services. However dc mostly leave Cornwall to go to uni. That’s inevitable. As over 60% of 18 year olds don’t go to uni, many will do apprenticeships and be hairdressers. Of course, and why not?

I think teens across the board are having a harder time of it with social media etc but it is interesting that UK teens are a pretty significant outlier vs European peers. I'm Irish but lived in the UK for over a decade before moving home and still have lots of UK friends who are parents (primary school kids).

Of the OPs list of potential reasons, most of those would also apply here in Ireland - lack of affordable housing/ lack of supply of decent CAMHS support and, of course the weather. The only anecdotal difference I see is the lack of freedom of our UK friends kids vs our own - in terms of being allowed to play out/ hang around with friends/ walk to and from school (they're all London based so appreciate I'm not seeing a representation of the whole of UK!)

I've noticed a real difference in the confidence of my 8 year old since he started being allowed some independence - that ability to build resilience has to be important in later years and I wonder what we're losing as a result of that increase in fear as referenced by PPs. There's a quote by the author Jonathan Haidt ('The Anxious Generation') that, paraphrased, is something along the lines of us overestimating real life risks for our kids in terms of being allowed freedom and underestimating the risks of the online world - it can seem safer to have your primary/ young teen kids in the house on the screen that wandering around outdoors, I guess?

I recently watched Simon Reeve in Cornwall, part of the show discussed apprenticeships and that the main push at schools is for university, approximately 50% of students now go to Uni. In other European countries they offer real Apprenticeships in trades and see that these are as important as getting a degree.

At my daughter’s school her head of year told her she’d only amount to being a hairdresser 😲, what a bastard. Her school was awful, it was all about getting to Uni. I had to battle for an assessment as she was struggling with revision for her GCSEs, student services discovered that she is dyslexic, they had missed this right up until year 11, that’s why she bloody struggled. The comment about being a hairdresser was disgraceful, where does he have his hair cut? What a dick!!

Huge pressure on exam results? My niece is an average student in theory, but she works so hard to excel - she has just got the equivalent of straight As but is gutted she didn't get A*s. In my day, Bs and C's were impressive results.

Also, just something I notice - so many of my friends with kids have messy, unhomely feeling houses, some have chaotic messy houses. This seems to be the norm? I'm sure that a crazy messy house contributes to mental health negatively.

Part of it is everyone in the house works full-time, part of it is, it's so hard to constantly pick up after kids and part (I think) is we've been bred to think household domestic chores are unimportant & even beneath us.

I am not sure how high France rates on the happiness system, but all the French parents and children I know are obsessed with the Bacc and how they are doing.
In Belgium they are assessed continuously and if they fail they have to either repeat a year or transfer to another school if they're at the Grammar type school.
Again Belgian friends and family talk a lot about their exams and results etc.

If they don't do well enough in English or Maths here they have to resit.

But my point is that regardless, giving over 4 years of teenagers' lives to exam pressure (mocks, GCSEs that dictate what you can do at very narrow A levels, mocks that determine your provisional university offers, actual A levels) doesn't feel particularly healthy. Coming from another system I find it pretty shocking.

@Nuggetnuggety It’s not really blame, no. However people do have to take responsibility at some point in their lives. It’s actually better for them if they use opportunities to improve, eg stop smoking, eat healthier food. Go for a walk. Play with dc. I know some people find these things difficult and come from generations of people who have not taken responsibility. If we did, no need for SS.

i agree. Discontentment breeds discontentment. There’s no incentive to look on the bright side

On the weather issue, earlier winter darkness I think has an impact. Countries on a time zone an hour ahead such as Belgium and the Netherlands I have visited in winter and notice the difference.

Agree about academic specialisation too early too.

Have a look at the French system. It's not exactly child centric.

But in some European countries you get held back a year if you don’t pass. That could be far more damaging to mental health!

And did you ever think of taking photos of those outfits and sharing with friends? Nope! People would have thought you were up yourself and been very uncool thing to do.

It's a mindset too.
We've always had a pretty moany and negative culture. You only need to look here and anyone who posts positively about their life is accused of being smug or rubbing peoples noses into it.
People aren't encouraged to see the positives and those that post positive snapshots of their day eg on Facebook are accused of being fake or cause resentment and feelings of insecurity in others.
People don't realise that they too have those positive snapshots in their day and could also show off those moments (if they wanted to) and be comparatively similar.

I don't know what it's like in europe but I also think that the threat of being recorded and posted on social media if you do anything embarrassing, or get into an argument or whatever, must create a huge undercurrent of anxiety.

@coffeeandteav

We don’t have any of those things where I teach and we still have huge numbers of kids with anxiety so bad that they don’t come to school. The only identical factor between these kids is vast amounts of unmonitored time on the internet.

COVID led to a huge chunk of kids being patented by screens (and that it totally understandable). Parents were online working, not able to pay attention to what kids were doing (again, no fault of their own), kids were spending weeks tied to devices for school/ entertainment. And the behavioural issues post COVID have been horrific. I genuinely believe it’s because of online habits and social/ emotional damage cause by fewer IRL interactions. Social media is a fair environment and it encourages anti-social behaviours that don’t work when interacting in real life. Kids are confused about the gap between what they were taught is how to behave online and the reaction they get when they act out those behaviours in the real world. That causes social stress and anxiety.

I’d like to see a total ban on smart phones under the age of 18 and a total ban on social media under the age of 21.

We didn't have compulsary blazers - we had compulsary coats - why? because staying warm mattered more than appearances - the uniform is set now to improve the corporate brand of the school.
During my kid's GCSEs there was a massive downpour - all the kids were soaking wet - we got a letter from the head explaining the importance of wearing coats - it was bloody laughable - the kids had never worn coats - there was nowhere to put them, they weren't allowed coats in the building but suddenly when it's exam time it's the parent's fault they aren't being worn. Rules are being made for the school's image not the children's comfort or welfare.

I think 'average' kids are falling through a pretty massive crack in the floor of education and life in general.
It's always been the case to a certain extent that the kids who plod along were just left to get on with it. I speak as an 80s average kid. When I left school, after a brief stint in care work, I moved to factory work. The wages then were enough for me to rent a flat on my own without parental help and get a mortgage with my partner at 21. Not that the wages were great, but there was a sweet spot in the 90s when housing prices were relatively stable, cost of living wasn't huge, etc.

Now, the average kids have got no hope. There's fewer factories/manual jobs available, the wages won't get you anything. It's all very well people talking about 'trades' but not being academic doesn't equate to having the aptitude for skilled trades. Added to that, many trades have become more academically demanding than they were.

When my mother left school, she went straight into nursing at 16. When I was in care work, I could have trained to be a state enrolled nurse, which was more practical - based and you didn't need academic qualifications.
Now, to get into nursing college you need A levels or Btec.

There's far less employment 'for the masses' now that actually pays a living wage. It's one reason why kids now end up doing some Mickey mouse degree. What options have they really got? There's no 'reasonable adjustment' for just not being very good at stuff.

Our kids are under pressure to be good academically or have a reason why they aren't. Because, frankly, if you are an average kid, there's not a lot out there for you. Once, you would have been on the factory floor, maybe you would have moved up to supervisor or middle-management. Now it's much harder to start at the bottom and work your way up without much in the way of qualifications. Chances are you'll end up in a zero hours contract position or working 'part-time' for a big supermarket that really wants full time workers, but knows they can get people working 'overtime' whilst only having to give them pro-rata holidays, etc.

There's no respect for the working masses any more. My parents respected the fact that I got off my arse and worked for a living. They weren't disappointed I was on the factory floor. I was a productive member of society, making my own way in the world.

Who wants to do that now, even in the few places those jobs still exist? It barely pays enough to live on without government top-ups, people call you lazy even if you work 12 hours a day doing heavy lifting, everyone wants their kids earning six figures even if they really haven't the brains for it, and the kids who would have once been 'factory fodder' are now dropping into a big hole of doing Mickey mouse degrees to get a minimum wage admin job because at least that's a bit more respected than McDonald's.

Schools have changed a lot since covid. I don't think parents realise how badly the lack of staff is biting.

@coffeeandteav exactly. Schools have not been the same for decades. They've changed significantly in the last 5 years, I would agree.

I disagree with you as I think it’s not any better in Scandinavia. Go to Southern Finland for example. It can be glorious during the summer but the season is much shorter. Snow fall in early May is not unsual and it starts to cool off drastically in September. From late October to March it’s dark and sleet will rain down on you horizontally. Fallen snow in towns and cities is mainly brown due to the traffic.