The UK’s teenagers have the bottom levels of happiness and life satisfaction in Europe, a latest study has found.
The Good Childhood Report 2024 was compiled by Christian charity, The Children’s Society, which said it painted a “deeply worrying picture” about how young people within the UK feel.
The report is predicated on the findings of The Children’s Society’s own annual household survey in 2024 and an evaluation of knowledge from 27 European countries belonging to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
The report reveals that 1 / 4 of 15-year-old students within the UK (25.2%) reported low life satisfaction in 2022 – essentially the most recent data available – a far greater proportion than the 16.6% average across the identical age group in the opposite 26 countries.
By contrast, only 6.7% of Dutch teens reported low life satisfaction.
UK girls are significantly unhappier than their peers in other European countries. Nearly a 3rd (30.9%) of UK girls aged 15 reported low life satisfaction, in comparison with just one in five (21.4%) of the identical age across Europe.
Life satisfaction for each young girls and boys within the UK declined between 2015 and 2022 more rapidly than other parts of Europe – by 1.03 points for UK girls, in comparison with 0.77 points for women on average across Europe, and 0.80 points for UK boys, in comparison with 0.41 points for boys on average across Europe.
The UK has a number of the highest rates of food poverty in Europe with one in 10 UK 15 yr olds (11%) skipping meals no less than once every week because of economic pressures – putting the UK above only Bulgaria, Romania, and Lithuania.
UK youths aged 10 to 17 from financially strained households were found to have lower low life satisfaction than their peers in additional affluent households.
Commenting on the findings, Children’s Society Mark Russell, said that “alarm bells are ringing”.
“UK teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-olds recording the bottom life satisfaction on average across 27 European nations,” he said.
“It’s time for change, and we’re committed to leading the way in which.”
