Happiness for Cynics
This week, Marie and Pete discuss The Children’s Society “The Good Childhood Report 2020” and the troubling decline in teens’ happiness levels over the past few years.
Transcript
M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.
P: And I’m Peter Furness, a bouncy castle lover, a naked swims partaker and an exuberant celebrator of sunsets. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.
M: So if you’re feeling low.
P: But if your only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.
M: Or maybe you just want more.
P: Then this is the place to be!
M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey today’s episode is about happy teens.
[Happy Intro Music]
P: Ok, so this is an interesting one, happy teens?
M: Yes.
P: When you proposed this topic, my mind instantly went to the cynical side of my brain. Going ‘Oh bloody millennials, they’re so boring and everything and you know –
M: Boring? [Laugh]
P: Everything’s a trial. Get over it, get a life. But-
M: You’re showing your age, Peter.
P: Yes, yes, I am definitely. But the sad thing is that when you actually start looking at the science, it’s tough for a young person out there these days. And I didn’t realise how tough it was going to quite a serious episode.
M: Ooh! You’ve done a flip?
P: Yeah, yeah.
M: All right. So what prompted this episode is a report from The Children’s Society over in Europe called the Good Childhood Report 2020 and they recently put out their findings and it’s, it’s really troubling and look, it’s to be expected during Covid.
P: I think this goes beyond Covid this is-
M: Absolutely.
P: -a much broader perspective in terms of the world and our society and what teens now have to deal with. And I think the.. sorry I cut you off completely there Marie. [Laugh]
M: It’s ok, keep going.
P: Damnit I’m standing up. I’m shocked thinking about the rates of information that are coming at us the way that we can be hounded by so much social media, devices. The Internet makes it so much easier for people to reach us, for example. You can’t escape. I’m thinking, particularly in terms of things like bullying and on social media pressuring us to look a certain way and I know you’re going to talk about that. When you actually take the time to sit and think about it, it is tougher these days to be a kid.
M: And expectations have changed. So when we were young, we used to do sports because it was fun. If you did sports or you did drama or you did volunteering at the local pound or whatever it was. Your parents might push you a little bit to do some kind of extracurricular activity, normally just to get you out of the house.
P: “You’re in Mum’s way in the kitchen.”
[Laughter]
P: [Woman’s voice] “I’ve just done the floor!” [Laugh]
M: Get out of the house, make sure you’re back before the lights are on in the street.
P: Yeah, there we go. [Laugh]
M: Nowadays, though, there is a checklist of things that young adults need to do in order to be well rounded adults and even in the States to get accepted into university. Your life is determined by the sheer volume of tick box activities you can do between 11 to 17 in order to round out your personality and yourself. And so playing sport is about how much can you excel, playing… Having a job is about what type of skills can you gain. Doing any other type of extra correct curricular activity is about rounding out your resume so that you can be positioned-
P: Prepared, ready, yeah.
M: Yeah, exactly. And that’s taken all the joy.
P: Mmm. I was shocked the other day, talking to a client who has an eight year old son who was doing mountain biking. No, not mountain biking he was doing swimming and he was telling me that the other kids were doing better times because they were training six times a week, at eight years of age these kids are doing six days of training to be the best swimmer. I was shocked.
M: Yep, yep.
P: Where’s the playtime? Where’s the time to run around trees, scrape your knees, climb the.. run away from mum and jump off the bridge into the river?
M: Yes, absolutely. So that pressure and stress on today’s teens is huge. And that’s just one, one small thing. So the pressure and stress to do stuff rather than.. So it’s the extrinsic motivation rather than the intrinsic motivation that we talked about rather than enjoying the activity. For me playing volleyball, I didn’t do it so that I could tick a box and get into a better university.
P: Yeah.
M: I loved volleyball, loved it, right?
P: Yes.
M: So they’ve lost all of that. Then you’ve got what you mentioned before the social media and that pressure there. Can you imagine having someone constantly following you around telling you I don’t like your outfit today? I don’t think you’re very good looking. I don’t think you’re funny at all. What’s that big pimple on your forehead, Pete?
P: Yeah, yeah.
M: Really, if you put on some weight, should you really be eating that?
P: Yes, mm, mm.
M: The constant pressure of having someone there watching you all the time. That is social media.
P: Yep, pretty much.
M: That’s what social media is. And if you don’t partake in the social media, the social ostracize you.
P: Yes, pretty much.
M: So there’s that. So this report, let’s go into the report. So pre-Covid there was a really troubling trend and decline in a lot of kids happiness. And so we’re talking between 10 to 15 year olds in general, there was a decline in happiness with friends, with schools with a lot of the different elements of kids lives. The one thing that did remain constant was happiness with families so that is actually nice.
P: Yes.
M: But as we know, when kids reach teen years, they’re trying to pull away from family and find themselves and create their own identity. And that’s very heavily tied to friends. So their decrease in happiness with friends can be a really deep impacting factor in their happiness.
P: Yeah, right.
M: And then, of course, this report’s come out and been surveying people this year, so 2020 in the middle of Covid and everything is just jumbled. Everything has gone even worse for people.
P: Yes.
M: So 15 year olds in the UK were amongst the saddest and least satisfied with their lives through Europe, and worries about relationships with friends, appearance and school were the three worst impacted areas for kids that are impacting their happiness. Not good times for kids.
P: No. So I actually went for the Australian experience with this and went into The Australian Loneliness Report, which was published in 2018 and it says that younger adults compared to adults over 35 are reporting more social interaction anxiety (slightly higher [than teens]). That’s among 18 to 35 year olds.
But also more depressive symptoms were coming through in the 18 to 25 year old bracket and that’s feeding in directly from what you’re talking about Marie in terms of the teens. So is this an epidemic and a problem that we can cut off in the teenage years?
M: I think that loneliness.. So World Health Organisation has said that loneliness is an epidemic. They’ve got a lot of research into this, and I think most of us immediately think of Grandma and Grandpa, who are isolated at home and perhaps have mobility issues that can’t get out and of course that’s going to be a lonely time for them. We don’t realise that this is an epidemic that is hitting every generation right now, it is hitting our teens, and I think that technology has a lot to do with this.
P: Definitely.
M: And it’s training us to have a back up, which is ‘Oh, I don’t know anyone here. I’m going to look at my phone’, right? Rather than working through the discomfort and growing as a person to better your social skills.
P: Yes.
M: So you go to a party and you feel awkward and you don’t have a phone. You find a way to make a friend.
P: Yep, exactly.
M: Yeah, and we’re not doing that. We’re not doing that anymore as kids, we can hide behind the technology, so we’re more awkward as a society I think. [Laugh]
P: Interesting.
M: Also, if you look into a lot of it the way that our cities are structured nowadays, there are more people living by themselves than ever before in human history, and it is seen as something to strive towards. Living in a share home is not normal as you get older. It is not common [or] as common as it used to be, because our standards of living have gotten better.
P: [Yeah]
M: We can afford now as a single adult to get a small apartment by ourselves, and you might come in and out from the garage up to your apartment back and never see your neighbours.
P: Yep, exactly.
M: And that is the way that our world, the mega cities, and increased density of housing all of that is impacting our loneliness levels as well.
P: Mm. And that’s a big one for kids playing in the neighbour’s backyard. Getting the ball from across Mr. Biggs’s backyard because went over in a cricket match that was six and out, that’s not happening.
M: All the kids playing on the street, doesn’t happen.
P: No, that interacting is not happening as much so this is one of the reasons behind why kids are finding it harder and the cynics like me need to take a little bit of a chill pill and be more understanding. [Laugh]
M: Definitely so, one of the big things that this research found was that fear of failure is really impacting kids nowadays. So teenagers again, we’re talking about teens, so exam stress, bullying, school culture. All of it’s just adding up. But there are high levels of fear of failure amongst our teens, so this is kind of 15 [up] older teens, and a lot of them are just, they’re just struggling with the academic achievement and the pressures that are being placed on them.
P: Yep, right.
P: Yeah. Right.
M: So really, really sad.
I did want to talk a bit about education now for teens, since it is such a big part of their lives.
P: It’s also where, a lot of social interaction occurs for the teens is at school.
M: Yeah.
P: That’s where you are. You’re away from the home you’re away from Mom and Dad and you’re forced to interact with a bunch of other kids that you don’t necessarily like and that’s where you learn life skills. It’s where you learn how to deal with projection and bullying and all that sort of stuff that does happen and naturally happens in an environment where you put the kids together, Lord of the Flies stuff.
[Laughter]
P: A book everyone should read.
M: Yeah, good book, definitely.
P: So what do we need to think up in our education systems? What other things did the report say?
M: Well I think back to that intrinsic connect, extrinsic motivation and what, what drives us and what makes us happy. So rather than a check box of things you need to do to be a well rounded human way need to rethink. And the Nordic countries again are doing such a good job in this area. And it is about the joy of learning rather than the tick box exercise to get you through to the next year and the last year and out the back into university and a good job.
P: [Laugh]
M: And it’s that that treadmill we’ve been talking about and that is shown not to make you happy. So in the Nordic countries, there again, looking at what makes you happy and they rather than sitting down and reading a chapter of a text book and then rote learning and writing about rocks, they get kids out to the playground and playing with rocks. They have to go collect 20 rocks and they bring them back in, and then they’ll divide them up into the types of rocks they are, and they’ll teach them that way.
P: Right.
M: And if the kids don’t feel like doing that that day, they might be off learning or climbing trees and learning about gravity. What happens when you fall?
[Laughter]
P: The experience, experiential as opposed to the academic approach.
M: Well, no academic, they’re both academic, but the traditional, as opposed to the traditional approach.
P: That’s read and learn.
M: Yes, and let’s take all of the love of learning out.
P: Yes,
M: And force you to rote learn a bunch of things so that when you finish school you think ‘Hoorah, I don’t have to learn ever again.’
P: [Laugh]
M: Yeah, and as we know, growth mindset is so important, to growing and learning over your life and is actually a factor in happiness. So our whole education system needs a rethink. And that’s a whole other episode, [laugh] to be honest.
P: [Laugh]
M: Yeah, but there is just so much in here that sadly we haven’t caught up on the 21st century from an education point of view. We’re still teaching that industrialised way of learning that hasn’t changed since the early 19 hundred’s when it was first put in.
P: Hhmm.
M: We haven’t caught up yet, and I think a lot of that is adding to the stress and pressure that our teens are feeling.
P: Because teens are being left behind, some teens are being left behind because they don’t learn?
M: I mean there is that definitely, but we’re just not giving them skills they need for the 21st century.
P: OK.
M: We’re not teaching them that happiness isn’t about how many boxes you can tick it’s about the enjoyment of ticking boxes [laugh].
P: Is it about more play. Is it about allowing more space to have other things come into your life, other influences because we are so pressured with achievement and getting there, I mean even at year six and year five getting 100% are getting an A on the test is still the goal.
M: Rather than exploring the joy of maths, that’s the different.
P: Ok.
M: And if you love maths, you should be able to go to year seven level of maths. Even though you’re in year six, because you love it as long as the teacher is also teaching you balance, so you might love maths, but what can we love in English, too?
P: Yeah, righteo.
M: And kids who take themselves through their learning journey are far more engaged, and there’s actually a whole lot of research now into what used to be the weird kids who did home schooling.
P: [Laugh] Yes.
M: Home schooling was for the weird, eccentric, hippies or whatever else.. cults.
P: [Laugh]
M: You know, or whatever else, that stuff. But there is so much research now they’ve organised in the States. There is so much to be said for the kids who direct their own learning based on their own interests.
P: Mmm.
M: That doesn’t mean that they get to not do certain things.
P: Yep.
M: These kids are so much more balanced. And the fear was always that they wouldn’t develop social skills needed because they weren’t at school.
P: Yeah.
M: Nowadays, they’ve organised like I said. So they’re doing the field trips with other home schooled kids and things like that.
P: And that’s a change storm, they’re changing it up completely of how we interact on an educational level.
M: Yep.
P: But again, it’s about balance. So as you were saying, it’s finding a solution outside of what we need because okay, so we are not interacting at a school level. So let’s have a field trip that come together and that has to be organised and generated from the top down.
M: Yep, and allowing home school kids to band together into a baseball team and join the local schools comp.
P: Yeah.
M: As a bunch of home school kids so that they can still play sports, team, sports and things like that. But what they’ve done is they’ve looked at the education system and seen that there is a gap there, and these kids are well out performing in intellect and IQ and general EQ as well, emotional intelligence. A lot of the kids that are going through all your prep schools.
P: [Laugh]
P: So how can we change that? How do we create situations as a, as an adult looking at interacting with teenagers and trying to help them get a little bit more social interaction and bring up their happiness levels?
M: Look, we were products of the same system that they’re going through. Just theirs is on steroids.
P: [Laugh] That’s a good description.
M: Right? So we need to role model the right behaviours for our youth. We need to put the phones down at dinner. We need to do around the table, ‘what are we grateful for today kids?’ conversation before we dig in to our meals.
P: Right.
M: If you’re not religious and you’re not thanking God, you’re, you’re just going around the table and still doing that exercise of what is ‘what are we grateful for today, kids?’
P: So is this coming back to some of that old school things that we have talked about.
M: Yeah.
P: This seems to be a trend, but a lot of happiness movement, it’s coming back to some routines and connection between the generations. In my own experience, having the kids around Grandma has been a huge influence for them. And don’t get me wrong Grandma’s difficult to deal with sometimes.
M: [Laugh]
P: But the kids have learned to negotiate that space, and I remember watching my niece deal with Grandma in the back of the car and it was great because she was, she was finding her own way and eventually she fell asleep.
[Laughter]
P: But they’re was, because Grandma was a part of their daily lives, they had to negotiate that. And it’s now a source of comedic relief if you like in terms of conversations like ‘ Oh that’s a Grandma statement, or that’s what Grandma would do.’ But it’s a relative experience.
M: Yep.
P: And it’s bringing that into connection between the generations which is so important. And again the…
M: Face to face.
P: The face to face, the dining room table conversations and having those routines of gratitude and saying, ‘OK, phones are off the table, we’re all sitting and we’re all enjoying a meal together, spending time together.’
M: Yep and don’t make it a special one off, it’s just what we do in our house.
P: It’s a Sunday thing.
M: Yep, and one of the other things that I think a lot of people have realised through Covid is, it could be so simple, it could be baking cookies with kids. It could be doing gardening with kids, the puzzles, games, all this tech free stuff. It’s returning to that simplicity, but it’s the activity of just enjoying doing something.
And the last one that I’ll throw in there is ‘let your kids be bored.’
P: Yes, “the groundswell of creativity is boredom.”
M: [Laugh]
P: That’s not the right quote but someone said it, who was it? [Laugh]
M: There’s two things to it. Boredom creates an opportunity for creativity. But also boredom helps you to feel uncomfortable and you never grow without feeling uncomfortable.
P: Yes, yes. I agree with that.
M: So there’s definitely, and they’re gonna hate you for it. But explain why. Kids are smart.
P: Yep.
M: Yep.
P: I like it.
[Laughter]
P: Ok, I think we’re there. Thanks for listening. And if you like this podcast, then please subscribe and don’t forget to visit us at www.marieskelton.com, which shows a lot of the research and the articles that we talk about here on the podcast.
M: Including our new book, which was recently launched.
P: Yay!
M: If you’re interested in the book, go to our website and you can find where to buy it but we’re also on Amazon. Alright, thanks for joining us.
P: Remember people, choose happiness.
[Happy Exit Music]
Related content: Read Moving On article 5 ways to teach kids resiliency and happiness , listen to our Podcast: The Importance of Being Social (E14)
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