A new report from The Children’s Society says children’s average subjective wellbeing scores were significantly lower in 2022-23 than when Understanding Society started in 2009-10.
The new publication, How Has Children’s Wellbeing Changed? Reviewing the Evidence from the Good Childhood Research Programme, examines trends in children and young people’s subjective wellbeing, plus findings from consultations with young people in 2025.
The report says each annual Good Childhood Report since 2017 “has outlined a significant decline in children’s happiness with their life as a whole compared to the start of the Understanding Society study. Findings from consultations suggest that this decline in children and young people’s wellbeing could relate to aspects like the multiple pressures that young people and their families encounter, against a background of decline in community mentality.”
Although the majority of children and young people appear to lead relatively happy lives, “an important proportion of children and young people who have low subjective wellbeing (or low life satisfaction)”.
Other findings include:
- children’s use of social media is not the main factor in predicting changes in their life satisfaction, but high intensity use seems to have a detrimental effect on wellbeing
- in 2021-22 and 2022-23, girls aged 10 to 15 were significantly less happy than boys with life as a whole, appearance, family, and school.
The Children’s Society is campaigning for a national wellbeing measurement programme “to further our understanding, at scale, of the factors shaping children and young people’s subjective wellbeing”. They say this will help them understand “the experiences of different groups of children, for example, with specific characteristics or in different localities” and “enable sharing of local and national data to inform policymaking and practice”.
Findings and impactInforming PolicyFamily and householdsYoung people
