The Children’s Society’s 14th annual Good Childhood Report has once again used Understanding Society data to research trends in children’s wellbeing over time. The 2025 report shows that children’s happiness with their life as a whole has declined – and has done consistently for several years.
The report’s headline findings this year include:
- for the first time, children’s average happiness was significantly lower across all six aspects of life measured by Understanding Society in 2022/23 compared to when it started in 2009/10
- school and appearance remained the areas of life that children and young people were most commonly unhappy with – over 15% were unhappy with their appearance in 2022/23
- more than double the proportion of girls (21.2%) than boys (9.3%) were unhappy with how they looked.
Understanding Society’s youth questionnaire asks 10-15-year-olds to rate their feelings on a seven-point scale from ‘completely happy’ to ‘not at all happy’, asking about six aspects of life:
- schoolwork
- appearance
- family
- friends
- school
- life as a whole.
This year, the Children’s Society also carried out their own survey, which found that children and young people’s biggest worries were about:
- getting good grades in school or college – 43% said they were ‘very’ or ‘quite’ worried about this
- rising prices – 40%
- crime – 38%.
In his foreword to the report, Mark Russell, Chief Executive of the Children’s Society, says: “Year after year we see that life is just too hard for too many children, and we see the increasing challenges they face … a good childhood should not be a matter of chance, it is something every child deserves, yet we report once again that their life satisfaction, wellbeing and happiness continue to decline.”
The Society uses its report as part of its work campaigning for government to “build the future young people need”, including calling for action on issues such as:
- early mental health support for young people
- protecting children during the cost of living crisis
- exempting care leavers from council tax
- guardians for unaccompanied child refugees.
