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Social media, poverty and lack of exercise drive mental health crisis

Pastoral issues Safeguarding Pupil wellbeing Mental health Poverty Coronavirus
Heavy use of social media, growing up in poverty, a lack of physical exercise and being bullied are all factors in the Generation Z mental health and wellbeing crisis – with problems being particularly acute for girls.

And problems – which existed pre-pandemic – have been exacerbated during Covid-19, with an estimated one in six young people now having a probable mental illness.

The mental health challenges facing Generation Z – those born around the year 2000 – have been laid bare in a wide-ranging report from the Prince’s Trust and the think-tank Education Policy Institute (Crenna-Jennings, 2021).

The study is based on data from the Millennium Cohort Study and examines the personal experiences of young people in England at age 11, 14 and 17. It also includes focus group responses from November 2020.

The resulting report issues an especially stark warning for girls. While the wellbeing and self-esteem of all young people drops as they move into secondary school and continues to fall as they grow older, girls see a far greater decline than boys, it finds.

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