Research from Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University challenges the notion that young people today are more burdened by emotional and behavioural issues, revealing instead that the nature of their difficulties has evolved over recent decades.
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary say there is no evidence that today’s children and teenagers carry a heavier overall burden of emotional and behavioural problems than previous generations. The team, from ELTE PPK’s Institute of Education, analysed 175 representative studies from around the world and concluded that, over roughly the past four decades, the profile of young people’s difficulties has changed more than their total level. According to the university, the work was published in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.
The meta-analysis examined data collected between 1981 and 2019 using standardised Child Behavior Checklist questionnaires completed by parents, teachers and young people themselves. It covered children and adolescents aged one to 18 and took account of age, sex, response rates and geography. Boglárka Vekety, the study’s lead author, said the combined symptom load had not shifted over time, even though some individual problems had declined while others had become more common.
Among younger children, the study found falls in externalising behaviours such as aggression, based on both parent reports and self-reports. Parents and teachers also reported reductions in internalising problems, including anxiety, depression and psychosomatic complaints. By contrast, the pattern in adolescence was more mixed. Parents reported more anxiety and depressive symptoms, while teenage boys were more likely to report physical complaints linked to psychological stress, such as headaches and stomach aches.
The study also found that social problems had risen among European teenagers in self-reports, even as parents reported less rule-breaking behaviour. Parents additionally described more attention and thinking problems over the past 40 years, particularly among younger children and teenage boys, although teachers and the young people themselves did not confirm that trend. The authors said the findings do not support the idea that younger generations are broadly worse off mentally, but rather suggest that the nature of the difficulties has changed. They noted one important limitation: the analysis did not cover changes after the coronavirus pandemic.
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