According to Academy of Finland Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro, the wellbeing of adolescents would be improved by, among other things, helping them get attached to their groups, teaching them interaction skills, and curbing competition by increasing student intake.
Academy of Finland Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro from the University of Helsinki has been investigating the wellbeing of adolescents and schoolchildren since the 1980s. Her recent findings have been alarming.
Some of Salmela-Aro's studies are longitudinal, meaning that certain groups of young people have been observed for several years. The latest example is a yearly follow-up of roughly 3,000 young Helsinki residents born in 2000. The follow-up started on the seventh grade and continued till the students graduated from the upper secondary school.
In this study, which concluded just before the pandemic, researchers were able to recognise five different paths of wellbeing. Three of these paths covered 90 per cent of the pupils. In all of these three paths, malaise increased. In the other of the remaining two groups, malaise remained high throughout the research period, and in the other group it stayed low.
The results in total turned out to be worrying: school wellbeing had not increased in any of the groups.
"We have never seen a similar situation before," says Salmela-Aro, who is trained in developmental psychology.
She identifies measures that could help reverse the situation.
1. Support for transitions
According to Salmela-Aro, it appears that rapid increases in malaise can be linked with school transitions, such as the step from lower to upper secondary education. In transitions, the environment often changes, with the old circle of friends left behind.
"It's important for young people to feel that they are attached to a group. We should provide help in this. The support for transitions does not necessarily have to be substantial, but it should be targeted appropriately. Precise measures could be defined through research."
2. Scrap the concept of screen time
Young people spend a lot of time on their smartphones. This is particularly confusing to the generations who have not grown up in a digital world. In a way, it is natural to assume a connection when the time spent on mobile phones and the malaise of young people have increased at the same rate.
"However, the problems arise in another way. Young people who find themselves very lonely or, for example, have mental health problems start using their mobile phones in an addictive manner, as such devices are designed to be extremely addictive. It creates a vicious circle where school performance starts to decline or malaise to increase."
According to Salmela-Aro, using screen time alone as a measure of wellbeing should in fact be abandoned altogether.
