CANADA
Shiny, happy teenagers
Teenagers report the highest levels of life satisfaction of any Canadians, defying the stereotype of unhappy. misunderstood youth. What's behind this trend? Experts say it's because we care more.
Meet Calgarian Omar Bainto, 17. The recent Lester B. Pearson High School graduate says he's got great friends, awesome parents and a wonderful girlfriend. He volunteers and has big plans for the future. "I'm just, well ... I'm happy," says the self-professed well-adjusted young man, who doesn't hate authority figures or feel overly moody on a regular basis.
Something seems suspicious. Everyone knows that teenagers are supposed to be moody, broody, angsty balls of anti-joy who listen to emo music while writing negative thoughts in journals and hating their parents, just for the heck of it. Right? Wrong.
According to new data from Statistics Canada, teens are the happiest people in Canada. And they're getting happier. In fact, 96 per cent of Canadians aged 12 to 19 reported they were highly satisfied with life in 2009. That's compared to 94 per cent of teens who reported either being satisfied or very satisfied with their lives in 2008. Each year the Canadian Community Health Survey asks Canadians to rank their life satisfaction, and the data shows that teens are getting more satisfied every year.
"My group is pretty content. Their biggest problems would be stress with school," says Omar. The jovial teen and his buddies are about as far away from Kurt Cobain as you can imagine. In fact, Omar was an infant when Cobain died in 1994. That whole "teenage angst" thing is not really something Omar can or wants to relate to. He and his gratified group don't fit the moody mould.
One of the defining images of life is a few years of grumpy, anti-social glumness before graduating to adulthood. Culture has created a dour typecast of juveniles from the days of Shakespeare's ill-fated lovers Romeo and Juliet, to J.D. Salinger's angst-ridden anti-hero Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, to filmmaker John Hughes's explorations of teen turmoil, most notably the 1985 cult classic The Breakfast Club. Then there's Cobain of '90s grunge band Nirvana -- the reluctant rock star became a poster boy for disenfranchised youth.
So what's changed? Why is life supposedly so peachy for the teens of 2010? According to the experts, teens are happy because their parents (the baby boomers and gen Xers) are really good at being moms and dads. These parents have put a ton of resources into kids, from school and extracurricular programs, to counsellors and sport and recreation opportunities.
Reginald Bibby, Board of Governors Research Chair in Sociology at the University of Lethbridge and author of The Emerging Millennials*, has spent the last three decades studying teen life quality as the head of Project Teen Canada, a series of Canadian research projects examining values, attitudes, behaviour and expectations of Canadian teenagers. The surveys are done every four years and involve approximately 4,000 15-to 19-year-olds. Bibby has seen the lives of teens improve markedly.
The reasons? Many of them are simple -- society cares more about teenagers today. Teens in Canada have access to myriad resources, while their parents are more committed and open-minded than ever before. "Teens haven't reached utopia yet, but life in general is a whole lot better," says Bibby. "Just talk to some grandparents about what it was like for them growing up, getting the strap for instance. Or, talk to the boomers about their childhood, about what it was like being latchkey kids. We place a very high priority on young people now," says Bibby, whose latest findings are contained in The Emerging Millennials. Bibby's research has found three key reasons why teen life quality is through the roof.
First, there's what he calls "the boomer legacy." Baby boomer and generation X parents have created a life for their children that places value on education, sharing of information, technology and a balance of personal and professional success.
Second, young people are a high priority in North American society, where schools and youth-based institutions have never been better prepared or funded.
Third, teens in Canada have been brought up with more freedom of choice than any previous generation. They have the Internet, iPods, video games, social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, cellphones and a wealth of other technological advances to keep them busy, connected to one another and intrigued with life.
All of these aspects are incredibly emancipating for teens," says Bibby. Since the 1980s, there have been significant decreases in teen smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use, as well as a drop in teen violence. "The combination of freedom of choice and a wealth of resources and things to do has some interesting consequences. The big thing when I was growing up in a small (town) used to be to get drunk on a Saturday night. Well, who needs to get drunk when you have video games, iPods, TV, Facebook and music?" says Bibby. "There's still a distance to go, and there are still teens at risk. But, what we're seeing is that overall situation is the patterns are positive."
There are other reasons. Yvonne Hebert, a professor at the University of Calgary who specializes in the sociology of youth, identity and diversity issues, says the tolerance and respect the average teens feel for one another contributes to their general well-being. Hebert describes teens today as cosmopolitan. "Many have travelled. They've seen more, they might have migrated or immigrated or just gone on vacations throughout the world and Canada," she says. These global experiences, according to Hebert, have made teenagers well aware of the political, cultural and economic problems that plague the planet. Through her interviews and studies of adolescents, Hebert has found this global knowledge has given adolescents a greater sense of obligation to others.
"They see themselves as citizens of the world," she says. "They're quite well aware of child-labour issues in other countries and those less fortunate than themselves. They're far more likely to get involved socially and volunteer," she says. "They're accepting and curious about one another's background and culture."
That certainly applies to Omar and his group of friends. His dad is from the Philippines and was raised Muslim, while his mom was brought up in small-town Alberta by devout Baptists. "We had to set aside our religions and consider our family our new religion," says Bert Bainto from the family's Marlborough Park home. Shelley Bainto says the couple tried to teach Omar to not only accept, but to understand other cultures and value systems. "The kids his age are way more tolerant than they were 20 years ago. It was very evident at Omar's graduation ... whether someone wears a hijab to school or stuff about sexuality, these kids don't bat an eye at each other," she says. "It's great."
Omar's girlfriend Anita Chowdhury, 17, also grew up in Canada. Her parents are from Bangladesh. "We live in a very materialistic age and society, but at the same time we have more freedom," says Anita. "Teens are more comfortable expressing their ideas and thoughts. We have freedom of choice about where we go, religion and our ideas."
Yet that doesn't preclude teenagers from those old behaviours that gave parents ulcers, such as sneaking out at night to go drinking and who knows what else. Right? Omar says he knows the way to avoid the bad stuff is to make good choices. "The pressure to drink is still there, but it's easy to cope with because it's about the people you choose to hang out with. My group are on the same page: none of us want to drink, so we don't."
If they don't drink, smoke, do drugs like they used to, are their lives as boring as they sound? What exactly, do teens do for fun? Omar says he spends his days volunteering, reading, catching flicks with friends, hanging out with his parents, grabbing a bite to eat with his girlfriend and applying for university scholarships. He plans on taking a five-week French program in Nova Scotia this summer before heading to Carleton University in Ottawa to begin a program in public affairs and policy management. "We keep him too busy to be troubled," says Bert Bainto.
So, things are pretty much near perfect then. Right? Well, no, of course not. " Not everyone is super happy," says Omar. "I volunteer at the Distress Centre, so I know. Teenagers don't exactly call up there to complain about how happy they are." The most common issues he hears about involve problems with parents divorcing, family abuse and stress from relationships and school. " When I listen to a call from a teen in trouble, I realize how lucky I am just to be in such a good environment in every aspect from family to friends and school," says Omar. "I feel get a lot of satisfaction when I'm able to be there, and help out some of the teens who aren't doing so well."
By Theresa Tayler
4 July 200
http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Shiny+happy+teenagers/3233784/story.html
* The Emerging Millenials by Reginald Bibby, Sarah Russell and Ron Rolheiser is in our bookstore:
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