‘We as teens bottle it up and pretend to be happy’

Many local teenagers felt lonely, isolated, and unsupported as pandemic raged, survey finds

A teenager who spoke from the heart was uncertain if adults would listen.

“Lots of teens can’t tell parents their problems, because they just get pushed aside or get told that they’ve had it worse,” the youth, aged between 13 and 15, told researchers.

“So we as teens bottle it up and pretend to be happy, while it’s so hard on the inside. It gets very lonely when you feel that the people that are closest to you don’t care about your mental well-being.”

The loneliness felt by that teen is not unusual, new University of Waterloo research shows.

Researchers surveyed 1,074 local youths last year to find that while the COVID-19 pandemic raged, half of teenagers aged 16 to 18 felt lonely and almost half felt isolated. Older teens felt more lonely and more isolated than younger children aged nine to 12.

Compared to younger kids, older teens felt less positive about their mental or physical health. They felt less valued as community members, and they felt less likely to get the help and support they need from their family.

As kids grow up, “life’s more complex. Schools are more challenging. Peer romantic relationships are there. That’s not easy to navigate always,” said Dillon Browne, a UW psychology professor who analyzed the findings.

Some teens juggle jobs and schools. Some may be anxious about their future. Some teens move heavily into social media after not being online as younger kids.

“Social media, that’s a place where there’s a lot of opportunity to connect, but also some inherent risks,” Browne said. “So life is getting more complicated, and that’s not always easy.”

Findings on child well-being are part of a new snapshot of data released by the Children and Youth Planning Table, a partnership of more than 60 agencies that aim for happy, healthy children.

The data “points to a concerning picture around mental health in general,” said Alison Pearson, manager of community engagement at the Region of Waterloo.

Evidence points to damage done to children during the pandemic, when steps taken to limit the spread of COVID-19 cut kids off from sports, clubs, friends and activities.

“It’s important for young people to have opportunities to connect and experience mastery and agency over their lives,” Browne said. “When we consider the way that the pandemic has impacted kids, it’s really taken away a lot of those non-academic opportunities

where children thrive.”

Researchers hope the data can show how different youths have different interests and needs, and point the way toward solutions.

One possible solution is to help children develop a stronger sense of belonging — “feeling like they belong at school, belong at home, belong in their peer group, belong in the community,” Browne said.

Other survey data from the planning table has highlighted how child well-being differs by community, pointing to Cambridge as a city with the greatest needs. Still to come are snapshots that differentiate children’s needs by gender identity, racial identity, special needs and more.

Analyzing subsets of children and releasing the findings shines a light on inequities and reveals trends or patterns that might be hidden in data that lumps all children together, the planning table says.

“We get a chance to see how some of those inequities play out,” Pearson said. “It’s shining a light and hearing those voices more clearly than we are able to when we treat the data as one big group.”

The planning table’s transparency contrasts with the secrecy imposed by the Waterloo Region District School Board on some of its data on child wellbeing.

In a different survey of 27,428 students conducted before the pandemic, the school board similarly found that children feel worse about themselves as they age. But the board refuses to release data for each school, saying the information could cause “harm and prejudice” if the public knew.

“Each school community might be taking different approaches, at different times, to support student well-being. We would not want this data to be used by the general public out of context,” the board said in rejecting a Freedom of Information request for data on child well-being at every school.