Teenagers are happier than ten years ago

YOUNGER teenagers are happier and healthier now than children were a decade ago, a study said yesterday.

It found that the ‘Facebook generation’ of youngsters are less likely to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or cannabis or get bullied.

A growing proportion of 11 to 15-yearolds engage in behaviour that would make their parents proud, the St Andrews University study said. They eat fruit and vegetables, take exercise, clean their teeth and talk to their mothers and fathers.

however the study said that – despite the increasing levels of health and well-being – adolescents now are just as likely to be fat as the generation of the 2000s.

The findings, put together with the help of the World health Organisation, are the latest to underline the increasing trend for teenagers to avoid risky behaviour.

Some researchers have pointed to a ‘Facebook effect’ that has led teenagers who would once have spent their spare time on the streets instead devoting it to playing with gadgets in their bedrooms.

Disapproval of smoking, drunkenness, drug abuse and teen mothers is also likely to have influenced teenagers’ behaviour.

Professor Candace Currie, of St Andrews University, said: ‘There is much to celebrate about the health and well-being of many young people today.’

But she added that ‘others continue to experience real and worrying problems’.

Some countries, including Scotland, showed evidence that fewer youngsters took daily exercise in 2010 than in 2002.