Commissioned by the European Parliament, an international group of experts with the support of the Swiss Jacobs Foundation conducted the world's first large-scale survey of 53 thousand adolescents aged 8 to 12 from 15 countries. As reported by "Russkaya Germaniya", the survey was conducted among residents of Algeria, Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Spain, Colombia, Nepal, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Estonia, Ethiopia, South Africa, and South Korea. The goal of the study, called "Children's Worlds. International Survey of Children's Well-Being", was to obtain clear data on children's lives and daily activities, as well as their perceptions and assessments of their well-being.
The study also aimed to develop recommendations for improving children's well-being for dissemination among children themselves, their parents, specialists, and the general public, as well as among decision-makers and those influencing public opinion. As the researchers hope, the collected data will help EU statesmen and all other countries improve educational and social youth policies.
Having studied such basic aspects of children's lives as family, friends, money and possessions, school life, living environment, use of leisure time, personal well-being, and children's rights, the researchers came to unexpected conclusions. In general, children view their lives positively and do not see serious problems. However, the gap in the number of happy and unhappy schoolchildren across different countries turned out to be quite significant.
Thus, more than 70% of children from Romania, Colombia, and Israel view their childhood extremely positively – they gave it the highest possible score (10 out of 10), while their peers from South Korea gave such a score in only 40% of cases. South Korea and South Africa also turned out to be leaders in the anti-rating: the number of children who gave their childhood a score of 1 was two and three times higher, respectively, than in other countries.
Adolescent "melancholy" is characteristic only of children from European countries – their peers from other parts of the world did not experience dissatisfaction with their current lives. European children get more joy from personal friendships, while children from African countries feel happy in school life. Children in northern European countries are particularly dissatisfied with their appearance and lack self-confidence.
The most pronounced differences were in how children from different countries spend their free time. For example, in Estonia, children pay more attention to reading, homework, and the internet than their peers in South Korea and Great Britain. Children in Poland, Norway, and Israel are more athletic. Algerians, Nepalese, and South Africans spend more time caring for their siblings and other family members than German, Turkish, and South Korean adolescents.
By the sum of indicators, German adolescents in assessments of their seemingly happy childhood ended up only in ninth place out of fifteen. "And this is not surprising," explains Klaus Seifried, a member of the Association of German Psychologists. "Children who grow up in prosperity are very demanding and, as a result, become dissatisfied more quickly. In our society, much attention is paid to wealth, consumption, and diversity of leisure, while children in poor countries have different living conditions. Children in Africa and Asia are often happy simply because they manage to eat every day and attend school.
In Germany, many children should be taught how to motivate themselves to reduce their needs. In our country, a large-screen TV, a game console in the children's room, or a new bicycle causes only a brief surge of joy in most children."
According to one of the leaders of the Children's Worlds project, Professor Asher Ben-Arieh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "the findings of the Children's Worlds study should be noted by all politicians concerned about the future of new generations."