This chapter looks at effective policies and practices to protect and improve the mental health of young people in OECD countries, in light of the clear declining trend in youth mental health. A multi‑sectoral approach is essential: strong, resilient mental health depends not only on clinical services but also on supportive environments in families, schools, communities and the health system. Targeted mental health support must still play a major role, particularly by strengthening social and emotional learning, improving mental health literacy, and providing accessible, holistic services with an emphasis on peer‑to‑peer support. Better and more consistent data are needed to monitor the youth mental health crisis and to assess the impacts of emerging policies aimed at shaping children’s and adolescents’ online behaviour, including social media age limits and school phone bans.
Child, Adolescent and Youth Mental Health in the 21st Century
Abstract
Responding to the youth mental health crisis
A multi-sectoral response is essential to address the youth mental health crisis. Experts interviewed for the report consistently emphasised that mental health services alone are insufficient, and that instead, a broader approach involving education, families, digital policy, and community support is needed to tackle the complex and interrelated drivers of poor mental health among young people.
Categories that were mentioned at least 5 times are shown in the Figure
Note: 1. Addressing economic inequality, preventing mal treatment, parental mental health knowledge, maternal mental health, mental health tracking surveys. Experts were asked “What do you believe is the most effective way to build mental health and well-being resilience amongst young people?”
Source: OECD Semi-Structured Interviews with Clinical and Policy Experts on Young People’s Mental Health, 2025.
Low-threshold, holistic mental health services with a peer-support component should be a policy priority. While most experts agreed that mental health support is currently too limited, they did not call for a major expansion of specialist services. Models like Australia’s headspace and the Netherlands’ @ease, which offer accessible, community-based support and integrate peer involvement to reduce stigma and improve engagement, should be made widely accessible to offer well-rounded support to a large number of young people.
Digital regulation policies are expanding, but their mental health impacts remain unclear. Many OECD countries have introduced school phone bans and age restrictions for social media, often citing concerns about youth well-being. However, evaluations of these policies have produced mixed results; future impact evaluations should go beyond academic performance and include, mental health and broader well-being outcomes, and also consider ways to mitigate potential unintended consequences, such as reduced access to online support.
Improved data collection is critical to understanding and addressing youth mental health trends. Fewer than one‑third of OECD countries have nationally representative time‑series data on young people’s mental health, making it difficult to track changes over time or evaluate policy impacts. Strengthening data infrastructure would help governments respond more effectively to what may be a sustained and widespread decline in youth mental health.
It is clear though from the drivers is that interventions in the health or mental health sector alone will probably not be enough. Teaching mental health literacy in schools, teaching social and emotional learning and coping skills, ensuring access to the right kind of support for young people with mental health care needs are all critical, but given the current scale of mental distress amongst OECD youth are unlikely to significantly transform current trends. The impact of broader policies, and in particular efforts by countries to limit potential harms from unhealthy patterns of digital device use, should be evaluated carefully including to watch for any impacts on mental health outcomes. But, the evidence seems to support the views of one Nordic policymaker, who said, “screen use is a driver [of poor mental health], but just one out of many... removing the screens is not going to solve all of the problems”.
As discussed in this report, there are strong signs that youth mental status has declined, and yet there is no single, provable driver that can fully explain this trend. Instead, it is likely that multiple factors interact in complex ways to influence young people’s mental health outcomes. Risk factors, such as digitalisation and social media use, global instability, socio-economic turbulence, and exposure to bullying or academic pressure, do not operate in isolation. The impact of mental health risk factors can be moderated by protective factors, which help buffer young people against adversity. These protective factors, when strengthened, can play a critical role in promoting resilience and well-being among youth. As part of the semi-structured interviews to inform this report, clinical and policy experts were asked what they saw as the most effective ways to increase mental health resilience and support for young people (Figure 3.2).
Categories that were mentioned at least 5 times are shown in the Figure
Note: 1. Addressing economic inequality, preventing mal treatment, parental mental health knowledge, maternal mental health, mental health tracking surveys. Experts were asked “What do you believe is the most effective way to build mental health and well-being resilience amongst young people?”
Source: OECD Semi-Structured Interviews with Clinical and Policy Experts on Young People’s Mental Health, 2025.
The most frequently mentioned approaches included improving early years education and school environments, enhancing access to mental health support (including peer support), and promoting psychosocial education and mental health literacy. Experts also emphasised the importance of supportive families and parenting skills, healthy lifestyle habits (such as sleep, exercise, and nutrition), fostering social connections, and managing online habits through digital literacy and balanced screen time. All experts interviewed pointed – to varying extents – to a holistic, multi-sectoral approach to building youth resilience, with an important but nonetheless limited role for specialist mental health support.
Even though they saw a holistic, multi-sectoral approach as key to building young people’s mental health resilience, clinical and policy experts did nonetheless agree that the level of mental health support in their country or region was, for the most part, too low (Figure 3.3). The three experts who said that they thought the support in their country was the “right level” nonetheless stated that they thought the support available was not well-distributed, with too little focus on prevention and promotion, lower-threshold disorders, or with other inefficiencies in access.
Responses to interview question, “Do you believe that the level of mental health support for young people in your country or region is: 1) the right level 2) too low 3) too high 4) cannot say?”
Source: OECD Semi-Structured Interviews with Clinical and Policy Experts on Young People’s Mental Health, 2025.
In terms of mental health-specific support, the services that experts most-frequently brought up as missing from existing provision, or as being in short-supply, were lower-threshold support or mid-level services, rather than necessarily investment in specialist or acute services. Experts pointed to growing demand for youth mental health support – which is certainly borne out by data for at least Australia (Kids Help Phone, 2024[1]), Canada (Kids Help Phone, 2024[1]), France (Santé Publique France, 2021[2]), Norway (fhi.no, 2023[3]), Sweden (Sveriges Kommuner och Regioner, 2024[4]), the United Kingdom (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2024[5]), and the United States (Leyenaar et al., 2025[6]) – but did not suggest significant increases in existing specialist services in most cases.
Experts emphasised the importance of peer-led support, stepped care approaches, and – for some experts – less medicalised approaches. A clinician from Southern Europe said, for example, “I believe that resources are insufficient, but more importantly, I think the model of care itself should be reformed—shifting toward a more community-based approach, less medicalized, and one that respects the subjectivity of children and adolescents.” A clinician from Central Europe stressed, like many experts, the value of peer-support: “Young people won’t listen to me... I’m already too old for them. The best option is good examples among their peers… peer programmes make a huge difference.” Some experts did also insist on shortages in specialist care, especially on workforce shortages for example low numbers of child and adolescent psychiatrists.
One service model that has received considerable recognition, has inspired similar models in other countries, and which prioritises a holistic, stepped, peer-to-peer approach is Australia’s headspace centres. Established in 2006 by the Australian Government in response to growing concerns about the mental health service offer for young people, headspace offers holistic health and mental health support for young people aged 12 to 25, mixing low-intensity support and more intensive clinical services as needed, and integrating peer-led initiatives (Box 3.1). Headspace has also inspired similar models elsewhere, including “headspace Denmark” and the Netherland’s @ease programme. Headspace Denmark was founded in 2013, is volunteer-led (using trained volunteers and peer workers), and focusses on low-intensity, low-cost interventions (Bjørkedal et al., 2025[7]). @ease was launched in the Netherlands in 2018, and was directly inspired by headspace Australia, offering free, anonymous, walk-in and online peer-to-peer support for young people aged 12‑25. @ease was included in the OECD’s Best Practices in Mental Health Promotion and Prevention (OECD, 2025[8]), and was found to improve psychological distress and functioning improve over time for young people and reduce school absences, and to be an effective way to remove barriers to accessing mental health support, reaching people who may not have otherwise received formal mental health support.
Australia’s headspace programme is a national youth mental health initiative providing early intervention services for young people aged 12 to 25. Having been established in 2006 in response to rising rates of youth mental illness and suicide, headspace offers a holistic, integrated model of care across four domains: mental health, physical and sexual health, alcohol and other drug use, and vocational support. headspace operates through a network of 172 centres nationwide, built on a stepped care framework, ensuring that young people receive the right level of support based on their needs – from low-intensity interventions to more specialised clinical care. Additional services delivered via eheadspace (online and phone support), outreach in schools and communities, and enhanced models like headspace Plus for young people with more complex needs.
Headspace also incorporates a peer-led dimension, including trained peer workers and online peer support communities that provide safe, anonymous spaces for young people to connect and share lived experiences. Evaluations commissioned by the Department of Health and conducted by UNSW’s Social Policy Research Centre, KPMG, and batyr have found the programme to be effective in improving mental health outcomes, accessibility, and service appropriateness (Unsw, 2015[9]). A 2023 peer-reviewed study reflecting on 16 years of headspace centres reported that over 70% of clients showed significant improvements in psychological distress, psychosocial functioning, or quality of life after engaging with headspace services (Rickwood et al., 2023[10]).
As well as having inspired headspace Denmark, and @ease in the Netherlands, headspace Australia was also part of the inspiration for programmes including “Jigsaw” in Ireland (O’Reilly et al., 2021[11]), “Foundry” in Canada (Barbic et al., 2024[12]), “soulspace” in Berlin, Germany (Bechdolf et al., 2024[13]), and Peaasi in Estonia.
Source: https://headspace.org.au/.
Many experts pointed to the importance of teaching children social and emotional skills, and mental health literacy, in school settings. For example, a Finnish study found that adolescents with higher levels of health literacy also exhibited a more positive mental health profile, underscoring the value of developing stronger health literacy skills among young people (Gustafsson et al., 2023[14]). In recent years, OECD countries have made school-based mental health support, and promotion activities, a priority. In 2021, 19 OECD countries indicated that mental health training was provided to teachers (OECD, 2021[15]), while a report assessing the implementation of the OECD Council Recommendation on Integrated Mental Health, Skills and Work Policy found that there had been widespread efforts to increase the understanding of mental health among teachers and educators (OECD, 2021[16]). There are also multiple evidence‑based programmes for teaching mental health skills in schools that have shown good potential for transferability between countries (see Box 3.2). Beyond specific programmes, broader policy action has an important role to play in supporting youth mental health. This includes fostering inclusive learning environments that support student well‑being, provide tailored support based on individual needs – including mental health needs – and ensure access to services such as school psychologists and counsellors (OECD, 2023[17]). It also includes raising hope and agency – through meaningful participation, civic engagement – to equip young people with a sense of purpose and collective efficacy to face global challenges.
Zippy’s Friends is one of the best-known school-based programmes which teaches social and emotional learning to children age 5‑7. First established in 1996, Zippy’s Friends is a series of 24 sessions of 45‑60 minutes which aims to improve emotional literacy, resilience, social and coping skills. OECD (2025[18])has found that the programme can increase active coping strategies and reduce oppositional coping strategies (e.g. opposition and withdrawal behaviours reduced by 9% and 15% respectively) amongst children.
This is me (To sem jaz) is a Slovenian programme designed to strengthening social and emotional skills amongst adolescents, and help adolescents build positive self-image. The programme consists of two different types of interventions – access to anonymous, simple, rapid, and free access to online expert advice, and a series of ten workshops that help the development of social and emotional competencies and realistic self-evaluation. The workshops are mostly delivered by trained teachers or school counsellors. OECD (2025[18]) found that the programme helped improve classroom climate, as rated by the teachers, and may help measurable student outcomes (interpersonal difficulties, coping and self-concept). This intervention also has the advantage of being universally applicable, given the school setting, and highly accessible, given the additional online expert advice component.
Findings from the OECD’s Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), one of the first international efforts to collect data from students, parents and teachers on the social and emotional skills of students at ages 10 and 15, show that students’ social and emotional skills are strongly related to students’ psychological well-being after accounting for socio-economic status and gender (OECD, 2021[19]; OECD, 2024[20]). This report also included examples of school curricula that include teaching social and emotional skills, for example Ontario, Canada’s “Health and Physical Education curriculum” for 6‑ to 14‑year‑olds. This curriculum includes aspects like: teaching students to identify and manage their emotions, develop self-awareness and learn how to express their feelings; strategies to cope with stress such as deep breathing and guided imagery; and practices to foster motivation and perseverance through difficulty such as expressing gratitude and reframing negative thoughts.
There are other ways to teach mental health skills or foster mental resilience outside of school settings, for example through parenting programmes. For example, the “Incredible Years Parent Training” programme is in place in at least 12 OECD countries, and is designed for parents of young children (often ages 3‑8) who display early signs of challenging behaviours. The programme teaches positive parenting practices, behaviour management strategies (e.g. logical consequences, monitoring), and promotes parent – child relationship building, through weekly group sessions led by trained facilitators. Incredible Years has a strong evidence base, including from Randomised Control Trials, that supports its effectiveness for improving children’s behaviour, gains in children’s emotion-regulation skills and social problem-solving skills; the programme is designed to address externalising disorders (e.g. conduct disorder, ADHD), rather than to address internalising conditions such as anxiety or depression (Trillingsgaard, Trillingsgaard and Webster‐Stratton, 2014[21]; Menting, Orobio de Castro and Matthys, 2013[22]; Gardner and Leijten, 2017[23]).
Broader population-wide mental health resilience programmes are also important; many young adults, whose mental health has also seen a decline, are out of school and not in formal educational settings. For example, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a training programme that teaches people how to recognise, understand and help someone who may be experiencing mental health problems (OECD, 2025[8]). Aimed at the general public, the programme tries to improve mental health literacy, reduce stigma, and increase confidence in helping someone experiencing mental distress or crisis. MHFA started in Australia, but is now widely used internationally, in schools, workplaces and institutions, as well as by private citizens. The French Government has been supporting MHFA (“secourisme en santé mentale”) as part of its Mental Health and Psychiatry Roadmap; as of December 2024, there were already 165 000 trained mental health first aiders in France (sante.gouv.fr, 2025[24]).
As well as policies to support young people’s specific mental health needs, OECD countries have been looking at ways to protect children and adolescents from potential harms associated with digital device use and digital media consumption. Policies such as phone‑bans in schools, enhanced age restrictions on access to certain digital technologies (e.g. social media, video gaming), and efforts to remove or limit harmful online content have become widespread in recent years (see Box 3.3). A recent legal development may further accelerate such efforts: in March 2026, a California jury ruled that Instagram and YouTube were liable for designing addictive platforms that harmed a young woman’s mental health (Taylor, 2026[25]), setting a major legal precedent likely to prompt further claims and potentially accelerating efforts toward stronger federal regulation of social media platforms.
Phone‑bans in schools are now widespread across countries, whereas enhanced age‑based restrictions on access to social media remain less common. As of October 2025, 29 countries had national or regional restrictions on phone use in schools in place, which mostly focussed on children and younger adolescents (see Figure 3.4). Since June 2025 alone 7 countries have introduced or announced new legislation regulating phone or other device use in schools (Costa Rica; Denmark; Ireland; Korea; Luxembourg; Portugal; Slovenia).
Based on policies in place or upcoming as of October 2025.
1. Reported to the OECD as part of the OECD Survey on National Policies Regulating Digital Advertising to Children and Adolescents for the Prevention of Cardiovascular and Related Noncommunicable Diseases, September 2025.
It is often difficult to identify the specific drivers of these new regulations and policies, and the extent to which children and adolescent’s well-being and mental health are considerations. For example Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovenia, when explaining the restrictions on personal phones during the day in primary schools refer to improving concentration and focus on learning and improving the educational environment (Irish Government, 2025[26]; Portuguese Government, 2025[27]; Eurydice, 2025[28]; New Zealand Government, 2024[29]). Ireland and Portugal also refer to reducing cyberbullying and improving well-being and socialisation. The ban on mobile phones and other digital devices in classrooms in Korea will take effect in 2026, and concerns about phone‑addiction and how social media can increase youth anxiety were mentioned as motivating factors by lawmakers (Reuters, 2025[30]).
In the very small number of published evaluations of school phone bans or restrictions so far, mental health outcomes have not necessarily been the focus, and findings have been relatively mixed. The OECD has previously concluded that smartphone bans can be effective for supporting learning outcomes and supporting a positive school environment, but enforcement matters (and can be difficult), and that many students still report daily use even where bans exist (OECD, 2024[31]). In Norway, an event-study found that smartphone bans reduced healthcare use for psychological symptoms among adolescent girls (Abrahamsson, 2024[32]). In South Australia, a one‑year review reports less time spent on phone‑related discipline, fewer cyber incidents, and more positive peer interaction, though this is not a causal impact study (Government of South Australia, 2025[33]). In the Netherlands, early school-level reviews note better cognitive functions, concentration and less online bullying, alongside student concerns about practicality and uneven implementation (Brummer and Achterberg, 2025[34]). In England, the SMART Schools study of 30 secondary schools found that restrictive policies lowered in-school phone and social media use, but showed no evidence of improved overall well-being, sleep, attainment or behaviour compared to permissive schools (Goodyear et al., 2025[35]). An evaluation from several schools with phone bans in Sweden found no significant effect on anxiety or depression symptoms (PHQ‑4), but students did report better general well-being, spent 33 minutes a day less on phones outside school work, slept 10 minutes longer on average, and reported fewer incidents of problematic online behaviour (Nutley, 2025[36]).
Along with school-based phone and device restrictions, a number of OECD countries have introduced, or are planning to introduce, enhanced age restrictions on access to online content and developed efforts to remove or limit harmful online content to protect children. An OECD review of age assurance online for child safety and well-being found that the legal environment for such limits is complicated, that some protections for children (e.g. regarding access to pornography, purchasing age‑restricted goods online) are uneven in terms of the specificity of legislation, and that a lack of specificity on how to comply with age assurance requirements is common across the laws analysed (OECD, 2025[37]). Australia, the European Union and the United Kingdom are developing enforceable implementation guidance for online age restrictions that may create express requirements for different age cohorts (OECD, 2025[37]), while the European Union is also leveraging the EU Digital Services Act to encourage online platforms to take more steps to protect minors’ health (see Box 3.3).
Australia’s mandatory minimum age for social media accounts
From December 2025 Australia’s online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 will come into effect, introducing a mandatory minimum age of 16 for accounts on certain social media platforms. The Australian Government has cited the risks of social media to young people’s mental health and well-being as primary motivators of the ban, including exposure to cyberbullying, harmful content, and online predators (UNICEF Australia, 2025[38]). The Social Media Minimum Age framework (SMMA) highlights evidence that adolescent social media use can predict decreased life satisfaction in key developmental stages, particularly among girls aged 11‑13 and boys aged 14‑15.
The EU Digital Services Act
On 27 May 2025, the Council of the European Union issued a call for greater efforts to protect the mental health of children and teenagers in the digital era, highlighting both the potential benefits and harms of digital technologies for youth: “Digital technologies … have the power to negatively affect mental health, notably among children and adolescents” and there is a “pressing need to foster the safer and healthier use of digital tools by children and adolescents which prioritises protecting their mental health” (Council of the EU, 2025[39]). The Council urged Member States to curb problematic online design practices, and to embed attention to the user’s well-being into the design process from the outset.
EU Digital Services Act (DSA), in force since 2024, also makes this link explicit by identifying the systemic risks that large platforms must address, including risks to minors’ health: “[The DSA] aims at ensuring a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, which for large online platforms extends to assessing and mitigating “any actual or foreseeable negative effects for the exercise of fundamental rights, including … the rights of the child” and to addressing “systemic risks stemming from the design or functioning of their services, including … negative effects on the protection of minors” (European Union, 2022[40]).
What sets the Digital Services Act (DSA) apart is how it moves the EU from a relatively light regulatory framework under the e‑Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) to a binding, enforceable regime with new oversight and accountability powers. Under the e‑Commerce Directive, intermediaries (hosting services, caching, mere conduits) were largely exempt from liability for user-posted content so long as they acted when made aware of illegal content (the “notice-and-takedown” model) and operated via largely self-regulation and national enforcement. The DSA preserves certain safe‑harbour protections, but adds obligations for “very large online platforms” to conduct systemic risk assessments, submit to transparency requirements (including around recommender systems, advertising, and user reporting), and allow oversight by national Digital Services Co‑ordinators as well as the European Commission.
Including mental health and broader well-being outcomes in evaluations of digital device restrictions, such as phone bans in schools or broader social media and content regulations like Australia’s under‑16 social media ban or actions taken under the EU’s Digital Services Act, should be a priority. Given the very mixed evidence on the links between digital technology use and young people’s mental health outcomes, and a general focus on academic performance in existing evaluations, this is a critical opportunity to gather more insights and build a stronger evidence base to inform future policy decisions. Evaluations should also give due consideration to whether new limits reduce access to supportive online communities, mental health resources, or social connections that can be important for adolescents. For example, a study from the United Kingdom found that 16% of teenagers used apps or online services to look after their mental health, 14% to get support when feeling anxious, and 32% to “improve their mood”, although the accuracy of information found and/or usefulness of support obtained was not assessed (Ofcom, 2025[41]).
Finally, while beyond the scope of this report, digital education and skill-building have been frequently referred to as an important part of helping children and adolescents build a healthy and balanced relationship with digital technologies, and reducing divides in digital skills.
A series of recent OECD papers and reports – including “Policies for the Digital Transformation of School Education" (Boeskens and Meyer, 2025[42]); “School partnerships addressing child well-being and digital technology” (OECD, 2025[43]); “OECD Digital Education Outlook 2023” (OECD, 2023[44]), and “How's Life for Children in the Digital Age?” (OECD, 2025[45]) – give an overview of how digital skills and healthy device use are included in school curricula, and are highly relevant for this discussion.
The findings of this report reinforce the challenge facing policymakers in OECD countries: young people’s mental health appears to be declining, and the multiple, intersecting, suspected drivers of this decline are far from straightforward to address. There are some policy responses that can be taken to support young people with mental health needs, and build mental resilience. However, if the data and expert insights set out at the start of this report are accurate – and the decline in youth mental health is widespread, and sustained over time – policies in the health and mental health sector alone will likely be insufficient to turn the tide of this trend. To give policymakers the best possible insights with which to tackle what could reasonably be called a youth mental health crisis, there are several key data and information gaps that should be addressed.
Firstly, it will be very important to track young people’s mental health status in the coming years, as further data becomes available, to see whether the “improving” trend post-pandemic is maintained. Less than a third of OECD countries have nationally representative time series data on mental health outcomes amongst young people; often that data which is available is only collected infrequently. More frequent monitoring of youth mental health status across a broader set of countries is needed to better inform national policymaking, service planning, and research. While methodologically challenging, efforts to improve international comparability of these data would be particularly valuable. The HBSC survey remains an excellent source of information on adolescent well-being, strengthened further by the addition of the WHO‑5 indicator on well-being in the 2022 edition, and should be watched carefully for insights into this evolving trend.
Second, more and better information is needed on the relationship between young people’s digital technology use, and mental health outcomes. Despite the huge policy attention being given to this topic, significant data weaknesses in underlying research remain. The OECD Digital Economy Outlook (2024[46]), for example, emphasises the limited reliability of data drawn from subjective reports of time spent online, stressing the need for more precise and objective measures that differentiate clearly between the duration, type, and intensity of digital activities. At present, samples and datasets in current research are limited, primarily sourced from high-income countries, and tend to be unrepresentative and lacking the depth and granularity that data held by the technology industry itself could provide (Sanders et al., 2023[47]). Further insights into young people’s interactions with digital technologies and associated mental health impacts should aim to address current limitations in data collection and analysis, particularly the reliance on self-reported measures, lack of specificity beyond “screen time”, and limited understanding of causal direction. Future research should also prioritise capturing moderating factors such as socio-economic status, daily routines, family and peer support, and access to mental health services.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, every effort should be made to consult young people about their own mental health, what they see as drivers of good and poor mental health, the support they need but might be struggling to get. Young people should also be meaningfully involved in the design and implementation of policies and programmes that foster positive mental health. Box 3.4 gives some insights into what young people in a few countries say about their own mental health. In the context of this report specifically, many of the surveys tracking young people’s mental health rely upon self-reported measures, and therefore capture some of young people’s own beliefs about their mental health. Additionally most if not all of the experts interviewed for this work were in contact with young people in their country, and therefore brought insights into young people’s own views on their mental health and its drivers; for example, some experts had taken part in focus groups with young people to discuss mental health issues, and others were clinicians regularly seeing young people. However, it was not possible as part of this report to speak directly with young people, which is a limitation that could be addressed if this work was expanded further.
A range of studies from different OECD countries have highlighted young people’s own views about their mental health. Many young people are clearly aware of the importance of good mental health, and some are concerned about how their mental health is affecting their daily life. A study from the UK-based Mental Health Foundation found that 86% of young people age 18‑24 years who they surveyed had felt anxious in the previous two weeks, and 58% said that this had stopped them undertaking day-to-day activities (Mental Health Foundation, 2023[48]). A report by the American Psychological Association in 2023 found that 72% of people age 18‑34 saw “mental health” as a stressor, the highest single health stressor for this group, and the group that pointed most significantly to mental health as a stressor (American Psychological Association, 2023[49]). In 2024 Pew Research found that 35% of adolescents age 13‑17, and 55% of parents, were very or extremely worried about teen mental health, and only 23% of adolescents and 11% of parents were not worried about teen mental health (Pew Research Center, 2025[50]).
What do young people say is driving good and poor mental health?
Multiple reports have been developed which reflect young people’s own perspectives on their mental health. UNICEF’s 2025 report on youth perceptions of mental health covers 14‑25 year‑olds in seven countries (Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Afrida), and looks at how global challenges affect this generation’s mental health. Fifty-two per cent of young adult respondents, and 29% of teen respondents, said they had needed help with their mental health; 80% of adults and 92% of teens said they needed help had sought mental health help, which is encouraging (UNICEF Global Coalition for Youth Mental Health, 2025[51]). Sixty per cent of youth participants reported being “overwhelmed by news and events”, especially young adults, and many felt worried about the future.
A 2024 report that gathers youth mental health perspectives from 13 countries pointed to a wide set of factors shaping youth mental health: Family functioning; Mental health literacy and stigma; Bullying; Youth exposure to violence; Academic pressure; Self-esteem; Cyberbullying and excessive social media use; Substance use; and Poverty and unemployment (Being, 2024[52]).
A report on the mental health of young people in the United States (age 18‑25), adolescents and their parents, based on a nationally representative sample in December 2022, found that young adults reported twice as high rates of anxiety and depression than teens, and that they were concerns about diver challenges including a lack of meaning, purpose and direction, financial worries and achievement pressures, global challenges, relationships, and social and political issues (Making Caring Common, 2023[53]). A 2025 poll of young people age 16‑29 in the United Kingdom also suggested that young people felt that mental health problems were common amongst their age group, and that issues that concerned them included fears for the future, especially when it came to financial security (37% said this contributed to feeling nervous, anxious or on edge), and employment prospects (20%) and work pressures (23% worried) (John Smith Centre, 2025[54]). Concerns about finances, work, and employment were more significant worries than those about social media (14%) or climate change (10%).
The OECD’s “Risk that Matters for Young People” (2024[55]) report doesn’t address mental health drivers explicitly, but does offer key insights into what young people age 18‑29 are most worried about. The 2022 wave included 27 countries, and pointed to short term financial insecurity (69% of respondents worried), housing (64‑68% worried), and job insecurity (29% worried) as among some of young people’s primary concerns.
When it comes to mental health and social media specifically, both adolescents (age 13‑17) and parents in the United States appear to have concerns, but parents are comparatively more concerned than adolescents and see fewer of the positive effects (Figure 3.5) (Pew Research Center, 2025[50]).
Note: Survey conducted in September-October 2024, only responses that were given by at least 5% of respondents were reported.
Source: Pew Research Center, (2025[50]), “Teens, Social Media and Mental Health”, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social-media-and-mental-health/.
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