This paper has shown that a significant minority of young adolescents report relatively low levels of emotional and social well-being. While these challenges manifest differently for boys and girls, they appear to be at least partly linked to the demands of adolescence itself – a developmental period marked by rapid physical changes and the need to navigate social norms in the construction of self and social identity, including norms of femininity and masculinity.
Addressing these difficulties requires strengthening support for adolescents across the environments in which they spend their time, in order to better detect early signs of ill-being, create opportunities for young people to discuss and share the worries and questions that arise across childhood and during the transition into adulthood, and ensure that appropriate support is provided at the right time to prevent difficulties from escalating into more serious problems. The paper also highlighted the need for a policy strategy that is sensitive to both age and sex, recognising that the challenges faced by children and adolescents are specific to particular stages of development and should not be conflated with those of youth as a homogeneous group, and that their timing, expression and intensity can differ markedly between girls and boys.
The key findings and policy implications of this paper are summarised below.
Adolescence is a particularly challenging period for children’s socio‑emotional well-being, with distinct patterns of vulnerability emerging for girls and boys. While both experience difficulties, these tend to take different forms. Adolescent girls aged 11, 13 and 15 are between 1.65 and 2.5 times more likely than boys of the same age to report low life satisfaction. Girls below age 19 are also more prone to internalising disorders, such as anxiety and depression: they are around 70% more likely to experience anxiety disorders and about twice as likely to experience depressive disorders. In addition, girls face higher risks of dissatisfaction with their body appearance, eating disorders and deliberate self-harm.
By contrast, boys aged 5 to 19 are more susceptible to externalising disorders, including conduct disorders, which they are nearly twice as likely to develop as girls. Risk-taking and aggressive behaviours are also more prevalent among boys: around one in seven adolescents aged 11 to 15 report having been involved in physical fights three or more times within a year – more than twice the rate observed among girls of the same age. Moreover, boys and young men aged 15 to 29 are nearly three times more likely than young women to die by suicide.
Norms of femininity and masculinity as a double‑edged factor in adolescence. Multiple factors contribute to socio‑emotional difficulties in this period, but a key challenge lies in navigating puberty and forming a sense of self while confronting societal expectations and stereotypes associated with being male or female. Although norms of femininity and masculinity can provide reference points for identity and socio‑emotional development, they may also clash with adolescents’ emerging self-perceptions and expose them to rigid or contradictory expectations. For some adolescents, adherence to restrictive norms may function as a coping strategy in response to difficulties in family, social, or school contexts. However, restrictive representations of femininity can heighten girls’ concerns about body image and contribute to the hyper sexualisation of young girls, while pressures to deviate from these norms may generate other strains, such as intensified academic expectations. Conversely, restrictive masculinity norms can inhibit help-seeking behaviours, reinforce boys’ disengagement from learning and increase the risk of conduct problems and aggressive behaviours. Supporting boys’ and girls’ well-being requires promoting positive models feminity and masculinity, encouraging help-seeking, and preventing behavioural difficulties before they escalate.
The importance of supportive and adolescent-sensitive environments. Promoting adolescents’ emotional and social well-being requires co‑ordinated and sustained support across the multiple environments that shape young people’s daily lives, including the home, school, neighbourhood and community spaces, and the digital environment. While families play a central role, parents may face difficulties communicating about puberty, identity development and the social expectations adolescents encounter, and unequal time and resources can limit their capacity to provide support. Schools are crucial for addressing barriers to learning that may affect girls and boys differently, fostering emotional and social skills, and offering safe spaces for discussion and reflection. Neighbourhoods and community settings can further support adolescents by providing safe “third places” for social connection, guidance from older peers and trusted adults, and exposure to diverse and positive role models. Finally, as digital spaces increasingly influence norms, expectations and social comparisons, ensuring that online environments are safe, positive and supportive is essential to adolescent well-being.
Prevention and early identification should be prioritised through tiered systems of support. Low-threshold initiatives and mechanisms to detect early signs of distress can help address difficulties before they become more severe and require more intensive intervention. Strengthening families’ ability to recognise emerging problems, respond appropriately and maintain open communication with their children is an important first line of support. At the same time, expanding access to school-based and community-based services can help ensure that concerns are identified and addressed early. Together, these measures can improve timely access to assistance, reduce barriers to seeking help, and prevent temporary difficulties from becoming persistent challenges that affect young people's well-being and future outcomes.
Implications for policy and future research. Policy responses should be differentiated according to the age and sex of adolescents, recognising that challenges vary across developmental stages and differ between girls and boys. Further work is needed to systematically assess programmes across the settings in which children spend time, in order to identify effective approaches, key implementation features, and interventions that address challenges spanning multiple life domains, tailor support to different levels of severity, and ensure timely access to appropriate support before difficulties escalate. Particular attention could be paid to preventing and addressing antisocial behaviours among vulnerable adolescents and to supporting children in navigating digital environments, including through effective digital parenting practices. Strengthening the measurement of subjective well-being across childhood – especially dimensions such as sense of developing autonomy and positive relationships as core aspects of eudaimonic well-being – is also essential to better understand developmental trajectories and the transition to adulthood.
Future work should focus on systematically analysing programmes implemented across the different environments in which children spend time, with the aim of identifying which approaches most effectively support social and emotional development and which implementation features underpin their success. Particular attention should be paid to how programmes address challenges that intersect across life domains and settings, and to the extent to which support is co‑ordinated across these environments. Examining mechanisms to strengthen co‑ordination across ministries, as well as reporting, monitoring and accountability arrangements among responsible entities, would help reinforce evidence‑informed policymaking in support of children’s social and emotional well-being (Dirwan and Thévenon, 2023[108]). While child and parents” social and emotional well-being and mental health are a component that is incorporated in the support of services to families with children, examining further how family and social services incorporate social and emotional well-being in their assessment of needs and support delivered would help identify good practices to strengthen prevention and promote social and emotional well-being, how they handle lower and high-threshold disorders and enhance co‑ordination across service, provide single entry point and improve access to adequate service support.
While children’s and parents’ social and emotional well-being and mental health are often incorporated into family support services (Riding et al., 2021[188]), further examination of how family and social services assess social and emotional needs and translate these assessments into tailored support would help identify good practices for strengthening prevention and promoting well-being. Such analysis could shed light on how services address both lower- and higher-threshold difficulties, improve co‑ordination across services, establish effective single‑entry points, and enhance access to timely and appropriate support – areas that experts identify as weaknesses in current systems of support (OECD, 2026[3]).
As reviewed in the previous sections, further research is also needed to better understand how policy responses can prevent and address fighting and other antisocial behaviours among a significant minority of adolescents, and how to support those affected. In addition, given the growing amount of time young people spend online, future work should examine how children can be better supported in navigating digital environments, including through the identification and dissemination of effective digital parenting practices.
Finally, a fuller understanding of these challenges requires improvements in the measurement of subjective well-being across childhood, including eudaimonic dimensions (OECD, 2026[8]). Such measures can help capture the extent to which children feel supported and cared for, as well as how they progressively develop autonomy and positive relationships – key foundations of social and emotional development. Improved measurement is also critical for understanding the mechanisms at play during the transition to adulthood, a period in which life satisfaction tends to decline and in which young men, in particular, report higher levels of dissatisfaction with personal relationships (OECD, 2024[189]; 2025[190]).