A new WHO cross-national study suggests that Finnish adolescents are satisfied with their lives, but Finnish tweens and teens like school a lot less than their peers elsewhere.
Overall Finnish kids topped rankings in the study of nearly 40 countries looking at the social determinants of health and well-being. Life satisfaction rated highly -- around 90 percent -- among Finnish youths. Generally this contentment wanes with age. Fifteen-year-olds were less pleased with life than 11-year-olds.
But Finnish kids did not rise to the top of the table in all areas. Compared to other nationalities, few Finnish 11-year-olds reported liking school a lot. Only Estonian and Croatian kids enjoy school less than their Finnish peers.
The report finds that while young people in rich countries enjoy better health and development opportunities than ever before, many are involved in health-compromising behaviour, including smoking, drinking and unhealthy diets.
Finland was one country that exhibited gender paradoxes: girls in Scandinavia, including Finland, have a higher prevalence of drunkenness. More girls also report having sex (by age 15) in the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries. Twenty-four percent of 15-year-old girls in Finland said they had had sex, compared with 20 percent of boys.
The WHO survey covered 39 countries and regions across Europe and North America and examined more than 60 topics among 200,000 children and young people.
