the-story-vol-10

THE STORY
STATISTICS, TRENDS AND RESEARCH FOR YOUTH WORK
NEW RESEARCH:
GEN Z: DIGITAL
GENERATION
THE BIG PICTURE:
MENTAL HEALTH
youthscape.co.uk/research
VOL. 10
SUMMER
2019

WELCOME TO
THE STORY
In each issue of The Story we bring you some of
the latest research related to young people and
youth work. In the coming pages you will find
statistics, research and trends which we hope
will interest you, challenge you and inform your
work with young people.
In this edition we highlight new research from
Youth for Christ and compare their findings with
other research into social media use (p.2–3).
We share research on hope in young people’s
lives, and where it springs from (p.4–5), and we
look at the big picture of trends in mental health
disorders amongst teenagers in England (p.6–7).
And to top it all off, our first Venn diagram on the
back page! We’re pretty sure you can do better,
and if so please let us see too (#ywdiagrams).
Don’t forget that you can now subscribe to
The Story for £10 a year, and we will send all
four physical copies to your door as they are
published. It’s the only way to get your hands on
the stats poster…
To sign up for future editions of
THE STORY, and to receive printed
versions, visit youthscape.co.uk/
research/the-story
IN THIS ISSUE:
NEW RESEARCH
Gen Z: Digital Generation
NEW IDEAS
Pivoting Toward Hope
THE BIG PICTURE
Mental Health
YOUTH WORK DIAGRAMS
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT… SCHOOL
P.2–3
P.4–5
P.6–7
P.8
REVERSE
YOUTH FOR CHRIST OFCOM SO?
PREFERRED PLATFORMS
YouTube was the most popular social
networking platform (77%) followed
by Facebook (49%), Snapchat (48%),
Instagram (46%) and WhatsApp
(37%).
AUTHENTICITY ONLINE
85% of the YFC sample said ‘yes’
they can be authentic online. Of the
152 who said ‘No’, around half said
they were either more confident
online or they could say things they
couldn’t say in person.
IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
When asked how social media
affects your mood and the way you
see yourself, young people were
much more positive than negative.
56% said they feel happier when
they use it and only 19% said they
compared themselves to others
(highest ranking positive and
negative responses).
YOUTUBE CONTENT – VLOGGERS
The top five sites used by those
with a social media profile were
Facebook (72%), Instagram (65%),
Snapchat (62%), Whatsapp (62%)
and YouTube (35%). When asked
which site they used most often,
the top five were Facebook (31%)
Snapchat (31%), Instagram (23%)
YouTube (7%) and WhatsApp (5%).
Just over half (54%) agreed that the
images or videos that people post
online make their life look more
interesting than it is; less than one in
ten (6%) disagreed.
When asked about the positive and
negative effects of social media,
12–15 year old users as a group
were more positive than negative,
with 66% saying it makes them feel
closer to friends and 54% saying it
makes them feel happy all or most of
the time.
You get different answers
depending on your exact questions
and the profile of those you ask.
Though Facebook is top dog, its
popularity is declining, and though
YouTube is less popular in the
Ofcom study their data shows
it is still used by 89% of those
surveyed.
Together these findings suggest
that authenticity is highly valued
by young people – they largely
see themselves as authentic even
as they recognise inauthenticity in
other people’s posts.
Across both studies young people
saw social media positively on
balance. So we shouldn’t take an
automatically negative tone on
this issue.
Lucie Shuker
Director of Research, Youthscape
NEW RESEARCH:
Gen Z: Digital Generation
Youth for Christ have recently published the
second of three research reports exploring
the culture of young people – ‘Gen Z: Digital
Generation’. They surveyed 1001 11–18 year olds,
asking them a range of questions about their
use of social media, and YouTube in particular.
We’ve highlighted some of the statistics we found
most interesting and compared them to another
study released by Ofcom in 2019 ‘Children and
parents: Media use and attitudes report’ that
focused on 12–15 year olds.
There is lots more to dig out from the YFC
study, and you can find it at https://yfc.co.uk/
digitalgeneration/
Vlogger videos were the second
most popular type of YouTube
content (56%) after music vids/
streaming (59%). The most popular
reason for watching vloggers was
‘talking about their passions’ (61%),
followed by ‘pranks’ (60%) and then
‘challenges’ (55%).
CONTENT CREATION
39% of the YFC sample said they
uploaded their own content to
YouTube, with the most popular
content being gaming videos (23%),
music/singing videos (23%) and
funny videos (12%).
Three-quarters of YouTube users
aged 12–15 say they watch funny
videos/ jokes/ pranks/ challenges
(74%) or music videos (74%) with half
watching vloggers (52%). This has
risen from 40% saying they watch
vloggers on YouTube a year ago.
82% of the 12–15 year olds surveyed
had undertaken at least one of 11
creative activities online, with the
most popular being changing or
editing a photo (59%), followed by
making a video at 47%. Another 20%
make their own music.
Vlogging is on the rise, and
humour and authenticity seem to
be big draws in this space. Both
the YFC study and Ofcom’s (2017)
media report found that the top
reason for choosing content was
‘it’s funny’.
We don’t have comparative
generational data to see if this is
unique to youth, but these figures
do highlight that young people
are creating, not just consuming
content.
P.2
P.3

NEW IDEAS:
Pivoting Toward Hope
Francisca Ireland-Verwoerd
and Mary Elizabeth Moore of
Boston University published
a paper last year called
‘Pivoting toward Hope:
Interplay of Imagination,
Fear and Life Experience’
in the Journal of Youth and
Theology. They drew on
interviews and focus groups
with 75 young people aged
12–24 from the USA and UK,
who predominantly identified
as Christian – exploring their
experiences of hope.
The authors establish early on that they are
discussing hope as a theological virtue – not
naïve optimism in the face of evil, nor a
psychological construct that helps people feel
positive. They draw on three theologians – John
Macquarrie, Jurgen Moltmann and Leonardo Boff
– whose work argues that hope is actively chosen.
It’s not just that hope is found in the grittiness
of people’s lives, but that hope is actually
‘drawn from the forces of life that flow within the
devastations of their existential worlds’ (p.70)
In other words, hope comes from God and is
wrestled out of our darkest experiences.
Young people’s narratives echoed this. The
participants lived ‘fragile lives in a fragile world’
and yet themes of searching for hope were
present in more than 95% of the interviews
and focus groups (p.64). When asked to name
their concerns, the young people identified:
broken family and community relationships;
violence; broken global relationships;
condemnation toward homosexuality; poverty
and consumerism; racism and sexism; drugs and
alcohol and ecological destruction (from the most
to the least frequent).
Young people’s personal experiences related
to their understanding and awareness of these
wider issues, and they reformed experiences
of struggle and fear into a ‘platform of hope’.
The researchers highlighted a range of
examples where “hopeful reconstruction often
propelled them into a trajectory where they saw
themselves addressing larger social issues that
were close to their own stories” (p. 68)
Chung-hee, who grew up in a
family in which his father beat his
mother, envisions himself as a global
peacemaker.
Calvin, who is African American and
has experienced years of overt and
covert racial taunts, wants to address
the “hateful violence” in our world.
Duk-hwan, who grew up immersed
in a culture of drinking, smoking and
fighting, wants to be a business man
who shapes the world to be more
peaceful for all people.
Valerie, whose boyfriend is hooked
on drugs, sees herself as helping
people to break their drug habits
and to develop communities that
minimise temptations.
The study revealed that the very things that
directly troubled young people were also the
areas where they pivoted toward hope – by
imagining an alternative future. Although the
young people didn’t consistently refer to God,
the researchers found that hope was found
more often where they had an active imagination
and a sense of something (God, or spirituality)
beyond themselves.
Finally, the paper also highlighted the fragility
of hope, acknowledging how easily it can be
overwhelmed by fear, and the importance
of imagination as a factor that enables or
encourages young people to make decisions
to hope. They identified five insights for youth
workers, from the research.
Young people…
1. Learn from their life experience, and need
maximum opportunities to reflect deeply on
those experiences with others
2. Learn from the social contexts in which they
live, and their experience can be stretched
with pedagogies that expand their horizons
3. Have formative life experiences which can
become platforms of hope
4. Are capable of imaginatively transforming
challenging and potentially damaging life
experiences into a hopeful outlook for the
social issues that concern them
5. Learn from being in positions of responsibility
and leadership, and need mentors to listen,
guide, and reflect with them on these roles.
The authors conclude:
“What we can say
definitively here is that
hope is a theological
construct that holds
great meaning to
young people, and
that its function in their
lives is not only to lift
their spirits but also to
sharpen their critiques
of life-destroying
realities in families,
religious communities,
and other social
contexts and to fire their
determination to change
the world.” (p.71)
P.4 P.5

THE BIG PICTURE
Mental Health Disorders
These figures are from ‘Mental Health of
Children and Young People in England, 2017’
which was published in November 2018. This
survey series provides England’s best source
of data on trends in child mental health , and
follows surveys carried out in 1999 and 2004,
meaning we now have comparable data for 5
to 15 year olds living in England across three
decades. The 2017 survey spans the transition
into adulthood by covering 17 to 19 year olds
for the first time.
There has been an upward
trend in the prevalence of any
disorder for 11–15 year olds.
The likelihood of having a
disorder increases with age,
and amongst older girls.
Emotional disorders are most
common, and particularly
affect older girls.
• Amongst all 11–19 year olds,
emotional disorders were the most
common type of disorder (10.4%), and
of these, anxiety related disorders
were the most common (9.1%).
• In girls, prevalence increased sharply
with age. At 22.4%, the rate of
emotional disorders among 17 to 19
year old girls was almost three times
higher than in boys (7.9%) of the
same age.
Other disorders.
• The 2017 survey was the first in the
series to include Body Dysmorphic
Disorder (BDD) where a person
spends a lot of time worrying about
flaws in their appearance that are
often unnoticeable to others.
• It was most prevalent in girls aged 11
to 16 (1.9%) and 17 to 19 (5.6%).
Characteristics of young
people with a disorder.
This data is not broken down by age,
so includes all 5–19 year olds.
• White British 5 to 19 year olds were
about three times more likely (14.9%)
than Black/Black British (5.6%) or
Asian/Asian British (5.2%) children to
have a disorder.
• Living in a low–income household or
with a parent in receipt of incomerelated
benefits was associated
with higher rates of mental disorder
in children. However, there was no
association with neighbourhood
deprivation.
• Children with poor general health,
special educational needs, or children
with a parent with poor mental health
or in receipt of a disability-related
benefit, were more likely to have a
mental disorder than other children.
• Rates of mental disorder were higher
in children living in households with
less healthy family functioning.
Nearly one in seven teenagers has a
disorder now, compared to one in nine
in 1999.
• 1999 – 11.4%
• 2004 – 12.4%
• 2017 – 13.6%
• 9.5% of 5 to 10 year olds
• 14.4% of 11 to 16 year olds
• 16.9% of 17 to 19 year olds
Boys (14.3%) and girls (14.4%) aged
11 to 16 were equally likely to have a
disorder, but among 17 to 19 year olds,
girls (23.9%) were more than twice
as likely as boys (10.3%) to have a
disorder.
• About one in fifty (2.1%) 11 to 19 year
olds was identified with another
type of disorder, such as an eating
disorder (0.6%) or autism (1%). Overall
rates have remained stable.
P.6
P.7

THE VENN
DIAGRAM OF
CHRISTIAN
YOUTH WORK
Spends summer in a field
Druid
Fruit picker
Wears a hoodie
Christian
Youth
Worker
Underpaid
Construction
worker
Taxi driver
For more
#youthworkdiagrams
follow us on Twitter
@YWresearch
Knows all the local
McDonalds
TWITTER POLL: COLLECTIVE NOUNS
Bute Mills, 74 Bute Street,
Luton, LU1 2EY
hello@youthscape.co.uk
01582 877220
Registered charity no. 1081754.
Registered company no. 3939801
registered in England, a company
limited by guarantee.
We’ve all been there. Wanting to tell someone about the large
group of young people who showed up to hang out, just as you
were about to close up shop. But what’s the right word? After
consulting Instagram for some options, we asked Twitter ‘What’s
the collective noun for young people?’
16%
21%
A SCURRY
36% A POTENTIAL
27% AN INSPIRATION
A HASHTAG
“So anyway, I was literally turning closing the door behind me,
when a whole potential of them showed up…”
P.8