
Are Taiwanese Children Happy? 2022 Child Wellbeing Survey
It is almost time for the annual Children’s Day. Are they happy? Are they satisfied with their current life situation? Though our daily life has become more and more convenient with more recreations, according CWLF’s survey on 5th to 9th graders in Taiwan, students’ subjective life satisfaction scores have reached a new low in recent years. In 2017, the score was 79.2/100; however, when it came to 2020, it dropped by 6.5 points to 72.7/100. Children felt unsatisfied about their life in personal (poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, feeling lonely), family (lack of family support), and school (academic stress, lack of peer support) aspects. It was no surprise that children felt more and more unhappy about their life.
Li-Fang Pai, CEO of CWLF, expressed that “Each year on the eve of Children’s Day, CWLF would publish survey results on children’s life in Taiwan, as a way to remind adults of children’s needs and issues children face, and what we can do to improve children’s wellbeing. In this post-pandemic era, children and adults are both facing new challenges that require everyone to deliberate on ways to make children happier and uphold their wellbeing.”
Children in Taiwan are more and more unsatisfied with their life
World Health Organization (WHO) started a cross-national survey, Health Behavior in School-Aged Children survey (HBSC survey), in 1982, where they conducted sampling survey on 1,500 children aged 11, 13 and 15 years old in 45 western countries. The themes of the surveys include family resource and structures, family relationship, peer relationship, physical and mental health condition, health behavior and dangerous behaviors to assess children’s level of satisfaction with their life.
In recent years, CWLF has conducted surveys on Taiwanese children’s level of satisfaction with their life. The results showed that in 2020, the percentage of children rating their subjective life satisfaction over 60 points merely accounted for 78.0% of the respondents, which was 10 percent lower than the average scores of children around the world in HBSC. Among the respondents, the older the children were, the unhappier they felt. There was even a more than 10.7 points gap between the scores of the primary schoolers (78.8) and the junior high schoolers (68.1).
Causes of low life satisfaction among children: imbalanced diet and lack of sleep and exercise
(1) Poor mental and physical health: Imbalanced diet. Almost 50% children consume sugary beverage every day.
According to the survey, almost half (49.5%) of the children have breakfast every day, but the number was still much lower than the UK’s 63.0%. On the other hand, 41.5% children in Taiwan have sweets at least once a day, while 48.8% children drink sugary beverage at least once a day, which was twice and three times higher than the number found in other countries.
(2) Relatively small amount of exercise and lack of sleep for Taiwanese children
Unlike the excessive intake of sugar, Taiwanese children’s time for exercise and sleep is not enough. According to the recommendations from WHO, children should at least exercise for 60 minutes per day and 420 minutes per week. However, according to our survey on Taiwanese children, we found that over 20% (22.7%) of children only exercise less than once a week, which means, far from the WHO recommended amount, they do not even exercise for 60 minutes in one week.
If we look at children’s sleep hour, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that the sleep hour for children between the age of 13 to 18 should be 8 to 10 hours per day. However, our survey found that Taiwanese children only have 7.8 hours of sleep in average each day, and the time would diminish as they grow older. For children aged 13, they sleep about 7.6 hours/day in average while children aged 15 only sleep 7.3 hours.(3) Children are more likely to feel lonely and alienated nowadays
Although the use of communication apps has become more prevalent these days, the distance between people does not necessary become closer. According to our survey, it is found that the percentage of children feeling lonely (strongly agree/ agree) has increased 3.3%, from 13.5% in 2019 to 16.8% in 2020. Moreover, the number of children agreeing that “without me, it will make no difference to the world” reached 29.9%, which is 5.8% higher than in 2019. It is clear that children’s sense of loneliness and alienation has aggravated.
Children in Taiwan do not like to go to school: Heavy pressure of schoolwork. 30% children still do not trust their teachers.
(1) Percentage of children enjoying school in Taiwan is lower than international average rate.
Taiwanese children spend half of their time at school, so it is very important whether they are happy at school. From this survey we found that children in Taiwan appear to be less enjoying school than children in other countries. In 2020, only 14.3% children in Taiwan answered that they enjoyed school, compared with 23.0% in the UK and 28.0% of HBSC average rate.
(2) 46% children feel they are under heavy pressure of schoolwork. The older they are, the more stress they have.
Causes for children not enjoying school may have a lot to do with the stress they feel at school. In our 2020 survey, 46% children answered that they experienced much pressure from their schoolwork, which was much higher than the 36% of the HBSC average rate. It was not surprising that for junior high students who were facing the state exams, 54.7% of them strongly agreed that they were under tremendous pressure from schoolwork. For primary schoolers, 34.2% of them also responded that they felt stressful about their schoolwork.
Children of International Children's Dance Association who were invited to perform the opening dance number of the press conference also shared their thoughts on the stress they felt from life and school after turning 3rd graders. One of the children said, “The pressure of schoolwork is actually quite heavy. Teachers would compare our grades. Parents also have expectations of our academic performance and would ask us to do a lot of writing exercises. They would also compare our grades with our siblings.”
Jason Hsu (許孟哲) agreed that children should have more playtime and opportunities to learn from playing. “I feel that parents nowadays are rushed and would worry about their children falling behind their peers at a young age. Therefore, they would cramp their children with talent classes or cram schools. But it will deprive their children of many opportunities to play happily.” Bernice Chao (趙孟姿) indicated that the time she spent with her child was therapeutic for her, so it was considered a kind of happiness for her to hang out with Doreen. “Making time is like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube…Even just a short time, as long as you provide focus and high-quality accompaniment, children can feel it too. Adults can also get rewarded in ways money cannot buy.”
(3) Lower peer support than international average rate. 30% children still do not trust their teachers.
Undoubtedly, interpersonal relationship is what children care the most as they grow up. From our survey, over 70% (74.2%) children think that they get along well with their classmates. 66.8% children feel that they are accepted by their peers. However, when dividing the responses of peer support scores into high and low two groups as the international standards, it was found that the proportion of Taiwanese children’s high peer support group (41.1%) are clearly lower than the international average rate (60%). Moreover, the survey also found that 30% children cannot feel the trust and acceptance from their teachers.
Sense of belonging and family quality time are the keys to uphold children’s life satisfaction.
Family is an important aspect of our life, and our relationship with family can affect satisfaction of our life. When we assessed parent-child interactions based on the frequency of them having meals together, we found that only 43.8% children in Taiwan dine with their family every day, which is lower than the 50% indicated in the HBSC surveys. In terms of sharing feelings, 56.6% children responded that they felt it was easy to tell mother about their concerns, and the number dropped to 43.6% if it was father. Still, both results were way lower than the international rates 85% and 73% respectively. Without adequate family accompaniment, it was not surprised that children in Taiwan found it hard to feel happy. Even if family accompaniment is provided, as the children of International Children's Dance Association said, they still hoped the topics of their family conversation could be less about schoolwork and learning, but about their life and encouragement.
We also attempted to further analyze the most relevant factors affecting children’s satisfaction of their life. The results showed that peer support and family support were at low positive correlation with their life satisfaction. This indicates that the more support and acceptance children receive in life, the more satisfied they are with their life. The result also showed that the correlation coefficient of family support was high than of peer support, which means compared with peer support, family support is more of the key to uphold children’s satisfaction with their life.
Li-Fang Pai indicated that family accompaniment and interaction are closely related to children’s life satisfaction. The survey showed that the more support children got from their family, the higher their life satisfaction were. In this post-pandemic era, people are given more time to return to family. Parents have more chance to examine their parent-child relationship and think about how to enhance the quality of their interaction. Concentrated accompaniment, warm parent-child communication and more positive encouragement and affirmation can further elevate children’s wellbeing.
Moreover, the survey also showed that children tended not to talk about their feelings with their parents, and that there was still room to improve on peer support. When children have concerns or things to share with someone, they may not be able to find a channel to convey, so I recommend CWLF’s children’s helplines to give children a friendly space to vent. For children under 12 years old, we have a children’s helpline: 0800-003-123. For young people aged 13 to 18, we have a youth helpline: 0800-00-1769. These are the spaces exclusive for children to share their life.