Positive experiences affect young people more than crises

A new study shows that adolescents and young adults describe positive, everyday experiences as shaping their lives most significantly, while psychological stress can change how they view major life events.

Which major life events matter to young people?

The recent study by the University of Zurich (UZH) shows that adolescents and young adults primarily cite positive, everyday developmental steps as formative events, for example school and apprenticeships, friendships, first relationships, travel, and moving out of their parents’ home.

The researchers evaluated open-ended written responses from 1,442 participants in a long-term study. Each participant was surveyed at the ages of 15, 17, 20 and 24.

The results paint a different picture than many classic studies on life events, which tend to focus on stressful experiences. Overall, 83% of the events mentioned were positive. The participants talked about school, training, and apprenticeships particularly often, with these topics accounting for almost half of all mentions. Friendships and romantic relationships came in second place, at around 12%. Personal development and mental well-being accounted for about 8%, while travel and stays abroad stood at approximately 7%.

“Our results show that youth is not primarily composed of crises. Many young people primarily mention positive developmental steps such as education, relationships, and personal achievements,” says David Bürgin, clinical developmental psychologist and first author of the study.

Lilly Shanahan, co-leader of the study, adds: “Support services should therefore not only focus on how to cope with stress. Stable relationships, positive experiences, and opportunities to experience self-efficacy are just as important.”

Nevertheless, the researchers found that psychological stress was still part of the equation. Adolescents and young adults with more severe symptoms of anxiety and depression mentioned stressful relationship experiences, conflicts, loss, and personal failures significantly more often. Correspondingly, they referred to positive events such as travel, educational achievements, and sports activities less frequently.

The study also revealed that clear changes occur between adolescence and early adulthood. While school, friendships, and leisure time were paramount in middle adolescence, education, work, relationships, and independence grew in significance later on. Topics such as sport and going out were mentioned less frequently as the participants became older, while work, housing, and having children became more important over time.

The researchers also found differences based on gender, social background, and experiences of migration. However, broadly speaking, the most important topics were very similar across social groups.

The research team used automated language processing methods to evaluate thousands of open-ended written responses according to topic.

“Our analyses show how freely formulated responses from large longitudinal studies can be processed in such a way that they provide a structured picture of young people’s experiences. This allows their perspectives remain visible in their own words,” says first author Christina Haag, who is now at the University of Cambridge. The study is one of the first large-scale, long-term studies in the world to use such methods to analyze open-ended responses from young people.

The research appears in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

The study is a collaboration between the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development and the Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Prevention Institute at the University of Zurich. The project was supported by the UZH Population Research Center as part of its Seed Grants Program.

Source: University of Zurich

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