Report: Children's mental health worse since Covid

Our key findings were:

• Many children have poor mental health
  Over half of the children we surveyed have had trouble sleeping or have felt lonely.
• Children’s mental health has got worse since the pandemic
  The proportion who have had trouble sleeping has increased by 17 percent and those who have felt lonely by 16 percent.
• Girls had more problems than boys
  Almost six out of ten girls have felt lonely, but only four out of ten boys have.
• Children feel less able to rely on parents
  Before the pandemic, 63 percent of children said they would go to their parents if they had a problem. Now only 54 percent say this.
• Children use social media for which they aren’t old enough
  Three quarters of the children use social media, though almost all of the platforms they use have minimum ages of 13 or 16. The numbers of children saying that they are free to look at anything online without adult supervision have increased slightly.
• Children worry less about SATs and going to secondary school
  There has been a marked reduction in the numbers of children who were very unhappy or unhappy about these topics.