Disclosure: This post is based on findings provided by Oxford Scholastica Academy, which conducted the survey discussed below. The findings and quotes are attributed to Oxford Scholastica Academy.
When we hear adults talking about the future, it can sometimes feel as though the world is nothing but bad news. We hear about rising costs, wars, artificial intelligence, political disagreements, environmental concerns and the challenges young people face as they prepare to enter adulthood. But what do young people themselves think about the future?
A new global survey from Oxford Scholastica Academy asked students to rate their optimism about five different areas of life: their personal future, the economy, the environment, politics and the future of society. The results are interesting because they don’t paint young people as simply pessimistic about the world. In fact, young people are most optimistic about themselves and their own futures.
Students from 41 countries provided enough responses to be included in the rankings, and the United States ranked 13th overall with an optimism score of 3.99 out of 5. That puts American students behind Canada, which ranked sixth with a score of 4.08, but ahead of several other Western nations. The survey found that optimism varies considerably depending on what young people are being asked to consider. And that may be one of the most interesting parts of the entire study.
Young People Are Most Optimistic About Their Personal Future. Across the countries surveyed, personal optimism averaged 4.40 out of 5. That is considerably higher than optimism about politics, which averaged only 3.29 out of 5. Think about that for a moment.
Young people may have concerns about the direction of politics or society, but many still believe that their own lives can turn out well. That is an encouraging message for parents and families. The survey’s highest personal optimism score came from Nepal, where students gave a perfect 5.00 out of 5. Sri Lanka followed with 4.75, while Canada scored 4.67 and Kazakhstan scored 4.71. The United States wasn’t among the very highest individual scores listed in the findings, but its overall ranking still places American students well above many countries included in the survey.
The Most Optimistic Countries: According to the survey, these were the ten countries with the highest overall optimism scores:
- Sri Lanka — 4.32
- Kenya — 4.31
- Nepal — 4.24
- Kazakhstan — 4.17
- Cyprus — 4.09
- Canada — 4.08
- Nigeria — 4.08
- Indonesia — 4.07
- Russia — 4.07
- Armenia — 4.06
Sri Lanka came in first overall. Students there reported particularly strong optimism about their personal futures and the environment. Kenya ranked second, with the survey finding the highest political optimism of any country included, at 3.96 out of 5. Nepal’s results are especially interesting because students there reported both the highest personal optimism score and the highest economic optimism score, at 4.80.
What About the Countries at the Bottom? At the other end of the list, Kuwait ranked 41st with an overall score of 2.92 out of 5.
The ten lowest-ranked countries were:
- Kuwait — 2.92
- Rwanda — 3.20
- Turkey — 3.22
- France — 3.22
- Poland — 3.24
- Italy — 3.36
- China — 3.36
- Taiwan — 3.44
- United Kingdom — 3.61
- Ghana — 3.63
Kuwait also recorded the lowest political optimism score in the survey, at just 1.80. France had the lowest environmental optimism score, at 2.25, while Poland recorded a political optimism score of 2.30. The United Kingdom ranked 33rd overall at 3.61, with political optimism of 3.04 and environmental optimism of 3.06.
One of the things I found most interesting about these findings is that the countries at the top aren’t necessarily the countries we would automatically expect to see there. Sri Lanka and Kenya, for example, have faced significant economic and political challenges, yet their young people reported some of the highest levels of optimism.
Lavinia Abell, Co-Director of Oxford Scholastica Academy, said the results suggest that optimism isn’t simply a matter of material comfort. And I think that’s an important distinction. Sometimes we assume that a young person who has fewer worries financially must automatically be more hopeful about the future. But hope doesn’t always work that way. A young person can recognize that the world has problems and still believe that their own story is going somewhere good.
As parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults who spend time with young people, we can’t control everything that happens in the world. We can’t fix every political disagreement. We can’t eliminate every economic challenge. We can’t promise our children that they will never encounter disappointment. But perhaps we can help them hold onto something that this survey shows is already there: hope for their own future.
We can talk with them about what they want to accomplish. We can encourage them to develop skills and interests. We can help them learn how to handle disappointment without assuming that one bad experience defines their entire future. And we can talk about the problems in the world without making young people feel as though there is no point in trying to make things better.
Five Questions to Ask a Young Person: The survey measured optimism in five areas, which also gives families an easy conversation starter.
Ask your child, teenager or young adult:
1. How optimistic are you about your own future? What are you looking forward to? 2. How do you feel about the economy and your ability to build the life you want? What concerns you? What makes you feel confident? 3. How hopeful are you about the environment? Are there things you think your generation can change? 4. How optimistic are you about politics? Do you think young people can have an impact on the decisions being made? 5. What do you think the future of society will look like? What would you like to see change?
There aren’t right or wrong answers. The point isn’t to convince a young person to be more optimistic. The point is to listen.
The world can feel very big when you’re looking at headlines about wars, politics, artificial intelligence, the economy and environmental problems. But a young person’s future is also made up of smaller things. A career they haven’t started yet. A friendship they haven’t made yet. A place they haven’t visited. A skill they haven’t learned. A family they may one day have. A dream they haven’t even discovered yet.
That is why the finding that young people are most optimistic about their personal futures stood out to me. Maybe we don’t always have to convince young people that the entire world is going to be perfect. Maybe we simply need to remind them that their future is still being written. And there is something pretty hopeful about that.
About the Survey: Oxford Scholastica Academy surveyed 1,433 students about their optimism in five categories: personal, economic, environmental, political and the future of society. Students rated each category from 1 to 5, with the overall score calculated as the mean average of the five categories. The rankings included 41 countries with at least five student respondents, from a dataset representing 100 countries.
Because the number of respondents varied and some countries had relatively small samples, these results should be viewed as a snapshot of the students surveyed rather than a definitive measure of every young person in a country. For the full findings and information about the survey, visit Oxford Scholastica Academy.
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Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
