Children and adolescents’ health behaviours, health complaints, and life satisfaction during 40 years

Policy actions are needed to increase adolescents’ physical activity and fruit intake and to counteract the severe increase in subjective health complaints and drop in life satisfaction among girls.

Background: In 1983 researchers from Austria, England, Finland, and Norway established the “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children” study, and collected the first set of nationally representative survey data from 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds. From 1985 another 11 surveys have been undertaken every fourth year, allowing for unique comparisons over time and across countries. Today, 52 countries in Europe, North America and West Asia participate in the WHO collaborative study.

Method: Data are collected anonymously through a survey administered in schools.

Results: The most recent survey was undertaken in 2022. Following an increase in daily fruit intake for all age and gender groups from 2001 to 2006, the intake has gone steadily down. In 2022 44% of 11-year-old girls and 23% of 15-year-old boys eat fruit daily. Leisure time physical activity has increased during the last 40 years, but with a drop from 2018 to 2022, except for 13- and 15-year-old boys. Daily smoking among Norwegian 15-year-olds have been reduced from 16% for boys and 17% for girls to 4% and 0.2% respectively. Having been drunk 2-3 times in their life or drinking beer or spirits at least monthly increased in the 1990s, and dropped substantially thereafter, and are today reported by 10-15% of the 15-year-olds. Girls reporting two or more weekly health complaints has over the last 30 years doubled to almost 50% in 2022. For boys the similar increase has been by 7-10%, with about 25% reporting this level of complaints. The proportion reporting to be very happy with their life has been mostly stable the last 20 years, except for an increase from 2002 to 2006 and with a substantial drop from 2018 to 2022, especially for 13- and 15-year-old girls, where the proportion was halved to respectively 13% and 15%. Socio-economic differences can be seen over time, with children and adolescents from families with high socio-economic status reporting slightly healthier levels, except for subjective health complaints, where girls report higher levels than their lower socio-economic counterparts. A selection of the results will be compared to the other countries in the HBSC study. Overall, Norway is placed in the middle, when ranking countries from low to high on the different measures.

Conclusions: Overall, Norwegian children and adolescents have over the last 20-40 years reported healthy levels of health behaviours and high life satisfaction. The survey indicates a generally healthy population, although our young are still struggling to adhere to national guidelines for physical activity and fruit intake. Worryingly, there has also been an alarming increase in subjective health complaints, as well as a drop in life satisfaction for girls, where the latter may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic.