In this session, McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) will share findings from their recent consumer insights surveys on Switzerland as well as nine other European countries regarding Gen Z (18-24 years old) mental health – launched in the context of an unprecedented moment of global and regional crises. In the survey, about 18% of Swiss Gen Z respondents reported poor mental health and nearly 20% reported their mental health has worsened over the past three years – both metrics worse compared to other generations. These findings support MHI’s core belief that promotion, prevention and early intervention to support youth mental health are key to adding years to life and life to years.

In the European Youth Survey "Our Europe, Our Future, Our Rights" (2021) of 10000 youth only 36% of youth reported they feel they can activate support by adults when feeling unhappy - often triggered by worries about the future or the state of their surrounding. 66% ask for school based programs to tackle violence and 63% see violence prevention as a priority of civil society. 28% like climate action and 56% would regard a "loving environment" as a high policy priority. Whole School Programmes as advised by the WHO & UNESCO (2021) are the most direct way to promote the health of all and return-of-prevention has been proven (Zölitz, 2020; Borowski, 2022; Heckman; 2022). How the ESCAP board around the ESCAP-2022-congress in Maastricht showed how serious they took participative actions for and with Youth parliament members from Zürich with national Youth panel members and transformative Youth agents (MIND Us, @ease) to co-create Youth and health policies, citizen science and co-publicity will be honoured. Innovative ideas and their financing inspired by Youth-policy stakeholders and the July 2022 community-based plans of the WHO pan-European Programme of Works (EPW) will outline needed multilevel planetary and public health leadership and interregional co-actions.

Background: we are a delegation of members of the officially recognized Jugendparlament Zürich (Youth Parliament Zürich), the largest Youth Parliament in Switzerland. As young people we’d like to address psychic stress and structural problems within our society that impacts on the daily life of us adolescents. Our poster and presentation deal with similar topics with the aim, to reach a larger audience with our inputs.

Method: In cooperation with the ZGKJPP-president and SGKJPP-member Matthias Köster,
an active child and adolescent psychiatrist, we discussed the challenges of social media and how it’s affecting our mental health.

Results: Among other things we criticize
- the lacking competencies regarding social media among contact persons, e.g. teachers
- the build-up and structure of algorithms of social media, which aim to keep users as long as possible, leading to a higher risk of social media addiction
( Noroozi et al. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/2556679 )

Furthermore we discussed
- the problem of constant comparisons with influencers and their positive and negative effects (Vuong et al. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413222 )

- the quickly bored youth that because of a shortened attention span permanently needs external inputs and that can’t deal with boredom anymore

- the tabooed theme of porn addiction, esp. by the challenges of new platforms like Only Fans (Alexandraki et al. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.7.2018.34 )

Conclusion:
With naming the challenges from the Youth’s perspective we like to stimulate a reflection, to highlight the problems and the need for action and to discuss possible solutions with the guests of the SGKJPP-congress. The new forms of social media are part of our daily life, so that an open and transgenerational dialogue should happen, to tackle the challenges together.

Authors: Amélie Galladé, Olivier Jacot, Janis Jeanrenaud, Daria Kutuzova, Robin Angst, Mischa Isele, Sarah Koller, Paul Carle & Nicolo Carle