Taiwanese children’s self-reported life satisfaction fell for the third straight year this year to the lowest level on record, an annual survey released yesterday by the Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) showed.
In its 2024 Health Behaviors in School-Aged Children Survey, the foundation found that the subjective life satisfaction score for Taiwanese children in grades 5 to 9 (ages 11 to 15) was 68 out of 100, down 5.5 points from last year and 11.2 points from 2017.
The score was also seven points below the international average, it said.
Photo: CNA
The foundation blamed the low scores on a combination of factors, including increased feelings of psychological alienation, stress from school, insufficient sleep and addiction to digital devices, which it said were borne out by the survey’s targeted questions.
In terms of psychological alienation and loneliness, 37.4 percent of children said they agreed with the statement “if I was not in the world, it would not make a difference.”
Another 13.7 percent of respondents described themselves as “unhappy” with their lives.
Other factors measured children’s satisfaction with their daily routines.
For example, three-quarters (75.9 percent) of the children said they felt stressed by their schoolwork, up more than 30 percentage points from the 44.5 percent reported last year, the survey showed.
The CWLF did not state whether it viewed the increase as a statistical anomaly or as related to specific trends or changes in Taiwan’s education system.
Respondents also reported sleeping an average of 8.01 hours on weekdays and 9.59 hours on weekends, falling in the lower end of the daily eight to 10 hours of sleep recommend by experts for children aged 13 to 18, the foundation said.
Regarding their engagement with digital devices, 20.8 percent of those surveyed said they played screen-based games at least six hours a day, while 9.4 percent said they played more than eight hours daily.
Nearly one-quarter of the children (24.5 percent) said they were so fixated on a game they could not think about other things, while a similar number said they had trouble reducing screen time even after being asked.
The survey also showed some positive developments in the area of family relations, with 70.8 percent of children saying they believed they could talk to their mother about their feelings, while 55.4 percent said they could talk to their father, the CWLF said.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said they shared at least one meal per day with their family, the foundation said, adding that each of the three metrics had risen “substantially” over the past year.
The CWLF has yet to release the details of the survey’s methodology. In previous years, it used a sample size of at least 1,500 students, as recommended by the WHO, which collaborates with more than 50 countries to administer the survey every four years.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
RSS