"The report, by the Children’s Society, found that British 15-year-old girls are the most unhappy in Europe.
British girls aged 10-15 are “significantly less happy” with their life, appearance, family and school than the average boy — and their happiness is still declining.
Boys’ life satisfaction, meanwhile, remains broadly stable. (…)
But I still didn’t have an “aha!” moment about why this so disproportionately affects girls until… I talked to some teenage girls.
It was at a party, and I went to vape with them on the patio. Because I take my nicotine like children do.
“Duh — it’s the boys,” one said when I brought it up, as all the others agreed.
My last book, What About Men?, had been all about how much boys struggle these days: their loneliness; their suicide rates. I’d spent the past year feeling very sympathetic towards boys.
“Yeah, well, who do you think they’re taking out their unhappiness on? It’s us,” another girl said.
“One boy at school used to draw a picture every day of how ugly I was,” a third girl said. “Every day for two years.”
“They’ve all got ‘Rate The Girls’ polls on their WhatsApps,” the first said. “They mark you down for weight gain, haircuts, what you say.”
“But then, if you’re hot, it’s just as bad, in a different way, because they’ll be talking about how they want to f*** you.”
The girls discussed coping techniques. Bad news: none of them worked.
“The only way you can stop them is if you become ‘one of the boys’ and hang out with them. But then,” the second girl said with a sigh, “all the other girls call you a slut. Because you’ve gone over to the boys’ side.”
“Surely it’s not all the boys?” I said. “There must be some nice boys?”
“Oh, yeah,” one girl said. “But they keep their heads down. Because… well, look.”
She showed me the Instagram account of her friend. Under every picture she posted of herself — smiling in a new dress; with her dog — dozens of anonymous accounts had replied with the most rank abuse.
“Fat.” “Slut.” “You gonna try and kill yourself again, for attention?”
“They’re all boys from her school,” she said. “And look, this one boy tried to defend her.”
I saw a series of messages from a brave teenage boy, posting things like, “You’re all big men, leaving these replies under anonymous accounts.”
As I could see, this boy immediately became a target too. Mainly accusations that he was “white knighting” this girl: “You wanna f*** her, bro?”
“So,” I asked, “you don’t think it’s social media pressure to be beautiful, or the economy, that’s making girls so sad?”
“Well, yeah, them too,” the first girl said. “But, Monday-Friday, 9-3, I’m not on social media. I’m not… in the economy. I’m just with these boys. And no one talks about how horrible they are.”
I thought about another recent report, showing a 30 per cent ideological gap between Gen Z men, who are increasingly conservative, and Gen Z women, who are increasingly progressive.
I thought about Andrew Tate, who has nine million mostly young male followers — and faces human trafficking charges, which he denies.
And I thought: maybe these girls are on to something. Maybe more people need to vape with teenage girls and ask them for the school gossip."
