Girls in Britain are becoming more miserable, says the Children’s Society’s annual report.
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And the researchers found that the difference was even starker when they asked young children about their looks: more than one third (34 per cent) or girls were unhappy with their looks, compared with 30 per cent five years’ ago.
While teenage angst is nothing new, Ms Capron said: “What’s new and what the Children’s Society have unveiled is the scale of the problem – particularly the fact that the gap between boys and girls is getting wider and that’s something that we should be anxious about”.
One group of girls at a dance school near Manchester have been talking about the pressure to look good on social media.
Plus-sized beauty queen Rebecca Argent, from Lostock Hall, said: “To anyone who is struggling with negativity towards them based on their body image all I can say is it will get better and don’t let what other people say stop you from achieving your dreams – use it as motivation to kickstart your future”.
The picture for girls is even worse than it was five years previously, with the number unhappy overall up 21 per cent between 2009/10 and 2013/14 and the number unhappy with their appearance in particular up eight per cent over the same period. Again the proportion of boys who were unhappy with their appearance (20 per cent) has remained stable. The number of girls unhappy with their appearance in particular was up 8% over the same period.
In Weymouth and Portland, 682 of the 2,030 girls aged between ten and 15 said they struggle with their looks, while 276 are unhappy.
The trend builds on findings from the 2015 Good Childhood Report, in which England ranked last out of 15 countries for happiness with appearance.
The report finds that emotional bullying such as name-calling, which girls are more likely to experience, was twice as common as physical bullying, which was more likely to affect boys.
“Sometimes it makes me feel – not annoyed – but I don’t want to look at it any more because they just do it all the time and it gets on your nerves”.
Research done separately by the Office for National Statistics suggested that girls were likely to spend more time on social media, which had been linked to a higher risk of mental ill-health among them.
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The Children’s Society is calling on the Government to take action to improve children’s happiness across the nation with a legal entitlement for children to be able to access mental health and well-being support in schools and FE colleges across England and Wales. As a first step all children should be able to access mental health and wellbeing support in school.
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Nearly a third of nursery and school staff said they had heard a child label themselves fat while 10 per cent said they had heard a child say they felt ugly, a survey of childcare professionals has suggested.
