In My View by Charlotte Butterick

Good or bad, there’s something about our formative teenage years that sticks with us forever.

Most of my teenage memories are a jumble of Friday nights queuing to get into the legendary Coliseum’s pop and crisps night, hanging out at Shelf Park drinking bottles of cheap booze, house parties, using fake ID in the Halifax bars… Mixed in with exams, academic pressures, romances – all normal teenage experiences. Lots of good times. But the

memories are also marred that feeling of utter fear as a young woman to ‘fit in’, worries of being too fat or too thin, self-doubt, self-loathing and anxiety. Today, accelerated and intensified by the pandemic, the number of girls (67%) feeling more sad, anxious or worried is at an all-time high.

A recent survey by the Girl Guides found that sadly, for many girls in the UK, there is a decline in happiness – with overall around two thirds of girls struggling and 62% saying they felt increasingly lonely. Social media and smartphones have undoubtedly exacerbated all these issues that generations of girls have faced for decades. People born after 1995 will

now have spent their entire adolescence in the age of social media – which for many is now an indispensable part of life. It’s estimated that a third of teen girls who felt bad about their bodies felt worse after using Instagram.

Concerningly, the majority (71%) of girls and young women aged 7-21 said they have experienced online harms in the past year, including appearance related harms. The research also revealed that disabled young women (40%) and those that identify as LGBTQ+ (42%) are more likely to experience online harm. This can be in the form of misinformation, hate speech, sexist comments, bullying, images that made them feel insecure about their appearance harassment, unwanted sexual images and cyberstalking.

There was no Facebook or Instagram when I was growing up, but social media was starting to take its grip. MSN, Bebo, Piczo, MySpace were hotbeds for the tyrannical teenage social conservatism enforced upon so many young women.

The pandemic has also had a momentous impact on all aspects of girls’ and young women’s lives, accentuating existing pressures and adding new worries. Girls’ unhappiness has a lasting effect and limits their ambition in life. When women remain disproportionately

disadvantaged in society by male authority, this is an added hurdle. Our government, schools and local government must act to reverse this trend, ensuring better support for girls’ wellbeing, education and wider opportunities. Our country needs to build a better

foundation for women’s mental health than what currently exists.

There are lots of support services in Calderdale preparing to help more young people with their mental health; Open Minds (CAMHS), Night Owls, Childline, Samaritans, NHS 111 are a few.