Youth Health Survey Report

Myopia rates are among the highest in the world, physical fitness has been sluggish for 10 consecutive years, and the detection rate of psychological and emotional problems among 14-16 year olds has climbed to 17.5%. The three types of problems are not caused by a single factor, but are the result of multiple overlays of family parenting concepts, school assessment orientation, and social supporting supplies.

To be honest, I used to think that most myopic children nowadays just play with mobile phones and are lazy if they can’t run. It wasn’t until I followed the research team to visit half of China’s primary and secondary schools that I discovered that things are not that simple at all. Last week at the physical test site of a third-grade junior high school class in Hangzhou, I came across a particularly impressive scene: Among the three children who crossed the finish line at the end of the 1,000-meter race, two squatted on the ground holding on to the railing to vomit. There was also a child wearing OK glasses whose lenses slipped out when he ran. He squatted on the side of the track and searched for three minutes before finding them. 38 of the 45 children in that class wore glasses, which is almost exactly the same as our statistics of 78.9% myopia rate among junior high school students.

When it comes to this, some people must think that "electronic products are not responsible", but when we were sampling in a primary school in Jiangsu, we found an even more interesting contrast: 31 of the 42 children in that class were enrolled in extracurricular classes such as hard-tipped calligraphy, programming, and sketching that require long periods of sitting and close eye use. Only 7 children can guarantee 2 hours of outdoor activities every day. The conclusion given by the ophthalmology team of Tongren Hospital that participated in this survey is also somewhat different from the public perception: Their long-term tracking data shows that more than 2 hours of outdoor natural light exposure per day can reduce the risk of myopia by 40%. This impact weight is much higher than the harm of watching an electronic screen for 1 hour at a time. To put it bluntly, many children do not look at mobile phones to see myopia, but do not even have enough time in the sun.

After talking about vision, let’s talk about physical fitness. When I talked to the dean of a junior high school in Shandong, he couldn’t stop complaining: “In the past, parents asked why physical education classes were occupied, but now they ask why standing long jumps and pull-ups are not practiced in physical education classes. Anyway, practicing the items that are not tested in the high school entrance examination is a waste of time.” Nowadays, it is a good thing that the scores of the high school entrance examination for physical education have increased, but it has also given rise to many strange phenomena of "examination-oriented sports": some schools only practice three sports for the high school entrance examination in one semester of physical education classes, and all interesting sports such as basketball and badminton have been cut off, which has made many children more resistant to sports. A little boy in sixth grade complained to me, saying that his mother forced him to do 2,000 jumps every day after school in order to get him to practice skipping. Now he gets annoyed when he sees the rope and would rather lie at home on weekends than go downstairs to play ball.

The most controversial issue is psychological issues. Many people say that today's children are "spoiled and cannot bear any setbacks." However, according to the interview data we obtained, among 14-16-year-old children with depression tendencies, 62% mentioned that the source of stress is "parents' high expectations" and "peer competition anxiety." Last month I interviewed a girl who was in the second grade of junior high school. Her grades were usually in the top 20 of her grade. Last month, she fell to 35th in the monthly exam. The first thing her mother said when she got home was, "Are you distracted by secretly falling in love?" We spend so much money on your education and you get this result in return? ”, she hid in the bathroom that night and slashed her wrist with a utility knife. Fortunately, her mother went in to get something and found out early. When an educational psychology expert from Beijing Normal University followed our investigation, he said that it’s not that today’s children have poor ability to withstand stress, but that their emotional needs are completely different from those of the previous generation: children in the past ran all over the alley after school and played wildly with their friends for half an hour, and all stress was relieved. Today’s children are so busy from morning to night that they can’t even find an outlet for their emotions.

Nowadays, various places are trying different solutions, and no one is absolutely correct. There are several pilot schools in Shenzhen that implement "one physical education class a day, and written homework is completed in school." After running the data for one semester, the children's physical fitness compliance rate increased by 12%, and the myopia rate only increased by 0.3%, which is far lower than the city's average increase of 1.2%. However, many parents also signed a petition to oppose it, saying "If you delay the time for writing questions, who will be responsible for not getting into a good high school in the future." Some places implement "parenting training" and require parents not to regard grades as the only evaluation criterion, but there is great resistance to implementation. After all, there is a huge competitive environment for further education, and no one dares to let their children "relax" easily.

My biggest feeling during the two months of research is that there is no universal antidote to youth health, nor can it be solved immediately by introducing one or two policies or changing assessment standards several times. Instead of looking at the nice percentage points on the health report, why not ask the children around you: Do you have time to go downstairs and run for 20 minutes today? Is there anything troubling you would like to talk about? After all, health is never calculated, it is something that children actually live out day by day.