The State of Youth Happiness: Understanding the Many Factors That Impact Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing
By Coalition to Empower our Future
Yesterday, former U.S. Representative and Coalition to Empower our Future Board Member Carlos Curbelo spoke at Semafor’s The State of World Happiness 2025 to discuss this year’s World Happiness Report and the ways we can enhance youth wellbeing.
Young people in America are navigating a mental health challenge unlike any generation before them. One in seven children are struggling with a mental or behavioral health issue, driven by factors, including but not limited to bullying, economic stress, peer pressure and social isolation.
Each young person’s experience is unique, and solutions must be fulsome and inclusive of their specific needs. But this is not something that we can just check off a list. It requires a comprehensive conversation and continuous, thoughtful effort from all stakeholders, including parents, youth, nonprofit representatives, industry leaders, educators, policymakers and others.
Addressing these challenges requires action from all of us — showing kindness, reaching out and supporting young people in need. Together, we can find meaningful solutions and work towards a future where every young person feels connected and supported.
Read the full conversation from Semafor’s The State of World Happiness 2025 event below.
Bennett Richardson, global head of public affairs, Semafor
Congressman Curbelo. Thank you so much for joining us. [We are] really excited to have your perspective on stage today. You served the 26th district of Florida for many years. Since then, you’ve been a fellow at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago, [giving you a] great perspective. But today, you’re representing the Coalition to Empower our Future, where you serve on the board of directors. Can you tell us a little bit about the coalition and what got you involved?
Congressman Carlos Curbelo, board member, Coalition to Empower our Future
Sure. Well, first, thank you for convening us. Thank you all for being here. This conversation is critical and means a lot to me in many ways, especially as the father of two teenage daughters. The Coalition to Empower our Future seeks to, much like you’re doing here today, convene a national conversation on this very important issue. And by the way, thank you for the opportunity to talk about happiness. You know, our friends at NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo call me to talk about a lot of things, but never [to talk about] happiness. So even though I love them, this is a special opportunity.
The Coalition to Empower our Future understands that this is a complex issue, a multifaceted issue that needs a wide range of solutions. In order to find those solutions, we need to bring all the stakeholders together — parents, young people, educators, business leaders, nonprofit leaders and clinicians — because this issue is too important just to try to check the box and say, “We’re going to pass a tax credit for low-income families,” or, “We’re going to make public investments or regulate.” It’s so much bigger than that. So, the Coalition really wants to have a meaningful conversation, and we want that conversation to lead to the full suite of solutions that will help us address this in a meaningful way.
Richardson
You all focus on youth mental health and wellbeing. What do you think are some of the most significant factors impacting the state of youth happiness today?
Curbelo
This is the number one issue for young people in the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in seven young people in this country has some kind of mental health or behavioral issue. So this can be found in every family, in every community, every city, every state, the whole country.
Your question is kind of the point. There are so many factors, and I’ve seen all of this as a parent and as a school board member when I would visit schools, all kinds of schools — low-income schools, higher income schools — they all deal with this in a different way. You have bullying, which there’s been, for a couple of decades, a good amount of awareness around bullying and how best to handle that; there are, obviously, economic issues and economic stress; we know what housing has done to so many families in this country by stressing their economics and just making it hard for them to have the kind of social mobility that yields stability and happiness; you have peer pressure. We have all become familiar with and more sensitive to a lot of the issues over the last couple of decades. These are all big factors.
Of course, we’ve heard a lot today about social isolation and parents who aren’t as engaged with their children as they should be, and I think that’s all of us. Sometimes, we’re at home and realize we haven’t seen one of our daughters for three to four hours because she’s just in her room. So again, there are many factors, and that’s why it’s critical to have this broad conversation, this inclusive conversation so that as we develop the solutions, we have all the input we need.
Richardson
As you all have been researching and reviewing all those factors, do you think today’s young people are experiencing more severe mental health challenges than prior generations?
Curbelo
It certainly seems that way. A part of this is that we, as a society, and this is something we should celebrate, have become more sensitive to a lot of these issues. I remember when I was a kid, [if] I was down or something, my mom, God bless her, would say, “Just ignore it, you’ll be fine tomorrow,” and then never really take the time to figure out if it was something more serious or not. I think we’ve become better at that, and that’s why we are more aware of these issues. And maybe statistically, these issues are showing up more than they used to, but I also think there are a lot of new factors, and certainly technology is one of them. Kids don’t play outside as much as they used to. They don’t make the kinds of meaningful social connections that I think we used to as children, and probably the generations before us used to do even more. I do think this situation is particularly acute in the current generation.
Richardson
I want to pick up where you left off. As we heard from the last panel, this year’s World Happiness Report finds and reinforces that social connections are significantly enhancing the wellbeing of young people. At the same time, social disconnection is growing increasingly prevalent among young adults. How do you think society can work to help solve that disconnection and loneliness epidemic?
Curbelo
Well, the good news is this is an issue or a factor where we can all make a contribution. We can all reach out to a young person, whether it’s a child of ours or a nephew or a niece or a grandson, and just try to connect with them. Ask them questions or do something meaningful with them. Take them somewhere. Go on a fishing trip. Whatever it is, we can all make contributions.
From the perspective of Coalition to Empower our Future, we’re looking for partners, nonprofit partners, that are out there trying to encourage the kind of social connectedness that we know we need for a healthy society, that we know we need to meaningfully address these youth mental health issues. We’re looking for partners all over the country who are willing to invest in this space, that are willing to raise social awareness and partner with schools. Maybe we know that for lower-income families, in particular, people who have to show up either to the office or to a job site, it’s harder to have that human interaction even within the family. So, what can we do to fill those gaps? What role can schools play [or] after-school programs, all of these?
From the very beginning, we talked about how the suite of solutions has to be broad and comprehensive, and this is why because every community has different challenges. Every family has different challenges. And if we’re going to help bring people together to help our society heal, it’s going to require a very broad effort, and the conversation has to be sincere. Again, it can’t just be like a check-the-box type of effort where we say, “Well, mental health. Okay, maybe we threw some money at it. Maybe we regulated a couple of companies, and now everything’s okay.” It’s just not going to work that way.
Richardson
I want to ask you to put your legislator hat back on. During your time in Congress, you served on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, and you were a leader in the Problem Solvers Caucus. [You have] a lot of relevant experience there. But prior to that, you were [on the] Miami-Dade School Board. Share with us how that experience in government shaped your perspective on this issue, and especially, as you mentioned, looking forward here, what do you think is working well and what’s not working?
Curbelo
When I was on the school board, my children were very young, so I didn’t have a full perspective on this, but I remember visiting schools — and this was back in 2010, 2011 and 2012 — and the teachers were the ones sounding the alarm back then. They were talking about how much harder it was for them to do their jobs because the kids were just not in a good mental place. The teachers were dealing with a lot of the issues that, when I went to school, was the counselor’s [job]. You would go to the counselor to deal with issues. But [now] there are so many. It’s so prevalent, and it manifests in the classroom in ways where the teachers have to deal with it.
So, I really gained an appreciation at that point as to how widespread this was. And again, Bennett, it wasn’t just in low-income schools — because we know that there are issues that are associated with lower income, there are correlations — this was everywhere. From the lower-income schools to the middle-income schools to the higher-income schools. Every race, every cultural background. Visiting those schools was when I first became sensitive to how widespread this was and how it was not just isolated incidents, the way we may be used to thinking about all of this.
In terms of policymakers, I certainly think we’ve done a great job of raising awareness of this issue. Everyone knows this is a challenge, and everyone knows that the government and, more broadly, society have a role in addressing it together, but I think we’re still not there in terms of this idea of broad, comprehensive solutions. We all know that, having been a member of Congress, you want to check the box. Sometimes, you want to be able to go back home and say, “I did this or that to address mental health,” or whatever the issue is. This issue requires a whole lot more than that.
Richardson
Looking at some of those boxes that are trying to be checked in different places, there are lots of policies out there — both in the States and in Congress — addressing youth mental health. Which of those do you think is headed in the right direction? Are there other things you think lawmakers should be doing to address this right now?
Curbelo
I think all the policies that are designed to build community or to encourage civil society are very important. I remember I was a student at the University of Miami in the early 2000s, and we had to read a book for a class called “Bowling Alone,” about how social isolation had become such a major challenge and how we didn’t come together back then as a society the way we used to in decades past. Now it’s, I don’t know, 10 times worse, and obviously, the pandemic exacerbated all of this. So, for now, while we’re gathering information, data, input and bringing all these stakeholders together, I think policies that are aimed at building community, at making sure that young people whose parents maybe aren’t home, have a place to go after school, have people to talk to, have ways in which they can express their anxieties, their fears, their frustrations. All of that helps, and it prevents tragedies because we know about the most dramatic cases of violence that make national news, but every day in school districts throughout this country, educators are dealing with young people who are struggling and who are acting out in ways that can be dangerous and harmful to others. I think, for now, the best we can do is make sure that we’re investing as a society in this kind of social safety net to catch these young people who are struggling. But we certainly have to do a whole lot more, and that’s kind of the purpose of the Coalition to Empower our Future.
Richardson
As we heard throughout today, investing in and reinforcing those communities is what ultimately leads to more happiness and wellbeing. So, it’s a great note to end on. Thank you so much, congressman, for joining us and thank you to the Coalition for participating in today’s event.
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