What To Do When Your Teen Asks, ‘Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?’
Lasagna crumbs still dotted the kitchen table after dinner, I was hauling a basket of clean laundry to the couch, and my 16-year-old Javi slouched in the armchair, phone in his lap, with a background playlist of car reviews droning from the TV. Out of nowhere, he paused scrolling and asked, “Do people really find life worth living?”
I fumbled the lid to my iced coffee, and it clattered onto the hardwood, spilling a dark splotch by the baseboard. My first instinct was to blurt out that silly, automatic reply: Of course they do, what a question. But I wiped up the mess with a paper towel and sat down instead. I remembered last semester, a 15-year-old in my 10th grade English class asked me the exact same thing right after bell, and I gave her that silly answer. She just nodded and walked out, and never brought it up again.
“What made you ask that?” I said.
He explained he’d been scrolling a Reddit thread about the point of working 40-hour weeks, and all the top comments were from people in their 20s and 30s saying they only got up in the morning for their kids or dogs, that they didn’t actually enjoy most of life. “If all that’s waiting for me after high school is just working to pay rent and being tired all the time, why bother?” he said.
I didn’t argue with him. I said, “You know what? You’re not wrong that most adults don’t talk about this honestly. We either post the fancy vacation photos online or vent about how bad work is, but we rarely talk about the middle. A lot of days are just okay. A lot of people go weeks without some big, exciting moment that makes them go ‘wow life is worth it.’ I think that’s pretty normal, actually.”
Then I did the thing I’ve started doing with every kid who asks this question, whether it’s my own or a student: I asked straight. “But I do need to know: are you feeling like life isn’t worth it for you right now? You can say whatever you want, I won’t panic or overreact, I just need to know.” That’s not a vague tip, it’s a specific line you can memorize. Skipping this step is a mistake I see a lot of adults make—they avoid the hard question because they’re scared of the answer, but not asking leaves the kid hanging whether they’re hurting or just confused.
Javi shook his head. “No, I’m fine. I’m just confused. All we see is either everyone’s perfect life or everyone’s miserable life. There’s no in between.”
I pulled a crumpled napkin from the coffee table, grabbed a pen off the counter, and wrote three things down: 1) My barista remembered I take no sugar, extra oat milk this week. 2) The stray cat that hangs around our porch sat on my lap while I graded papers for 15 minutes. 3) You left half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos on the counter for me Tuesday when I got home late from conferences. I slid it across the table to him.
“These are the things that make my life worth living this week,” I said. “None of them are big. None of them are the stuff I post about. But they add up. Most people I know aren’t walking around feeling like life is this amazing adventure every day. They’re just walking around looking for these tiny things, and that’s enough most of the time.”
As a teacher, I’ve learned this question isn’t always a cry for help, though it always requires that straight check-in. More often than not, it’s a kid sorting through the dissonance between what they’ve been told life should be—exciting, successful, happy all the time—and what they’re starting to see it actually is: mostly routine, lots of hard work, lots of boring bits. Social media amplified this, because now they get to see all the unfiltered adult venting we used to save for happy hours with friends, not broadcast for anyone to see. They fill in the gaps and assume that’s the whole story.
The worst thing you can do is rush to fix it with a motivational speech. It shuts the conversation down immediately. A kid admits they’re confused about whether life is worth it, and the adult says “it gets better!” or “just think positive!” and the kid walks away thinking adults can’t handle the truth, so they won’t ask again. Validating their observation first doesn’t mean you agree life is meaningless—it just means you’re willing to talk honestly instead of feeding them the same polished lines they’ve heard a hundred times.
Javi sat there for a minute, then picked up the pen and added his own three things to the napkin: 1) Waking up 20 minutes before school so I can lay in bed and listen to my playlist. 2) The peach pie we got at the farm stand last weekend. 3) My beat up old skateboard that’s all scratched up but rides better than any new one. We sat there for another 15 minutes talking about how stupid it is that everyone acts like you have to have some big grand purpose to be happy, then our golden retriever stole a sock from the laundry basket and we had to chase him around the coffee table. That was the end of it. No big revelation, no perfect emotional moment.
Last week, a student of mine left a note on my desk. She’d asked me the same question a month before, and I’d done the same thing I did with Javi: validated her observation, asked the straight check-in, wrote down my small things. Her note said, “I asked my dad what his small things are. He said pulling into the driveway after work and sitting in the car for five minutes before he comes in. I never thought about that being enough, but it kind of is.”
I still don’t have a universal answer to that question. Some days I’d say yes, life is definitely worth it. Some days I’d say it’s just okay, and that’s all I’ve got. But I know this works: being honest instead of polished, asking the hard question straight, and pointing to the small stuff no one posts about. That’s enough for now.
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