What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do people really find life worth living?
I was scraping congealed spaghetti sauce into the trash bin last Tuesday when my 16-year-old Lila asked it from her perch on the kitchen counter. She was scrolling TikTok, one sock off, half a granola bar melting next to her elbow. “Do people really find life worth living?” The sponge slipped out of my hand, splashing soapy water all over my jeans. I wiped my hand on my sweatpants and turned to face her. “Come again?” She repeated the question, no drama, no tears, just the same flat, curious tone she uses when she asks if I think pineapple belongs on pizza. “I see everyone always complaining. You work 40 hours just to pay for a house we barely get to hang out in. All I do is homework and study for tests that don’t even matter. What’s the point of any of it? None of the adults I ask ever answer me straight. They just say I’m too young to get it, or that it gets better.”
I sub for 10th grade English twice a week, so this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this question. Three weeks ago, I let my class work on their poetry projects early, and a group of boys in the back got to talking about the same thing. One said his dad leaves for work at 6 a.m. and comes home at 7, then sits on the couch and watches football until he goes to bed. “Is that what it is? Just work and watch TV until you die?” he asked. No one had an answer. Another kid said all the people on Instagram who have the “perfect life” are always posting about being depressed, so why are we all supposed to want that?
Most of the time, when adults hear this question, we do one of two things. We panic, assuming the kid is suicidal and immediately jump into crisis mode. That’s a valid first step, by the way— I always ask straight out if a kid is hurting themselves or wants to hurt themselves before anything else, and that day I asked Lila too. She said no, she just was wondering. The other thing we do is shut the question down with vague, positive nonsense: “Of course it’s worth it! You have so much to look forward to!” That’s what I did the first time Lila brought this up last year, actually. I listed off prom, college, meeting people she’ll love, traveling the world, all the big stuff we’re told to sell kids. She just rolled her eyes, grabbed her phone, and went to her room, and didn’t bring it up again for six months.
What I’ve learned since then is that this question isn’t a cry for a pep talk. It’s a developmental step. Teens are just starting to see that the story we told them growing up—work hard, be nice, and you’ll get a happy, perfect life—doesn’t match what they actually see all around them. They don’t need a lie. They need an honest answer. That Tuesday, I pulled a stool next to Lila instead of going back to dishes, and I told her the truth. I said, “Honestly? Some days I don’t. Some weeks I drag myself from work to grocery shopping to bedtime, and the whole thing just feels like checking boxes. I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel like it’s worth it. I just get through it.” She stopped scrolling and looked at me, like she didn’t expect me to say that.
Then I told her the part I wish more adults would tell kids. I said, “But most days, there’s at least one tiny thing that makes it okay. Today, it was that we had extra chocolate chips in the pancakes we made for breakfast. Last week, it was watching the squirrel that lives in our oak tree steal nuts from the bird feeder for 10 minutes before I had to start grading. It’s not the big stuff that makes it worth it, most of the time. The big stuff—college, getting a job, buying a house—those are just things we check off. It’s the tiny, stupid, useless little bits that add up.”
That’s the first concrete thing I share with other parents and teachers who deal with this: answer honestly, don’t default to fake positivity. Instead of “Of course it’s worth it,” try “Some days I don’t either. What’s feeling pointless for you right now?” If they say school is all stupid stress, don’t argue that it’s necessary for their future. Just say “That sounds exhausting. What’s the worst part of it right now?” You don’t have to fix the problem, you just have to not lie about how life actually works.
The second small shift that helps is to start pointing out those tiny good bits in regular conversation, not just when they ask the big question. You don’t have to make a big deal out of it. When you’re driving to school, just say “This song is so good, this 15 minute drive feels worth it just for this.” When you’re making dinner, say “I love that this mac and cheese takes 10 minutes and tastes so good.” We spend so much time only talking about big milestones as the “point” of life that kids think if they don’t get those big things, their life isn’t worth living. The truth is most of us get by on the small stuff.
A couple days after that Tuesday talk, Lila came home from school and dropped her backpack by the door. She pulled a crumpled receipt out of her pocket for a $3 chocolate chip cookie from the school cafeteria. “This cookie was so good,” she said. “It almost made my 8 a.m. chemistry test worth it.” I laughed and said that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
She still asks the question sometimes. Last week she asked it again after she got her SAT scores back lower than she wanted. I didn’t give her a big speech. I just said “Yeah, today really sucks, doesn’t it?” Then I ordered her favorite garlic noodles and we watched a terrible dating show on Netflix. We don’t have a permanent answer. Some days she thinks life is totally worth it, some days she thinks it’s all a waste of time, and that’s okay. I’d rather she be honest about it than buy into the lie that life is supposed to be perfect all the time. For now, that’s enough.
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