What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
The sponge slipped out of my hand and plopped in the dirty dish water last Tuesday, right after my 16-year-old Javi asked it. We’d just finished dinner, his half-eaten bowl of mac and cheese still sat on the table, rain streaked the kitchen window, and he’d been scrolling TikTok for 20 minutes quiet as a mouse. “Do people actually find life worth living?” he said, not even looking up from his phone at first.
My first instinct was to panic. As a high school teacher and a mom, you hear enough about teen mental health to immediately jump to the worst conclusion. I also wanted to blurt out the automatic reassurance: Of course it is! How could you even ask that? But I’ve had this question enough times in my classroom to know it’s not always a cry for help. Sometimes it’s just the first time a kid has actually connected the dots between what they’re told about life and what they actually see around them.
So I wiped my hand on my jeans, leaned against the counter, and said, “What made you ask that?”
He put his phone down and turned it around to show me a 15-second clip of a guy in his 30s saying he peaked in high school, and now all he does is work, pay bills, and wait for the weekend that’s over before it starts. Then Javi leaned back in his chair and ticked off his own observations. Look at Uncle Mike, he said. He works 60 hours a week at that accounting firm, bought that big fancy house, and he never has time to come camping with us like he did when I was little. He’s always tired. And you? You’re always grading papers until 10pm, you complain about your back hurting, you never have time to finish that novel you started writing. Is this just it?
I didn’t give him the scripted answer I probably should have. I didn’t say “it gets better” or “you’ll have your own family one day and it’ll all be worth it.” I told him the truth. I said some weeks I don’t think it’s worth it. Last month, remember when the car broke down two days after the water heater leaked? I had 68 essays to grade in three days, the cat peed on my favorite college sweater, and I got in bed at 7:30pm and just cried because I didn’t want to do any of it. I thought exactly what you’re thinking: what’s the point of all this if it’s just broken cars and leaky water heaters and endless grading?
Javi blinked. He’d never heard me say that out loud. I always put on the “it’s fine” face for him. “Really?” he said. I nodded. But then I told him that same week, on Wednesday, I walked to the mailbox after school and the neighbor’s 7-year-old left me a dandelion they picked on the way home, with a sticky note that said “you’re nice.” And that night, after I finished crying, you came in and sat on the end of the bed and showed me that meme of the cat in a pizza costume that you thought was the funniest thing ever, and we laughed for 10 minutes until my sides hurt. Those are the parts no one posts on TikTok. No one posts the dandelion or the meme laugh, because it’s not dramatic enough. It’s not a big achievement or a big rant. It’s just… there.
As a teacher, I’ve seen this question pop up more and more over the past five years. Teens grow up seeing only two versions of adult life online: one is the perfect highlight reel of fancy vacations and promotions and picture-perfect families, and the other is the bitter rant about how it’s all a scam and nothing matters. There’s no in-between. So when they start looking ahead, all they see is either a life they’ll never live up to, or a life that’s not worth living at all.
When other parents or new teachers ask me how to handle this question, I don’t give them vague tips about being supportive. I give them three small, concrete things to try. First, don’t rush to fix it or reassure them. The worst thing you can do is dismiss the question by saying “Of course it’s worth it, don’t be silly” or panic and immediately jump to crisis mode (to be clear: if your kid is talking about hurting themselves, get help right away, but most of the time, this is just a kid thinking through what life actually is, for the first time). Just start with “What made you think about that?” Let them talk through what they’ve seen that’s making them doubt. Nine times out of ten, they just want to be heard, not talked at.
Second, don’t sugarcoat it. Kids can smell a lie from a mile away. If you pretend your life is perfect and every day is a blessing, they won’t believe you. Admit the hard parts. Admit that most days are 90% boring, messy stuff you don’t want to do. That’s honest, and that builds trust.
Third, point to the tiny unglamorous stuff, not the big milestones. A concrete thing I started doing with my classes and with Javi is a casual “one good tiny thing” check-in at dinner or homeroom. No journaling required, no pressure to have something big. Just go around and say one tiny thing that didn’t suck that day. It can’t be a big thing like getting an A or a birthday present. It has to be something small: your coffee was the perfect temperature, you saw a cool dog on the way to school, your favorite song came on the radio. It takes two minutes a day, and it just trains everyone to look for the small stuff that adds up.
Last week, Javi complained for 20 minutes about having to work 20 hours a week at the grocery store this summer, said it’s just proof that adult life is all work and no play. I didn’t argue with him. Last night, he came home from skateboarding, dragged me over to his phone to show me a video he took of an old guy at the park pulling a kickflip over a cracked curb. The old guy wiped out, got up, and did it again, and when he landed he pumped his fist and yelled. Javi watched it three times, grinning, and said “That’s so cool, I want to do that when I’m 50.”
We didn’t talk again about whether life is worth living. That’s okay. He’s still figuring it out. I’m still figuring it out. Some questions don’t need a perfect answer right away. They just need you to not be afraid to talk about them honestly.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living