What To Do When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?”
It was 8:15 on a Tuesday, I was folding Javi’s mud-caked soccer hoodies at the kitchen table, the dishwasher humming, our golden retriever chewing a reeking rawhide by the front door. Javi was slouched on the couch, scrolling TikTok after dinner, quiet since he’d failed his driver’s test for the second time three days prior. Without looking up, he said, “Mom, do you think most people actually find life worth living?”
I almost dropped the hoodie I was holding. My first instinct was to panic: Is he suicidal? Do I need to call the therapist right now? But I’ve been doing this long enough, both as a parent and a middle school teacher, to know that panicking just shuts kids down. I folded the last hoodie, set the pile on the chair, and sat down on the coffee table across from him, instead of launching straight into crisis mode.
I said, “That’s such a good question. What made you ask that?” He turned his phone around to show me a thread of 18 to 22 year olds talking about post-college life. One said he works 45 hours a week just to pay rent for a studio apartment, and the only thing he looks forward to is napping on Saturdays. Another said she wouldn’t kill herself, but she also wouldn’t care if she never woke up. Most of the comments agreed: life isn’t terrible, it’s just not worth all the hassle.
Javi put his phone down. “All we hear is how if I work hard now, I’ll get into a good college, get a good job, and be happy. But what if that’s a lie? What if I do all this stuff just to end up tired and bored?”
That’s when I realized this wasn’t a crisis call, at least not for Javi that night. It was the first time he’d started questioning the script we’d all been feeding him since kindergarten. He’s 16, he’s starting to see that adults don’t have it all figured out, and the curated happy lives he sees on Instagram aren’t real. But he’s also only seeing the extremes: either you’re a wildly successful influencer loving every minute, or you’re a miserable adult just counting down to retirement. No one talks about the middle.
I used to make the mistake of jumping in to fix this kind of question. I’d say “Of course life is worth living! Think of all the amazing things you get to do!” But that’s a lie, and teens smell that lie immediately. I remember when I was his age, my mom always told me life was a beautiful gift, but I’d walk in on her crying after fights with my dad, and I knew she was faking it. That made me trust her even less when she talked about this stuff.
So this time, I told him the truth. I said, “Some days I do. Some days it’s totally worth it. Like that day after your game last month, when we got mint chocolate chip ice cream and ate it in the car while it rained? That day I thought, yeah, this is why it’s all worth it. But some days? Last Tuesday, my car broke down on the way to work, I forgot my lunch, and I had to sit through a two hour meeting about copy machine etiquette. That day, I just counted down the minutes until I could come home and get in bed. I didn’t think it was all that worth it that day.”
He stared at me for a second, then laughed. He said he didn’t think adults had days like that. I told him most adults don’t post those days on Instagram. We just talk about the good stuff, so kids grow up thinking they’re the only one who feels let down sometimes.
What I’ve learned from working with kids and talking to other parents is that this question comes up a lot more than most of us talk about. It’s not always a sign that your kid is in immediate danger, though it’s always worth checking. The first concrete thing I tell other parents to do is pause whatever you’re doing, put your phone down, and ask what brought the question on before you try to answer. Then, check in directly: “Are you feeling this way about your own life right now? Do you need help sorting through this?” If they say yes, you reach out to a counselor, that’s clear. If they say no, they’re just thinking, you don’t have to fix it.
The second thing is don’t fake a perfect happy answer. It’s okay to say you don’t know, that it changes day to day. Kids don’t need a speech about how great life is. They need honesty. The third thing is point to the small stuff, not the big goals. You don’t have to tell them “you’ll have a great job and a nice house one day.” Tell them you look forward to your 10 minutes of coffee on the porch before everyone wakes up. Tell them you get excited when your favorite song comes on the radio, or when the tomatoes from your garden are finally ripe. That’s the stuff most of life is made of, and that’s where most of the “worth” lives.
A week after that Tuesday, we were walking the dog around the block after dinner, and Javi brought it up again. He said, “I think I get it now. It’s not that life is always worth it, or always not. It just… is, most days, and sometimes it’s good, and that’s enough?” I said that sounded about right to me.
We haven’t solved the question forever. Last week he posted an Instagram story that just said “everything is mid” and I didn’t comment on it. He still goes to practice, still teases his little sister for stealing his socks, still asks for extra pepperoni on pizza night. The question didn’t go away, and I don’t expect it to. Figuring out what makes life worth living is something we all do, every day, no matter how old we are.
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