What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I was scraping dried Alfredo off pasta plates at the kitchen sink last month when my 16-year-old Lila leaned against the counter next to me, scrolling TikTok with one hand, and asked the question out of nowhere: “Do people really find life worth living?” I’d just been telling her I’d pick up her new cleats after work the next day, so the question hung there in the hum of the fridge, sticky with pasta steam. I almost dropped the plate I was holding.
My first instinct was to jump into the script I’d inherited as a parent: Of course it is! You have so much amazing stuff ahead of you. Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone? But I remembered a month earlier, when she’d asked why we bother with college apps if most people hate their jobs anyway, I’d given her that exact pep talk, and she’d just shrugged and walked back to her room, never bringing it up again. So I leaned against the counter next to her, wiped my hands on my jeans, and said, “Some days I don’t.”
She looked up from her phone, surprised. “You don’t?”
“No. Last week, I spent three hours on a district work call that ended with no decision, I forgot to buy your favorite oat milk on the way home, our dog chewed a hole in my good sneakers, and I went to bed that night thinking the whole day was just… nothing. Wasted. Not worth writing home about.”
She nodded, and explained that’s what all these people online are saying. They say they just go to work, pay bills, take care of kids, and that’s it. No big joy, just waiting for the weekend, then waiting for vacation, then waiting to retire. Her best friend said the same thing last week after her mom got a divorce and had to pick up two extra shifts. “Why would anyone sign up for that?” she said.
As a 7th grade teacher, I hear this question all the time. Last semester, three different kids brought up the same thought in after-school art club, while we sat waiting for glue to dry. Kids this age are starting to see past the story they got when they were little: that you grow up, get a job you love, a nice house, a happy family, and everything is great. They see us tired, they see people online being honest about being miserable, they see all the bad stuff in the news, and it makes perfect sense to ask if it’s all just a lie.
The first mistake I see parents and teachers make is shutting the question down immediately. Either you panic and assume it’s a crisis, you brush it off as over dramatic teen angst, or you jump into that forced positive pep talk. None of that works. The concrete change I made years ago, when I first started hearing this question from students, is I pause 10 full seconds before I answer, so I don’t default to what I think I’m supposed to say. Then I tell the truth, not the polished, Instagram-ready version of my life.
The second shift is that I don’t talk about big, grand achievements. I don’t tell them to think about graduation, or getting married, or their dream job. Those things are far away, and a lot of people don’t even get them, or they don’t feel as good as people promise when they do. Instead, I talk about the tiny, unplanned bits that don’t make it to any social feed. I told Lila that even on the worst days, there’s usually 5 or 10 minutes that make the whole rest of the day okay. Like the morning we got sourdough from the new bakery down the street, the butter melted into the warm bread, and she laughed so hard when a crumb fell in my coffee that she snort-laughed. That 2 minutes was better than any big vacation I’ve ever had, I told her.
At school, I changed my morning check-in question to match this. Instead of “How are you today?” which always gets the automatic “Fine,” I ask “What’s one small thing that didn’t totally suck in the past two days?” At home, we stuck a cheap notepad to the fridge, and whenever someone thinks of it, they write that small thing down. It takes 10 seconds. There’s no rule that we have to do it every day. Last week, the notes were “Saw a squirrel steal a whole french fry off a picnic table,” “My chemistry partner shared her gum with me,” “The bath was hot enough.” Nothing big, nothing impressive.
I also make a point to be clear with other parents that there’s a line, and it’s easy to spot. If your kid is asking about their own life, if they’ve stopped hanging out with friends, stopped doing things they used to love, if they say they don’t see the point for themselves, that’s when you call the school counselor or a therapist, no question. But when they’re asking a general question, “Do people really find life worth living?” that’s just them growing up, figuring out how the world actually works, not a crisis to fix.
That night after we talked, Lila grabbed a soda and headed back to her room to watch a show with her friend online. I added “Got to sit on the kitchen floor and talk about the hard stuff” to the fridge notepad before I finished the dishes. Last Tuesday, she came home from school after a bad track practice and a failed algebra quiz, threw her bag down, and said “Still think life’s worth it, huh?” I was folding laundry, and I said “Today’s been garbage for me too. Ask me tomorrow. I’ll probably have a better answer then.” She rolled her eyes, but she grabbed a chocolate chip cookie off the counter and smiled before she went upstairs. We don’t have a neat answer. Some weeks, she still says it feels like everyone’s just faking being happy. The notepad sits on the fridge, and we forget to add to it for 10 days at a time. But we keep talking about it, and that’s enough for now.
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