Why Your Teen Might Ask ‘Is Life Worth Living?’ And What To Do Next
I’m stacking chipped taco plates at the kitchen sink, dishwasher humming, Jax’s soccer cleats propped by the door reeking of wet grass when he says it from the couch, half into his phone: “Mom, do people really find life worth living?”
I nearly drop the ceramic plate I’m holding. It’s 7:30 on a Tuesday. I thought he was going to ask for gas money or a ride to the skate park Friday. His best friend moved across the country at the start of the semester, he didn’t make varsity soccer after trying out for two years, and lately he’s spent most of his free time scrolling TikTok until his eyes glaze over. This isn’t the kind of question you expect to pop up between unloading the dishwasher and turning on the evening news.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and pull a dining chair around to face the couch instead of rushing to answer. “What made you think of that right now?” I say. He turns the phone around to show me a 20-something creator leaning into the camera, saying no one actually enjoys being an adult, we’re all just faking it until we die. “They’re right, aren’t they?” Jax says. “You work all day, you cook, you clean up after the dog, you pay bills. When do you actually get to the part that’s worth it?”
I don’t say what every old parenting handout I’ve read used to tell me to say: Of course life is worth it! You have so much to live for! That would be a lie, and we both know it. Last week I cried for 20 minutes because I burnt my mom’s birthday cake and forgot to pay the internet bill, so we sat in the dark for three hours while the dog chewed a hole in my favorite sweater. Most of my days are just a string of small, annoying tasks that need doing. So I tell him that. “Most of the time, I’m just annoyed,” I say. “I’d say 70% of every week is stuff I don’t really want to do. But the other 30% isn’t, and that’s enough for me right now.”
He rolls his eyes. “What 30%? Your big work meetings? PTA meetings?” I shake my head, and I name the thing from last weekend: “That 10 minutes we got donuts at 7 a.m. before anyone else was up, sitting in the car watching the ducks fight over bread crumbs? That was enough to make all the burnt cake and bad internet worth it. Remember when you and your cousin stayed up until 2 a.m. building that Lego Falcon, and you laughed so hard you snort-laughed when he dropped the cockpit? That was 2 hours that beat out a whole week of homework and practice, wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t say anything, but he shoves his phone in his pocket and picks at a loose thread on the couch. As a high school counselor, I’ve gotten this exact question four times in the last month from different students. It’s never what most adults assume first. Most of the time, it’s not an immediate cry for help around suicide (though of course, if your kid says they don’t see any point to anything and don’t care about things they used to love, that’s when you call a therapist right away—no questions asked). More often than not, it’s that kids these days are growing up seeing a version of life online that’s all big wins, perfect vacations, viral happy moments. They think if their daily life is mostly boring, annoying, unremarkable, that means something is wrong, that life isn’t actually worth living.
The first mistake most of us make is rushing to fix the question with a big, happy speech. That just tells kids we don’t want to hear the answer they’re actually working through. The concrete things I’ve started doing, both with my own kid and my students, are small and low-effort. First, answer honestly. Don’t pretend your life is a constant stream of joy. Admit that most of it is boring or annoying. That immediately makes you more credible than any influencer they’re watching. Second, name small, specific moments instead of leaning on big abstract wins. You don’t have to say “you have your whole life ahead of you” or “we have such a great family.” You just point to the 10-minute donut run, the shared cookie in math class, the bad meme that made you snort-laugh. Those are the things that actually add up, not the college acceptances or the promotions we hold up as the “point” of life.
After that Tuesday conversation, I started dropping one small good thing into our daily routine, no pressure attached. When I drive Jax to practice, I’ll say “One tiny good thing today: the grocery store had my favorite lemon cookies in stock.” When we unload groceries, I’ll say “One tiny good thing: the sun was warm on my back when I checked the mail today.” I don’t make him share one back, I just say it. After five days, he was putting his cleats in the car and said, “One tiny good thing: the kid in my bio lab gave me half his extra energy bar today, I didn’t even ask.”
Last night, we walked the dog around the block after dinner. A group of kids from the neighborhood were lighting off small firecrackers early for Fourth of July, and one of Jax’s old teammates waved him over to have one. When we got back, he got a meme from his friend that moved, of a cat in a soccer jersey, and he laughed so hard he had to lean against the wall. He paused before heading up to his room and said, “I guess there’s enough small stuff, huh?” I nodded. I told him I still have days where I wonder the same thing. That’s okay.
We don’t have a final answer. Some nights he still sits on the couch scrolling and looks glum, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. I don’t push. The question doesn’t need a perfect, neat resolution. It just needs someone who won’t lie about what life is actually like, and help them spot the small bits that make it worth getting up for.
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