The State of the World as Viewed by Children Under 16 Years of Age and their Messages for the Secretary General of the United Nations

On its 75th anniversary the United Nations undertook a survey to catalogue the opinions of >1.4 million individuals on global priorities, threats, and forecasts for the state of the world in 2045. They also sought views on pandemic recovery and international cooperation. However, no attempts were made to disaggregate the data by age. This study examines the views of children under 16 years (n=85,988) in relation to adults (n=1,353,580) and contextualizes their responses by gender, disability, geography, and national socioeconomic indices. Parametric and nonparametric tests were used to analyze quantitative data. A thematic analysis framework was used to evaluate qualitative data. Rank order views on priorities and threats varied geographically with concordance between children and adults ranging from a low of ρ=0.38 in Europe to ρ>0.95 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Key differences included views on healthcare, sustainability, nuclear weapons, and forced migration. Self-identified gender and disability significantly influenced children’s concerns and priorities. Socioeconomic indicators were only moderately predictive of selected responses (r≤0.64). The extent of optimism for the future was lower in children versus adults and the degree of pessimism spanned 32% points across geographic regions. Open-ended responses provided context for children’s views and enumerated their vast array of opinions on the actions needed to improve global conditions and the supranational organizations responsible for driving this change. This study takes a deeper look at the UN75 data and provides unique insights for global leaders, policy makers and others who work with children to foster their emotional, social, and civic development.