Teenagers have again been in the news this week – fortunately, not this time shock-horror reports of their drink and drugs usage or their lack of ambition at school.

This time it was the publication of a survey which showed that some 25% of young Dutch people would like to emigrate. Apart from not feeling safe and being unhappy at the way people relate to each other, stress was one of the main reasons for wanting to doing so.
Stress? As if emigrating to a strange country where you know hardly anyone is a stress-free event.
Still, it is an interesting contrast to the UN survey earlier this year, which found Dutch young people are the most satisfied with life of all their European counterparts.
So, perhaps an explanation can be found in a major university research project also out this week, which looked at the theory that so many Dutch teenagers are over-tired because of all that stress.
Constantly running from school, to football practise to part-time jobs and to party – no wonder they are exhausted. Not at all, the research showed. Young people who complain of being tired all the time not only need to sleep more, but do more exercise.
Perhaps the one thing all these surveys show is that what ever an adult says, in a teenagers’ eyes, they are always wrong. And they need to go to bed earlier.