Youth Health Network

The health of adolescents is never enough to be "no disease and up to standard in sports". It is a three-dimensional dynamic balance of physical, psychological and social adaptability - this is also the definition of health clearly proposed by the WHO in 1948. However, 90% of the youth health science popularization on the market currently misses the core shortcoming of social adaptability, which is the most easily ignored.

Last week, when I was doing a youth health clinic in the community, I met Xiaoyu, a third-year student in junior high school. He is 1.82 meters tall, with lung capacity and body fat percentage within the optimal range. He got full marks in the physical education high school entrance examination. His mother brought him here because he wanted to ask if he needed some vitamin supplements. But when they talked about the class group assignment that had just ended, Xiaoyu clutched the corner of his clothes for a long time and said, "I do my own part, and I don't dare to discuss it with them." His mother also smiled and smoothed things over, "This kid is introverted, just grow up."

In fact, there have always been two completely different practical ideas in the field of adolescent health intervention. Most colleagues in public health will first focus on quantifiable hard indicators: such as screening for myopia and scoliosis twice a year, strictly controlling the obesity rate of primary and secondary school students, and ensuring one hour of outdoor activity time per day. This is also the plan that most schools are currently implementing. For example, Shenzhen has included spine health screening in the routine physical examination of primary and secondary school students starting in 2021. In the past three years, the scoliosis detection rate among students has dropped by 4.2 percentage points, and the effects are tangible. However, colleagues in clinical psychology often feel that this approach "treats the symptoms but not the root cause." Survey data released by the National Health Commission in 2023 show that the depression detection rate among adolescents aged 14-18 reached 17.5%, and nearly 60% of them do not take the initiative to talk to their parents and teachers about their emotions. Many seemingly healthy children have been plagued by anxiety and self-denial in private for several years.

I had been vacillating for a long time, not knowing which school of thought was more correct, until I chatted with Lao Zhou, who has been a youth social worker for five years. He said that many of the children who came to him for help had neither physical problems nor clinical depression, but just "don't know how to deal with the world." They were nicknamed by classmates and dared not say it, so they could only keep it in their hearts.； I watch so many short videos that I can’t find any topics to talk about with real classmates. ； There is even a girl who is a sophomore in high school, and her grades are always among the top 20 in her grade, but she doesn’t dare to go out to buy milk tea by herself. She has to write down what she wants to say on a piece of paper in advance when calling a delivery person. Do you think this is a health problem? Calculate, but neither the physical examination form nor the psychological assessment scale can detect this part of the problem.

Speaking of this, there must be some people who want to argue, so in the future, we don’t need to worry about myopia or grades, and just let our children go out and socialize every day? Of course not. In the past two years, there has been a lot of debate about whether to equip children with mobile phones. Many parents regard electronic devices as a scourge, thinking that if they touch them, they will destroy their eyesight and deteriorate their learning. However, a small-scale survey we conducted with three local middle schools last year showed that children who are allowed to use electronic devices for less than 1 hour a day to read popular science content or chat with classmates have a social adaptability score that is 23% higher than those of children who are not allowed to touch electronic devices at all. You can't let your children live in a vacuum without the Internet, right? The problem has never been with the phone itself, but with how to use it and how to guide it.

Therefore, when we make this "Youth Health Network", we will never give you the standard answer of "do these 10 things and your child will be healthy". Instead, we will put a lot of content that seems "not that useful": such as "3 tips on how to quickly get to know your classmates" summarized by school doctors, "How to adjust your emotions after being criticized by the teacher" compiled by psychiatrists, and even "What procedures should you go through to register at the hospital for the first time" compiled by a college student. A little reader in the second grade of junior high school left us a message before, saying that he followed the method we wrote and finally dared to apply to join the class basketball team. He was happier than we were when we published 10 popular science articles on myopia prevention and control.

To be honest, health is not something that can be quantified with points. Your child can get full marks for running 800 meters, but dare not say hello to his favorite teacher. How can this be considered completely healthy? We don’t want to be an authoritative science popularization platform. We just want to be a place where children, parents, and teachers can come and chat. If they have questions, they can talk about them. If they have experience, they can share their experiences. After all, there is no standard answer for the growth of teenagers, and there is certainly no standard answer for health.