- A new Pew survey identified gendered opinions on aspects of teen life.
- One thing teens have in common: Marriage and children not a huge aspiration.
- Boys and girls see different routes to a happy, prosperous adult future.
A gender gap exists between teen girls and boys in the U.S. in terms of both the challenges they face and how they perceive them. And a lot of teens see a gender imbalance play out at school, too.
That’s according to a new survey report from Pew Research Center released Thursday. The report also included a separate look at how much adults think certain things should be emphasized for boys and girls and where they should vary.
Teens agree that anxiety and depression are the biggest problems their classmates deal with, for example. But boys and girls see differences in coping tools. They agree that females have more friends to whom they can turn for emotional support.
They also agree that academics — the need to get good grades — are a key source of pressure, with about 7 in 10 regardless of gender saying that. Both sexes in high numbers say they feel that pressure to excel in school (71% for girls, compared to 65% for boys).
About a third of teens also feel pressure to participate in extracurricular activities, in similar shares between boys and girls.
Other pressures are less equally divided, Kim Parker, director of social trends research at Pew, told the Deseret News. Girls feel much more pressure than boys to look good and to fit in socially. Boys, on the other hand, feel more pressure to be physically strong and play sports well.
Almost none of the boys or the girls say they feel significant pressure to be sexually active. An identical 7% of boys and of girls say they feel that pressure.
The online survey of 1,391 teens ages 13 to 17 was conducted Sept. 18 to Oct. 10, 2024, by Ipsos. The teens are the children of adults participating in its Knowledge Panel. Findings were weighted to be nationally representative of teens who live with parents.
Looking to the future
The survey asked teens what they want to do after high school and found they have a lot of aspirations in common, said Parker, who with Kiley Hurst cowrote the report. As adults, they hope to have jobs they really like, lots of friends and plenty of money.
Marriage and becoming parents did not move the desire needle nearly as much, she said, adding that adults seem to have prioritized those two things less in surveys, too, over time. Among the teens in this survey, those who are Republican or lean that way prioritize marriage and kids more than do Democrats and those who lean more to the left.
But the routes these young people expect to follow after high school are different: More girls than boys plan to pursue a four-year college degree (60% vs. 46%). Boys with different plans than college say they’ll attend vocational school (11% compared to 7% of girls), work full-time (9% vs. 3% of girls) or join the military (5% vs. 1% of girls).
Parker said that Pew has been looking in depth at issues surrounding men and masculinity and has released reports on that recently. This survey provided an opportunity to look at how teens see differences between the sexes, as well.
Perceptions at school
In the survey, the teens were asked about school and whether boys or girls were more likely to do certain things or be treated certain ways. Among the findings:
- Forty-two percent of teens say girls at their school get better grades than boys. Just over half say it’s about even, while just 3% say boys get better grades than girls.
- Nearly two-thirds (63%) say boys are more disruptive than girls in school. Just 4% say girls are.
- While nearly half don’t see a gender difference in who speaks up more in class, girls have the edge over boys among the others, with 34% saying girls do, compared to 18% of boys.
- Nearly 6 in 10 say that girls are more apt to have friends to whom they turn for emotional support, while just over a third say it’s about even. Just 7% say boys are more apt to have friends who provide emotional support.
Parker said nearly all of the teens (a whopping 98% in the survey) report that they do have at least one close friend and more than a third have at least five close friends — findings true of boys and girls alike.
Facing issues
Teens were given a curated list of issues that young people their age might face at school and asked whether they were “extremely/very common,” “somewhat common” or “not too/not at all common.”
More than two-thirds identified anxiety and depression, with 30% calling it extremely common.
Just over 1 in 5 said bullying is common, and a similar number said that of drug use.
Physical fights came in fourth on the list, with 17% saying they are highly common.
Alcohol use came in last, with just 1 in 7 calling it at least very common.
The survey found girls outpace boys at saying anxiety and depression are extremely or very common. They were also more apt to say that alcohol use is common. On the other items, the shares were very similar.
But are those issues more common for boys or for girls?
Half or more of the teens say that four of the five issues are equally common. The exception was for physical fights, which the teens deemed more common for boys (44%) than girls (15%).
Unequal treatment?
More of the teens believe girls get better grades than boys in school, 42% vs. 3%. Even so, more than half believe grades are about equal.
When it comes to leadership roles, 56% say that’s about equal between the sexes, while 27% say girls are more likely to have leadership roles and 16% say that of boys.
What the teens don’t see at school is favoritism shown by teachers; 78% say that educators treat boys and girls about the same.
What adults say about boys and girls
The adult survey, a repeat of one conducted in 2017, uncovered a belief that there’s too little emphasis on encouraging boys to talk about their feelings (57%) or do well in school (43%).
Parker emphasized that not all the adults polled were parents.
The adults in slightly higher numbers also said there should be more encouragement for girls to stand up for themselves; 41% said that, compared to 37% who also think boys should receive more encouragement to stand up for themselves, too.
“Similar shares of adults say there’s too little emphasis on encouraging boys and girls to be leaders,” per the companion adult report, written by Pew’s Juliana Horowitz, senior associate director of research. “But slightly more say there’s too much focus on this for boys (17%), compared to for girls (12%).”
Since the survey in 2017, the share has dropped at least 10 percentage points among adults who feel that there’s too little emphasis for girls on doing well in school (27% now vs. 43% then), being leaders (38% vs. 53% back then) and standing up for themselves (41% vs. 54%).
The share has also dropped on whether there’s too little emphasis on encouraging boys to do well in school (43% now vs. 51% in 2017) and to be leaders (36% vs. 41%).