Secondary school-aged pupils in Scotland - mental wellbeing, relationships and social media: report

5. Conclusions

This report presented findings relating to the mental wellbeing, relationships and social media use of 1,361 pupils from secondary local authority schools in Scotland (S1 to S6) in early 2021 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). While, on average, these pupils reported having reasonable outcomes related to mental wellbeing, relationships and social media, certain characteristics were associated with poorer outcomes. Specifically, pupils who appeared to be most at risk of a range of poor outcomes: were female, were older; and had a physical or mental health condition. Pupils living in rural (compared with urban) settings and with a physical or mental health condition (compared with those without such a condition) were also found to experience specific poor outcomes. In contrast to surveys conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, no differences for any of the mental wellbeing, relationship and social media related outcomes were observed between the SIMD quintiles. As such, further research is warranted to investigate the inconsistency in these findings before and after the pandemic. Further research is also needed to examine the importance of other characteristics for which findings were not generated in this study, either due to sample sizes being too small (e.g., pupils identifying in a way other than female or male, pupils' ethnic and religious backgrounds) or measures not being included (e.g., sexual orientation, experience of violence or abuse). As such, caution should be taken not to neglect these groups when developing and implementing interventions in the future until a clearer understanding is available.