Changing Childhood Project
What is childhood like today?
No two generations have the same childhood. Today, children’s experiences are vastly different from their parents’. To better understand how childhood has changed and what it means to be a child today, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight and Gallup worked together to ask people across generations. The result is the Changing Childhood Project.
The goal of the project is to bring young people’s experiences and perspectives into the work of improving life for all children today and into the future. It is to do more listening and learning from children and young people — to let their experiences and perspectives shape public priorities.
The 2021 Changing Childhood report found that young people were optimistic about the future and recognized the benefits and risks of their ever-increasing digital lives. They were judicious about whom they trusted and sought action from decision makers on issues such as climate change and discrimination.
The 2023 report found that, across generations, people lack essential knowledge about climate change and place little faith in information found on social media. The data also show that young people are more likely to consider themselves citizens of the world than their elders. Interested in more? A central feature of the Changing Childhood Project is an interactive website, where the data are all there to explore. Want to delve into the methodology and underlying survey? It is open and available in the reports.
