Adolescents’ well-being during societal crises: a mixed-methods sociological analysis

This paper examines adolescents’ well-being during societal crises, using the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece and Cyprus as a case study. Drawing on a mixed-methods sociological approach, it combines survey data from 527 adolescents aged 14–16 with qualitative interviews and focus groups. The study explores how adolescents conceptualise well-being and how it is shaped by socio-economic background, gender, parental education, school performance, ethnicity and emotional experiences during the first lockdown. Findings indicate that well-being during crisis conditions is unevenly distributed and closely associated with socio-economic positioning. Emotional experiences during lockdown emerge as a strong predictor, while parental education and migrant background also influence adolescents’ coping capacities. Rather than identifying new forms of inequality, the study highlights differentiated experiences of disadvantage, showing how pre-existing social inequalities were reproduced and intensified during the pandemic. Overall, the paper contributes to understanding adolescent well-being as socially embedded and structurally conditioned.