From time to time, statistical reports act as mirrors. They don’t just give us numbers, they give us time. The ninth round of UNICEF’s rapid survey, conducted in August 2025, is one such document that requires a pause. It depicts what happens to the homes in which girls, boys and teenagers live, but it also opens a unique window: what Argentine teenagers themselves see, what they feel and what they fear.
The data shows a troubling paradox. On the one hand, the country is experiencing an economic improvement that reduces child poverty compared to 2024. On the other hand, under this recovery, new cracks in subjective experiences are appearing: increasing bullying, advances in illegal gambling, rising violence, and growing anxiety about the future of work. The combination of uncertainty, information overload, and silent pressure that is the pulse of adolescence today.
Debt, work and poverty
Although the child poverty rate fell to 46.1% in the first half of the year – a 21-point drop compared to 2024 – this still means that 5.5 million girls and boys live without basic needs covered, and 1.2 million suffer from extreme poverty. The impact is direct: families who restrict food, resort to informal credit, who have accumulated debt, and who see their teenage children go to work or look for work.
According to the report, nearly 3 out of every 10 teens have work tasks, and 4% are actively looking for work. This trend is most pronounced in highly indebted households: when cards are maxed out or loans become unpayable, teen employment rises to 38%.
This economic horizon prepares not only material life, but also emotional life: poverty appears to be **one of the main concerns** of adolescents. Not as a theoretical concept, but as an intimate experience; Something seen in their homes, in their neighborhoods, on the table.
The alarm about violence is growing
The report records an alarming fact: concern about violence has increased by 83% compared to 2024. Violence in the street, at school, and on the networks. Violence multiplied in daily stories, in public debates, on screens that do not subside.
Added to this climate is a sudden increase in bullying: 41% of teenagers have experienced or witnessed some situation. This represents approximately one million girls and boys who are exposed to forms of bullying in schools.
Violence, then, is not an issue we look at from the outside. It is the scene in which they move.
Online Betting: Symptoms that grew very quickly
One of the starkest data in the report appears for the first time this year: 40% of teens bet for money online in the past month. More than 800,000 girls and boys access platforms they should not have access to, many times through access that bypasses controls or borrowed accounts.
The effect is not slight. Betting combines complete accessibility with teenage impulsiveness and algorithms designed to retain them. Moreover, it contradicts another key fact: the increasing indebtedness of households, especially those in the middle class, where two out of three households use credit cards to buy food.
Three out of ten teens have work tasks and 4% are actively looking for work
In contexts where money is in short supply or where it is viewed as a central problem, gambling can become a refuge, a risky game, or an illusion of quick income. But also, specialists say, it is a gateway to bigger problems: dependency, distress, a sense of failure, or even what some teens describe as “the inability to stop playing.”
UNICEF warns that this phenomenon, which has spread widely in just a few years, “has negative effects on both the well-being and development of adolescents.” It’s not a hobby: it’s an underground economy that seeps into schoolyards and group conversations.
Anxiety, health and discrimination
Mental health concerns increased by 49% compared to last year. Not surprising. Teenagers navigate an ecosystem saturated with demands—academic, aesthetic, and social—while living with household debt, inflation, violence, hate speech, job insecurity, and shifting political scenarios.
As for discrimination, it increased by 37% in ranking the things that matter most to them. It appears to be linked to sexual orientation, gender identity, social origin, body, and disability. Period Thermometer: If something changes in late adolescence, it’s the ability to name wounds.
Drug use, another big concern, has increased by 30%. Concern about the future of work continues to rise: getting a job appears to be among their central issues.
In short, what worries teenagers most today can be summarized in a triangle: violence – poverty – mental health.
Around this triangle are illegal gambling, discrimination and fear of an uncertain future.
School life: connections, harms and the network
School continues to be a place where teenagers socialize intensely.
It is also in this area that tensions become more acute or pronounced: bullying, symbolic violence, academic pressures, and complex group dynamics. According to the report, 37% of teens say that at least one classmate suffered from bullying at their school, and 14% said they suffered from it themselves.
In a country where nearly a million teenagers suffer from bullying at school, the question is what tools exist today for care, prevention and accompaniment. And also what institutional listening is being provided to this growing discomfort.
An unequal country and a weak adolescence
Although economic indicators show improvement, the structure remains fragile. The truth is that teens grow up with these facts. Their concerns – violence, poverty, mental health, discrimination, addiction, gambling – are not abstract: they are expressions of the physical environment in which they live.
Although the economic recovery gives some breathing room, emotional, social and digital risks are deepening. Adolescence in Argentina does not just demand economic assistance: it demands a safe environment, emotional support, caring schools, stricter controls on online gambling, and public policies that recognize that this discomfort is not a fad, but a reality.
UNICEF’s statements do not serve as a sentence, but as a warning. They say: There is something going on here and we have to look at it head on. The fact that Argentine teenagers today are more worried about violence than studying, more exposed to gambling than sports, and more concerned with poverty than with their own plans, is all a social symptom, not an individual problem.
In a country that is accustomed to talking about “lost” or “threatened” generations, it would be better to start by talking about the generations that need time, support, listening, and strong policies. Jill is already telling what’s happening to him. The question is whether the adult world is willing to listen to him.