Teens are suffering, and the wellness world is just starting to create more solutions for their emotional and social health, but critics fear the industry may just be exploiting a new, young, wellness-obsessed consumer.

We’ve been bombarded for so long with stats on the teen mental wellness crisis that we’ve become numb, even as the younger generation faces rising levels of anxiety, depression and suicidality. Mental health conditions now affect 25-30% of adolescents. In China, 100,000 teens die by suicide each year.

In the US, more than one in five teens suffered from at least one major depressive disorder last year. A new study of over 20 countries reveals that teens/young adults are significantly less happy than prior generations, struggling with their physical and mental health, finding meaning in life, and the quality of their relationships.

This crisis isn’t surprising, given how teens now face climate and financial crises, political extremism, mass shootings, and the toxic pressures of social media.

A recent survey finds that 40% of teens spend at least six hours a day online––basically a school day. Teens are now the ones sounding the alarm on social media as the destroyer of their wellbeing. A new Pew Research survey of US teens finds that 48% say social media negatively impacts their peers, a sharp rise from 32% in 2022.

A new British survey of people aged 16 to 24 reveals that the majority of respondents believe social media has become more toxic and addictive in the last five years, that it’s the main negative influence on their mental health, and that they would keep their own children offline as long as possible.

Our 2025 trend “Teen Wellness” examines how the world––and the wellness sector––are stepping up to help this emotionally challenged demographic. It covers how schools are banning phones and governments worldwide are pushing back hard against Big Tech. One recent example: Australia approved a ban on all social media for children under the age of sixteen.

The trend also covers the rising wave of free apps, such as Clear Fear and Sorted Teens, designed to help teens deal with anxiety and foster resilience. And many more of these apps have appeared since the trend was published such as Sonar Mental Health’s “wellbeing companion” for US teens and the new Indian app Adaraa, an emotional support hub developed by teens for teens.

Additionally, the trend details how more retreats and wellness resorts are getting serious about programming for teen mental wellbeing. While they previously ignored teens, or offered them things they needed the least, i.e., more beauty (all the sparkly facials) and more screentime (teen gaming rooms, etc.), destinations are now trying to help teens and their families deal with unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression and social media addiction.

REWIRE Retreats in the UK is an excellent example of a phone-free retreat for teen girls that teaches them to feel good about themselves, work with their own biology, connect with the natural world, and master their emotions through expert-led critical thinking workshops and group activities like wild swimming and stargazing. Qatar’s Zulal Wellness Resort has created programming focused on helping teens cultivate emotional intelligence.

At Resurface Surf Therapy (UK, Morocco, Norway), psychologist Josh Dickson offers teen retreats based on the psychological benefits of combining the mindfulness of surfing with trauma therapy and deep social connection. The Place Retreats in Bali, founded by world-renowned psychotherapist Jean-Claude Chalmet, offers family-based, off-grid, four-week retreats led by a team of psychiatrists, therapists, doctors, and practitioners that help teens unplug and be heard, using neuroscience-based strategies to help them regulate their emotions.

Hotel brands like Rosewood, One Hotels and Carillon Miami are reportedly working on new teen-focused initiatives. Travel destinations can be powerful places for them to work on their mental wellbeing: they’re away from their peer-pressure group and more likely to open up.

Sincerely addressing the crisis vs. selling: When this trend came out, the Financial Times quickly ran a story on it called “The Tyranny of Teenage Wellness.” It asked whether the wellness industry was responding to––or contributing to––the pressures teens face, by training people ever earlier to become wellness consumers. The author was likely responding to the flood of news about tweens and teens being bombarded with beauty products (and worse, antiaging skincare) by influencers on platforms like TikTok, making them the beauty industry’s biggest new consumer.

We’re in an era where Gen Alpha spent $63 million on Drunk Elephant and $57 million on Glow Recipe last year. If teens never knew a time without screens, they’ve also lived all their years in a wellness-obsessed world, and they’re spenders.

A new report from Kyra reveals that 80% of Gen Z (aged 15-28) take between one and six supplements and a recent McKinsey report found they outspend “older consumers on mindfulness-related wellness products.” Teens are even becoming wellness influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers (see below).

The Financial Times article doesn’t make a distinction between the cynical hawking of beauty and wellness products aimed at teens and the more laudable attempts in the wellness space to provide meaningful solutions for both their mental and physical wellness. It throws the teen––and “teen wellness”––out with the bathwater.

But the industry should take note: consumerist pushes to sell wellness to teens and kids get called out. The wellness world has a responsibility to support this generation in crisis. There’s not enough being done, but we expect that more science-backed, serious solutions will emerge in coming years.

At the beginning of the 2000’s, a group of spa and wellness industry leaders decided to create and fund a conference where international experts and visionaries would gather to solve shared problems. Thus, the Global Wellness Summit (GWS) was born. Today the GWS is the foremost gathering of international leaders in the $4.4 trillion global wellness economy and is held annually.

The Global Wellness Summit is an international organization that brings together leaders and visionaries to positively impact and shape the future of the global wellness industry. The objectives of the Summit are to:

• Establish a forum for dialogue among global industry leaders
• Create community by fostering friendly relationships among stakeholders
• Inspire a spirit of collaboration to solve shared problems
• Facilitate healthy growth for the industry and its individual businesses
• Support quality research
• Encourage innovation
• Cultivate leaders for tomorrow

globalwellnesssummit.com