Wellbeing in adolescence: how do teens interpret their world?

The perspective on their own future may be an important source of worry for the adoles-cents, and when it is overwhelming, worry may affect their well-being and mental health. Conversely, a current confident orientation to the future could positively affect adolescents' wellbeing. However, some current sources of worry (as climate change or war) were found affecting adolescents' well-being, as well as psychological symptoms (i.e., depression, anxie-ty, stress). Furthermore, different levels of well-being can be associated and vary with the ways of interpreting one's social experience. The present study aims to explore in a sample of 496 high-school students (Mage= 16.8, SD = 1.03; 77.4% female) if the future time perspec-tive, as well as any specific ways to interpret own experiences, are predictors of well-being. Participants filled out Keyes' Mental Health Continuum - Short Form measuring emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing; Depression Anxiety Stress Scale - 21 for depression, anxiety, and stress as symptoms of personal distress; Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale - 12 as index of a dispositional characteristic; Climate Change Worry Scale and War Experience Worry Scale measuring the worries about two current planetary emergencies; Future Time Perspective (FTP) scale about the individual's projection on future; the View of Context (VOC), a questionnaire that asked to respondents to express themselves about their micro and macro-social context, as well as with respect to life values in order to detect respond-ents' positioning regarding the ways of attributing meaning to their experience in social contexts. Findings (i.e., Pearson's r coefficients for estimating the measure associations, and three linear regressions that verified the predictors of emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing) revealed that FTP is a positive predictor of all types of wellbeing β= 5.709; β=3.614; β= 5.480; all p<.001, respectively), as well as some different ways of attributing mean-ing to one's experience. Finally, based on VOC answers, eight semiotic clusters (i.e., re-spondent profiles) exhibiting significantly different levels of well-being were extracted. In conclusion, understanding adolescents' well-being implies knowing their world perception and the meanings they adopt to interpret their experiences. Some preventive and educa-tional implications are discussed.