Minors: 84% of adolescents trust doctors, trust in other figures collapses

White coats at the top of the list of reference figures for adolescents. If trust in the main interlocutors of society has collapsed compared to 2014, the percentage of teenagers who trust doctors has gone from 59% (data detected in 2014) to 84% today. Trust in the police force is still just over 50%, but it has dropped by more than 10 points since 2014 (53% against 64%), while magistrates are going against the trend, with trust having risen significantly compared to 2014 (50.6%, against 28.4% 10 years ago). This is indicated by the national survey on the lifestyles of adolescents living in Italy, 2024 edition, carried out annually by ‘Laboratorio adolescenti’ and the Iard research institute with the operational support of Mediatyche Srl, on a nationally representative sample of 3,427 students between 13 and 19 years old.

At the bottom of the ‘table’, where distrust prevails, we find teachers (who have fallen, in 10 years, from 70% to 48%) and priests (who also fell from 52% to 29%). With an even lower trust rate we find journalists (25%), who however are growing compared to 2014 when only 10% trusted them. While today influencers are at 10% (they were not present in the 2014 survey). A veil of silence over the trust placed in the political class: it was at 3.3% in 2014 and has managed to drop further to 2.9%. The only ‘subjects’ that adolescents fully trust are their parents (90% trust them) and friends (86%). And it is precisely friends – comparing the answers to the same question asked 10 years ago – who are gaining trust (87% versus 63%), while parents, albeit slightly, are decreasing (90% versus 93%).

“Trusting, and therefore feeling safe only in the world limited to family and friends – says Maurizio Tucci, president of Laboratorio adolescenza – is unequivocally a sign of discomfort in facing the outside world. But retreating into one’s shell like turtles when they are afraid or, to use a term that is in fashion today, closing oneself in one’s ‘comfort zone’ at 16, when the desire should be to explore, and possibly conquer the world, is a sort of worrying contradiction in terms on which we should reflect. Also because, beyond certain thresholds, the family risks becoming a familism and friendship a ‘clan’, if not even a ‘gang'”.