Do teenagers need to decompress? One English countryside hotel has just the thing: a spa day with a massage to relieve their “stress and tension”. After all, it’s not just their parents who are craving respite and revival from work and family pressures but adolescents too, coping “with intense schooling and sports programmes”.
Retreats used to be where adults sought refuge away from the kids. Increasingly, families are going together in search of a boost to their wellbeing. So much so that a report by the Global Wellness Summit identifies teen wellness as a trend for 2025. “The industry is finally getting serious about teen wellbeing, offering resorts and retreats that teach them emotional intelligence, resilience, and how to survive in a digital world, and creating a new wave of teen mental wellness apps,” it says.
One top-end example is the Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som in Qatar, which offers a family wellness adviser providing a personalised package for adults and kids, promising a shared “journey of healthy lifestyle discovery”. Activities include yoga, meditation and creative workshops to “help children build their emotional intelligence, enhance their personal and interpersonal skills and develop self-awareness”. I’d be happy with brighter skin, but I’m superficial like that.
Rina Raphael, author of The Gospel of Wellness, tells me that wellness — an amorphous term encompassing physical and mental health — has displaced the once-dominant fashion and beauty industries by wrapping its tentacles around them. Now, the wellness sector, comprised of skincare companies, spas, fitness chains and mindfulness app producers, is encouraging “health, wellness and personal care habits at an earlier age”, she says. Girls are the chief target but boys are increasingly too — one protein powder I saw was being marketed with “holistic health in mind”.
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There is nothing bad about forming healthy habits. Wellbeing seems laudable compared with the tyranny of diets I remember experiencing as a teenager. Bridget Jones’s return next week is a reminder that her youthful calorie-counting belongs in the past. But is the wellness industry responding to — or contributing to — the pressures young people face?
The shift among the young was brought home five years ago when Mattel released a new toy package: the Barbie Wellness Collection. Children could help the doll, wrapped in a towel dress and pink shoes, have a little me-time with a spa set, which includes toy bath bombs, cucumber eye masks and a candle. Wellness Barbie — a more radiant and chilled version of Scientist Barbie and Astronomer Barbie — is a gateway product in children’s training to become wellness consumers.
Although perhaps it starts even earlier? Those baby massage classes I attended over a decade ago always struck me as ridiculous. Of course, babies enjoyed being caressed and soothed, and the mothers liked having a reason to leave the house and enjoy the camaraderie of their frazzled peers. But to dress it up as a kind of wellbeing treatment to improve the infants’ mood and physical health seemed like madness. What’s a baby got to worry about?
The wellness industry’s expansion is working. A recent report by McKinsey found that Gen Z — which it defines as those aged 15 to 28 — outspends “older consumers on mindfulness-related wellness products such as meditation classes, mindfulness apps, and therapy sessions”. They are even “seeking preventive solutions to health issues typically associated with ageing”.
One of the problems the sector aims to address is mental health. It’s a laudable goal. As Raphael points out, the problem with wellness is “it’s very much tied to productivity, aesthetics and consumerism. It adds a pressure that you have to be working on yourself.”
Blame for the mental health crisis has been laid at the feet of smartphones, most vociferously by Jonathan Haidt in his latest book The Anxious Generation. Apps provide not just the problem — but also offer a solution. A slew of them, including Chill Panda and HappiMe are on the website of the UK’s CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services), which is buckling under the weight of demand.
Certainly, rapacious tech giants don’t give a hoot about their customers’ wellbeing. But campaigners advocating bans or restrictions at school may be disappointed by a study in The Lancet this week that concluded such policies do not lead to “better mental wellbeing in adolescents.”
Parents have a role too. In an excellent recent essay, US tech and social media researcher danah boyd argued that too many “focus all their spare time on helping their children thrive, often to the detriment of nurturing their own friendships and activities. The result of this intensive parenting is that too many young people don’t get to witness their parents socialising or engaging in activities they’re passionate about.”
The idea that the solution to adolescent anxiety is curated experiences bought by their parents and proffered by the wellness industry seems bleak at best. But I can’t see it ending. After all, as Ronald Purser, author of McMindfulness, once told me: “You can never be too well, that’s why it’s a massive growth industry”.
Emma Jacobs is the FT’s work & careers writer
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