Your age 11 essays: what have we learned?

More than 50 years ago, we asked you to write an essay imagining what your life would be like when you were 25.

Decades on, researchers have analysed your childhood essays, along with information you’ve provided in our surveys over the years, to make some fascinating and important discoveries.

What we asked you

As part of the Age 11 Survey, we set you this task:

“Imagine that you are now 25 years old. Write about the life you are leading, your interests, your home life and your work”.

Using other information that you’ve shared with us about your lives, researchers have explored the connections between the content of your childhood essays and your future real-life experiences.

Family background and aspirations

One team of researchers, from the Universities of Chicago and British Columbia, analysed your essays to identify the most common topics you wrote about. They looked at how the futures you imagined differed, depending on your family background.

They found that children from more privileged social backgrounds, whose fathers and maternal grandfathers had jobs associated with higher socioeconomic status, were more likely to see themselves attending university. Children in this group also expressed interest in specific types of jobs, such as teaching, medicine and the military.

In comparison, children from working class backgrounds were more likely to write about family, daily responsibilities and earning money.

How life unfolds

The researchers also examined how the lives you described in your essays compared to your real futures, using information collected in the Age 55 Survey.

They found that, regardless of family background, those who aspired to university and had specific career plans did tend to go on to gain a degree and be in careers with higher status and income. These things were less common among those who had written more about routines, and about earning and spending money in their essays.

The researchers noticed some big differences in how people imagined their financial futures. For example, one child wrote:

“I would of course be hoping to successful in my future career and earn sufficient money, not too much and not too poor either.”

Another child wrote:

“My ambition is to be the richest man in the world and buy my own island and build a city on it.”

Supporting young people’s ambitions

These findings suggest that it might be possible to predict people’s life outcomes at an early age and that early interventions could help to reduce socioeconomic inequalities. The authors recommend that schools and policymakers focus on supporting students’ ambitions, providing clear information about career options, and making university more affordable for all.

Can the essays predict future mental health?

In a separate piece of analysis, researchers found that people who expressed positive thoughts and optimism in their essays at age 11 were less likely to experience depression in their early 20s.

A team of researchers in the US gave each essay a ‘psychological wellbeing’ rating based on the extent to which the writer expressed seven unique elements of positive psychological wellbeing: positive emotions, optimism, life satisfaction, personal growth, mastery, and pleasant experiences.

“…I am now married and very happy, and I am going to have children. I lead a good home life, and my husbuned and I are very happy.”

– an extract from an essay given a high wellbeing score.

“I’m working at the docks and unloading the ships it a very heavy Jod and it very difficult. Loading the pasles. into the wright places.”

– an extract from an essay given a low wellbeing score.

The researchers found that those of you who wrote more positively in your essays at age 11 had a lower risk of depression at age 23. The link between the two was particularly strong among girls. Girls with low psychological wellbeing ratings at age 11 were more likely to report symptoms of depression at age 23 than other girls and their male counterparts. For boys, low psychological wellbeing in childhood was less strongly linked to depression in early adulthood.

Preventative mental health support

This research highlights how children’s personal reflections may be valuable in predicting patterns of mental health later on. With rates of mental-ill health increasing among younger generations, the authors suggest that this type of data could help with early intervention and preventative mental health support.

Read the full research papers

What will my life be like when I am 25? How do children’s social class contexts predict their imagined and actual futures? By Kristin Laurin, Holly R. Engstrom, Muhua Huang was published in the Journal of Social Issues in November 2024.

In the Words of Early Adolescents: A Novel Assessment of Positive Psychological Well-Being Predicts Young Adult Depressive Symptoms by Julia K Boehm, Farah Qureshi and Laura D Kubzansky was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in April 2024.