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It's official: this is the age when your self-esteem peaks

Esteem
It’s official: our self-esteem does grow with age [Photo: Pexels]

With the mounting pressure of earning enough social media ‘likes’ and the number of young women suffering from depression at an all time high – it’s never been more difficult to have great self-esteem.

But now, there’s scientific proof to back the well-known belief that our confidence grows with age and it’s promising news for millennials.

According to a recent study published in the Psychological Bulletin, our self-esteem steadily increases over the years and finally peaks when we turn 60.

For the study, researchers drew data from more than 300 published studies on self-confidence – defined as “a person’s subjective evaluation of his or her worth as a person” – across different age groups and noted a pattern in birth year, gender and nationality.

It's official: our self-esteem does grow with age [Photo: Pexels]
With the mounting pressure of social media ‘likes’, young people are less likely to have a high self-esteem [Photo: Pexels]

According to findings, participants’ self-esteem ascended until the age of 60 where it then stayed at a consistent level for the next decade. This could be down to a number of factors including learning from life experiences to growing more comfortable in our own skin.

When the person reached their 70s and 80s, their self-confidence began to decline slightly before sharply dropping at age 90.

Now, there’s two ways to perceive the latest data. Though it may seem frustrating to millennials that self-confidence still lies a few decades away, the news may feel reassuring to some.

With life’s everyday pressures of getting your foot on the property ladder, holding down a good job and eventually settling down (all while bagging enough likes on Instagram) – it comes as a relief to know that we’ll be pretty content in ourselves in the future.

Whether that means no longer following the latest trends and just wearing whatever you fancy or finally learning to love your body – it’s promising news for us all.


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