Growing up in an isolated, rural area presents many unique challenges, ones which many of my friends who come from larger areas fail to totally comprehend. Three buses a week connect the small population of my village in Scotland to the outside world, and only for a few hours at a time. There is no train station, no taxis or high school and certainly no food delivery services. I remember being approached by an American tourist, who asked me and my mother where our shopping mall was. We smiled, exchanged a laugh, and pointed him to the post office, a tiny building which also happens to be the only place to acquire groceries in the village.
Needless to say, growing up in such an isolated area can have profound consequences. I didn’t meet anyone of a different ethnicity to me until the age of 15, and on the rare occasion that an individual from a different ethnic or religious background did move into the village, they quickly moved away. Due to this lack of exposure, myself, and many like me were left ignorant about cultures that were not ours, and unsure of where to turn to educate ourselves. Access to the internet helped to alleviate this confusion some, but no amount of research can compare to real-life experiences and living in a community full of diversity and acceptance.
When I moved to a university in a large city, the rate at which I had to adapt to a totally separate way of living was rapid. Suddenly, I was surrounded by individuals with a completely different perspective to mine. These people didn’t have just one or two local bars, and they all knew of many things that I had no idea about. The drastic change was difficult to live with for the first few weeks, to say the least.
Unfortunately, the negative impact on young people does not stop there. As well as a lack of services that the average person may take for granted, living ‘out of the way’ can also mean that emergency services such as firefighters and ambulances take longer to get to you. Rural areas often have a large population of elderly people, and as result, the wait for emergency assistance can risk lives.
Often, a parent will make the decision to move their child somewhere rural out of the belief that fresh air, low crime rates and lots of nature is the best environment possible. While this may be true for young children, who derive countless hours of enjoyment from seemingly never-ending green spaces and the safety that a village full of people who know each other brings; teenagers and young adults are left grasping for any amount of entertainment that they can find.
Drug and alcohol use is often a hidden and misunderstood issue among youths in rural communities. A lack of activities for young adults leaves many with mental health issues, which only further generate drug and alcohol problems. With nothing for them to do, I experienced firsthand the amount of young people who fall into smoking, drug, and alcohol habits sometimes even before the age of thirteen.
Meera Mehat, a London-based psychotherapist, spoke to Keke Magazine about the impact that growing up rural has on young people:
“Living in rural areas, youngsters do not have the same mental health support as children living in cities. A few reasons for this can be due to the fact that they are from impoverished backgrounds, do not have the transport infrastructure to be able to get around easily, have few spaces or places where the young can gather together safely, and they may not have access to the internet due to limited availability of connectivity.
She continued, “All this can leave a young person vulnerable, and they can turn to other forms of comfort—overeating, drugs and alcohol are often the choice where they can lose themselves, feel like they get some level of comfort and can forget their troubles. These are issues that have been slow to be recognised and more needs to be done in rural and coastal communities to help reach children who are at risk of this kind of isolation and loneliness.”
According to the Centre for Mental Health, “Living in rural and remote areas often means people can feel socially isolated. This can contribute to stress, anxiety and depression which can have a detrimental effect on people’s mental health and wellbeing. Those in rural areas seem to be less likely to seek help in comparison to their urban counterparts.”
Individuals who suffer from mental health issues in rural areas often wait until their problems have reached a ‘boiling point’ before reaching out for help. When they do, many face long journeys to access the help that they so desperately need.
Not to mention the amount of education and work opportunities that children from isolated areas miss. There is no choice of schools, and very few jobs that young people in the area can get alongside their education. When stuck moving from job to job without the ability to develop a career in what they enjoy, many people never leave the area they grew up in. They meet a similar individual and start a family, and a cycle that is truly difficult to break begins.
It is up to the government and local councils to ensure that young people in rural areas have access to the same number of opportunities as those who live in more urban areas. They must also ensure that there are activities and groups in place for young people to connect with one another and to prevent the amount of addiction and criminal activity that youth in these areas end up in. It is not enough for adults in rural communities to complain about the impermissible acts that young people commit, without also actively campaigning for more activities and opportunities for said young people.
Instagram influencer, Antonia Rodgers, who uses she/they pronouns interchangeably, grew up on a farm in rural Scotland for much of their youth. Their family didn’t drive, further increasing their isolation. Antonia knows firsthand the impact that growing up in an isolated area can have.
“I kept to myself because I never got the chance to get to know anyone. By the time that I got to around eleven or twelve, I very much struggled socially and had a hard time speaking to anyone my age.”
She continues, “I definitely believe that it results in a lack of diversity, which can affect people growing up. If you’ve never experienced diversity growing up, how can you know what you don’t know? When I first moved into a bigger town at eleven years old, I had come from a primary school that had seven people in it, including the teachers. I met a girl who had a severe disability and needed to use a wheelchair. Seeing as I had only seen old people in wheelchairs, I ended up asking what was wrong with her, and didn’t understand why it was such an inappropriate question.”
“For [rural] girls, it’s very common to get pregnant early, get housing benefits and then stay where they are for the rest of their lives. I had a friend who followed this path as she thought that she wasn’t capable of anything else,” she told Keke.
“My mental health was really bad when living rurally,” Rodgers said. “If I didn’t get out of there, I don’t think I’d be here today. Coming away from my local authority to university was the best decision I ever made.”
There is nothing like the support that a tight-knit rural community can give you, nor are there better smiles to see after a long time away in the city. At a certain point, it is up to us as children of rural communities to become more ethical and educated on the wider world than the community that we grew up in. However, something must be done to counteract the negative implications that being isolated has on children and young adults, starting with wider opportunities for young people to partake in and more education about cultural and ethnic differences.
