So says the World Health Organization in a survey on teen life in 27 countries in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union released last week that a health worker in Latvia says isn't suprising but is distressing.
Surveyors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania polled nearly 4,000 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds about everything from school to smoking to sex over a one-year period in 1997-98.
Thirty seven percent of Latvian 15-year-olds say the like school "a lot.," ranking them first in a list of countries that includes Great Britain, Germany, the United States and Russia. Latvia's 11- and 13-year-olds weren't far behind, in second and fourth places respectively.
But all three Baltic countries ranked near the bottom when asked if they thought their teachers were "interested in them as people."
News was even more puzzling for Latvian students when questioned about their performance in school.
Though they liked to be there, 13- and 15-year-old students ranked last when asked if their performance at school was "very good". Responses from 11-year-olds in Latvia put them just above Germany in next-to-last place.
Lithuanian teens 13-15 years of age topped the survey in television watching, while Latvia and Estonia ranked in the bottom half of the top 10, just behind the U.S.
One piece of good news is that youths in all three Baltic states say they didn't play computer games very often, with about a quarter of all boys surveyed saying they played less than four hours a week.
But that leaves the question of what they do in their spare time.
Only Estonia's youths ranked high in exercise, with nearly 90 percent of boys saying they engaged in strenuous physical activity at least twice a week, according to the survey.
Latvia ranked near the bottom in exercise, ahead of only Greenland. Lithuania scored just above Latvia.
Teens in all three Baltic states rank near the middle or bottom when asked if they smoked daily.
Lithuania was last among 15-year-olds, but Latvia was 10th among 13-year-olds at about eight percent, a figure lower than Great Britain, Canada and Germany.
Greenland and Israeli youths were hands down the biggest smokers. In Greenland, more than half of the 15-year-old girls surveyed said they smoked daily. In Canada, girls also were ahead of the boys.
But in the Baltics boys were more likely to light up.
Baltic youths ranked in the bottom half when asked if they drank alcohol at least once a week. But their standing climbed when 15-year-olds were asked if they had been drunk twice or more in their lives.
About half of the 15-year-olds from Estonia and Latvia said they had, while in Lithuania the number dropped to about a third.
About a third of 15-year-old boys and 20 percent of girls from Latvia report having had sexual intercourse.
Girls here, according to those surveyed, lose their virginity at about 15.3 years of age, while boys experience sex for the first time at 14.86 years.
Boys here rank in the middle of the survey and girls near the bottom, younger than countries like Scotland and the U.S. where the average age for girls was about 14.22 years.
Boys in the U.S. reported losing their virginity at 13.77 years of age.
So what does all this mean?
Ieva Ranka, who conducted three similar WHO surveys in Latvia since 1990, wasn't alarmed by the results and apparently, she said, neither is the government.
Latvian teens are smoking and drinking more than ever.
Meanwhile, Ranka added, school doctors are disappearing thanks to stringent school budgets.
"The worst thing is that no one is working on it," she said. "The government gets the results, says 'thank you' and puts them aside."
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