The pros and cons of leaving home

Hello and welcome back to another video for the British Council’s LearnEnglish Teens website and their YouTube channel. My name is Molly and in today’s video, I wanted to talk about the advantages and the disadvantages of living at home vs living independently. I thought this would be an interesting topic to talk about because a lot of people, when they’re nearing the end of their teenage years or the start of their twenties, are thinking about moving out. In the UK, this happens a lot when you go to university. Obviously, moving out of your family home is a big change, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about, from my experiences, some of the pros and cons of the different ways of living.

One of the main things that’s great about living at home is the familiarity. Living with your family is, oftentimes, really comfortable – you know everyone extremely well, you’ve lived with them your whole life, so you’re in a routine, and that can be really nice. The great thing about living at home is that, most of the time, you don’t have to pay rent. So, it’s a lot cheaper and this is something that affects a lot of people’s decisions, I think, when they’re deciding when and whether they should move out: it’s whether they can actually afford it.

However, there are some disadvantages to living at home as well. If you move out, you have this independence; if you stay at home, there’s a chance you might feel stuck in your old life. If you’re at university, you might still feel like... it’s like you’re still at school and you don’t have the freedom or the independence to go and live your own life. You might be restricted by your family’s routine, which might be different to that of your friends. Particularly if you’re at university, a problem, I’d say, in the UK is that if you live at home, you might miss out on the student experience.

So, linked to that, if you do live on your own, there are a lot of advantages. For one thing, living alone and moving out of your parents’ house is a challenge, and it’s a good thing in life to try and challenge ourselves. A great thing about living alone is you can have your own space and maybe be more independent. Another great thing is that if you move out, oftentimes you’ll move in with friends, and living with friends can be a lot of fun.

On the other hand, just like with living at home, there are also some cons of living independently, the biggest one being cost. As I said, living at home is for the most part free, and when you move out and have to rent somewhere of your own, you realise just how expensive houses can be. Another thing that can be a disadvantage is that often you might have to live with people that you don’t know, and this could be a bit scary and also may be a bit of a risk, because you don’t know if you’re going to get on and be friends with these people that you’re having to share a house with. This is particularly the case in the UK when you go to university. We often live in halls of residence, and this is a kind of environment which is filled with loads of new people that you have to live with and you don’t know any of them! So, that can be a bit daunting. And another thing, maybe if you’re not living with friends or other students and you just move out on your own, there’s a risk that you might be a bit lonely, especially if you’re used to living in a big family with lots of things going on. It might be a bit weird at first to get used to having such a quiet individual environment.

So, that’s just some of my thoughts on the subject. I obviously have experience of living with my family, but also living with friends and with strangers, and I’ve had pretty good experiences across the board. I’d be interested to know if you guys have any opinions on this topic in the comments below. I hope you enjoyed this video, and maybe it gave you some things to think about, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Bye!