Happiness Crisis: Why Our Youth Are Struggling

Source: Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

Did you see the recent World Happiness Report?

The World Happiness Report started in 2012 and is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. The purpose is to increase attention on well-being and help guide governmental policies by evaluating the state of happiness in the world. They get their rankings by looking at data from the Gallup World Poll in which about 1,000 participants from each country respond to questions about their life satisfaction from the years 2021-2023. The report is based on a 3-year average (World Happiness Report, 2024).

In 2023, the U.S. ranked 15th but it dropped to 23rd this year. The reason? People under the age of 30.

People under 30 ranked 62nd out of 143 countries, while people over the age of 60 ranked 10th. And for those under 30, females reported lower happiness than males. The drop in youth happiness isn’t new—it started about 10 years ago but was exacerbated during the pandemic. It appears youth have not recovered from the drop and are now at “midlife crisis” level of discontent, something we normally don’t see until people are in their late 30s or early 40s.

Reasons for Lower Happiness

Some of you might remember when the US Surgeon General declared a youth mental health crisis at the end of 2021. He brought attention to rising mental health issues in youth, including persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, as well as increases in suicidal thoughts and behaviors (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2022). We have amassed sufficient research demonstrating that social media significantly heightens anxiety and depression among teens and can confidently assert its role as one of the contributing factors to the crisis. But we can’t solely blame social media, especially when it helped get us through the pandemic.

I recently read the book The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. My key takeaway was how important meaningful relationships are for longevity and overall life satisfaction. And my work with adolescents over the years has shown me how much has shifted in meaningful social interactions for them. Prior to the pandemic, teens and young adults hung out in person much more. They FaceTimed. They were involved in school groups. When things shut down and went virtual, they FaceTimed less and texted more. They stopped hanging out in person. They stopped attending school groups. And they haven’t bounced back.

Most of the teens and young adults I work with tell me they feel lonely or that they want to have a best friend or close friend group desperately. They crave it. But they just can’t seem to create these relationships. They’ll attempt to hang out in person only to be denied. They’ll try to call but get a text back instead. They find ways to hang out in person but their friend is on their phone the whole time. Youth culture has changed and it’s not for the best.

There are other factors as well, especially for young adults. Housing prices are high, there’s greater polarization among us, and increasing income disparities are apparent. But I honestly think those issues would be more manageable (at least from a mental wellness perspective) if we had quality social interactions on a regular basis.

What We’re Going to Do About It

Changing culture isn’t a one-person job. We have to do it together. And as a 47 (soon to be 48) year-old person, I’m enlisting every adult over the age of 30 to join me. It’s up to us. It’s not up to the people struggling to figure out how to be happier. We can’t expect people under 30 to figure this out and get over their crisis. We can’t tell teens to just be happier or ask young adults to improve their mental wellbeing. It’s not going to work.

Here’s what we’re going to do instead:

• We’re going to realign our lives so we’re living our values. Here's how to get started.
• We’re going to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. No offense to anyone with the last name Jones, but I want no part of what you’re doing (unless you’re living in the forest with a bunch of rescue animals, then I want every part of what you’re doing).
• We’re going to create more meaningful connections in our own lives. We’ll model healthy behaviors and spend quality in-person time with people we genuinely enjoy. If we don’t have people like that, we’re going to go out and find them.
• We’re going to spend less time on our devices and more time interacting with the world. Traveling, kayaking, going to museums, hiking, attending sporting events, eating out, cooking together, hosting board game nights…
• We’re going to live within our means so we don’t have to bust our butts to pay off credit cards or to drive an expensive car we don’t need.
• We’re going to focus on doing things we enjoy, like painting, writing, and making music simply because we enjoy it and not because it’ll make us money.

Notice how these are all things we, the adults over 30, are going to do and nothing about what those under 30 should do? I think we got them into this mess and it’s our job to get them out. We created a society of overconsumption, of trying to keep up with the random neighbor who we don’t really like anyways, of working jobs we hate to pay for things we don’t need, of spending time with people out of obligation rather than with those we truly enjoy. We did this and it’s up to us to undo it.

Happiness Essential Reads

3 Ideas from Aristotle on How to Build a Good Life

Chess, Happiness, and Chance

Are You With Me?

You don’t have to be a parent to care about future generations. We’re all going to be relying on them in one way or another and, personally, I’d rather have them grow up to be adults who are resilient, capable, and happy with meaningful relationships and interests. It’s good for them as individuals and it’s good for our society as a whole. Let’s get going.