Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows
Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows
Report finds falling happiness among youth of North America and western Europe, but rise in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe
Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.
Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.
Murthy spoke to the Guardian as new data revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders, with the same “historic” shift expected to follow in western Europe.
Declining wellbeing among under-30s has driven the US out of the top 20 list of happiest nations, the 2024 World Happiness Report revealed.
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I'm sorry, social media is the problem? It's a part of the problem sure but not THE problem. We just want to afford rent and feed our families. It's really not a big ask.
Surely it's not that our planet is dying, we can't afford shit like a roof over our heads / food / kids / health coverage, our rights are dropping like flies, christofascism is fucking rampant, and the Nazis are back...
No, it's social media! Surely that's what's getting everyone all fuckered up.
Social media is how the kids know the world is fucked, therefore social media is the problem. Think about it. :P
Perhaps it's just so much easier these days to find out about those problems on social media.
Before social media became popular, people still complained about cost of living (not sure how it compares to the 2010s, since post-pandemic is probably worse). Health coverage has always been tough in North America. At least in Canada, we haven't been losing rights (...yet?), and we've been gaining some (e.g. protections for minorities under the law). Christofascism and Nazis have been around for a while.
But with social media...
- We become more aware of the rights and health coverage we're losing, even if they don't affect us directly (a good thing, but depressing)
- We hear more about cost-of-living regardless of how it impacts us, which is more depressing. As well, we realize it's a problem of society, not of our local stores necessarily (another good but depressing thing)
- We see more of the Nazis, who generally stayed hidden before they had the veil of anonymity on social media (a bad thing)
- The Nazis can more easily organize, and (inter)nation-wide, too (a very bad thing)
Not to mention how addictive social media is.
And with the algorithms, you could end up with smart people reading about the problems of the world, and then to keep them engaged, the social media platforms just feed them a bunch of depressing stuff to doomscroll through. Then you've got another depressed person.
It could be argued that their depression was inevitable given the state of the world, but social media can make it so much faster and easier to get sucked into "doomerism"...and harder to get out.
Cost of living is so much worse now than in 2010s. Housing and food prices have doubled, but salaries have not doubled in 10 years. I couldn't come close to affording now the house I bought in 2012. Health care costs are actually rising lower than inflation, as is total healthcare spending. Christofascists and Nazis have been around forever, but in the early to mid 2010s we didn't have one as President of the US who actively encouraged them to come of hiding and boldly advertise their hatred.
Social Media and 24 hours news channels bring to light the issues facing us in the world today, but people wouldn't feel so bad if they felt a comfortable future was at least attainable. "Yeah, the world might suck but at least I should be able to afford a moderately nice house and car once I've paid my dues at work in 10 years." Versus, "shit, it sucks now and will probably suck even more in 10 years."
Cost of living is so much worse now than in 2010s
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
I've seen the argument made that Trump became president in a big part due to social media. He grew his cult following thanks to Twitter while Obama was president. So the problems caused by Trump could also be tied back to social media.
[Cost of] Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
It continues to piss me off that the pandemic effectively let Trump off the hook for the economy he had already fucked up with his 2017 tax handout to the rich and 2018 trade war with China. He had already been badgering the Fed to lower interest rates to stave off a recession in 2019, before COVID showed up. In fact, the erosion of the interest rate in 2019, and therefore the capacity for quantitative easing, is yet another way Trump's incompetent and vindictive policies made the pandemic even worse than it would've been otherwise.
Wouldn't doubt that one bit. I live in Canada, and while the Conservative party is often presented as "good for the economy", objectively, they're no better than the Liberals here.
the Conservative party is often presented as "good for the economy", objectively, they're no better than the Liberals here.
I don't know about Canada (I assume it's the same), but here in the US the conservative is objectively worse for the economy every damn time. The Republicans have been running a "two Santa Clauses" con for decades.
It's mostly the same.
Federally, the Conservatives are worse for the economy than the Liberals. The NDP (the left wing party) has never held office at the federal level.
Provincially ("state"-level), the NDP are the best, and the Liberals are worse than the Conservatives...but it does get muddied up a bit because in one province, the Liberals in name are basically the Conservatives, and the NDP fill the Liberal niche. Or something. I'm not from that province.
I do know that our Conservatives love starving the beast, and by the time the Liberals (or NDP) get back in power, there is a LOT of shit to clean up.
For example, our Conservative-run province spent millions of dollars to suppress and freeze nurse wages leading to a shortage of nurses. While spending those millions to suppress their wages, the solution to the nursing shortage has been to pay nursing agencies more than 3x the cost per nurse (middleman needs their cut!).
So we are paying money to pay nurses less, while simultaneously paying more for nurses.
It was found by the courts to be illegal to suppress the wages, and the government was ordered to back pay nurses (plus a bunch of other public sector workers). The government appealed that decision multiple times (paying court fees and such all the while), and eventually lost and had to pay out billions in backwages.
But we're still paying extra for the nursing agencies!