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Wheard a lot Recently, how miserable young Americans are. In the recently published World Happiness report, the United States fell in its lowest ranking since the start of this investigation – and this result was motivated by the misfortune of people under the age of 30 in this country. So what’s going on?
I have skepticism about these international rankings of happiness. The organizations that produce them always attract a lot of attention by responding “What is the happiest country in the world?” They draw this answer – generally Finland, with Denmark and other Nordic, by pushing people in several countries to answer a single question of self -assessment on life satisfaction. I do not place a lot of stock in this methodology because we cannot precisely compare nations based on such a limited self-assessment: people in different cultures will respond in different ways.
But I am very interested in change In country, such as the fall in the happiness of young adults in America. New research deepens this question, and many others: the Global Florishing study, based on a survey undertaken by a consortium of institutions, notably my colleagues from Harvard on the Florishing Human program. This survey also uses self-assessment, but it collects much more complete data on well-being, in about half a dozen distinct dimensions and in 22 countries, more than 200,000 people that it follows more than five years. The most important thing for me, the survey shows that although the emotional and psychological distress of young people is more pronounced in rich and industrialized countries like the United States, it occurs around the world.
Researchers have long noted that happiness tends to follow a form in life through life: self -declared happiness gradually decreases at young age and in the middle of adulthood, then turned later in life, from 50 years. The economist of the University of Dartmouth, David G. Blanchflower, made a hypothesis in 200 in 2008.
The left side of the form u would suggest that adolescents and young adults were traditionally, on average, happier that people at the average age. But given the well documented increase in recent decades in mood disorders diagnosed in adolescents and young adults, we could expect the left side to be pushed in more recent estimates. And of course, this is exactly what the new GFS study finds, in the United States and the world: flourishing scores do not fall from the beginning of adulthood because they to start weak; They stay low until they start to increase at the expected age.
This is the bad news, which is very bad. But there are good news. The flourishing survey discovers a notable exception to this world model: a plus traditional U -curve among young people who have more friends and intimate social relations. This quarrel with my own research on how young adults in today’s era of technologically mediated socialization lacks real human contact and love – without anyone being able to flourish. This exception created by a greater human connection is the starting point for how we could approach this pandemic of the misfortune of young people.
A plausible explanation For the most pronounced problem of happiness that western countries rich as the United States have increasing secularization-have been measured in the growing number of so-called nones, people who do not profess any religious affiliation. In the United States, the percentage of the population without religious affiliation has almost doubled since 2007, at 29%. Researchers have long noted that religious are, on average, happier than non -religious people.
How to account for this paradox that a practice that gives so many people an increase in tangible well-being is so clear? Researchers have hypothesized that the predominance of the phenomenon in wealthy countries is essentially a function of this wealth: as society is enriched, people become less religious because they no longer need the comfort of religion to deal with miseries such as hunger and early mortality.
I have my doubts about this economic andterministic account. As might expect from previous studies, the new survey shows that people attending a weekly score at least worship, on a global average, 8% higher in flourishing measures than non-tracts. But this also reveals that this positive effect is strongest Among the richest and most secular nations. This observation suggests that, unlike the materialist hypothesis, wealth is not a great source of metaphysical comfort – and the well -being effect of religious attendance is relatively independent of economic factors.
This leads to the question of what exactly lacks for so many people in rich countries when religion decreases. Community connection and share capital are two responses. But a deeper answer is meaningOne of the categories of flourishing of the study, which he measures by asking the participants if they consider that their daily activities are worth it and if they understand the purpose of their lives. GDP per capita, according to the survey, is conversely correlated with this meaning of meaning: the more rich a country, the more its citizens feel meaning.
Others have also observed this scheme. Researchers writing in the journal Psychological sciences In 2013, examined a much more important sample of nations (132) and came to the same conclusion as the GFS: in response to the question “Do you think your life has an important objective or meaning?”, Respondents of the survey in high-income countries expressed a much lower conviction than those of low-income countries. The researchers also found that these results were probably explained by secularism in richer nations.
This raises the question of whether something about material success in a society naturally abuses religion or spirituality, and therefore meaning, and therefore also flourishing. Many writers and thinkers across history have argued this case, of course. Indeed, we could return to the Bible and the history of the New Testament in which a rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to be admitted to heaven. Jesus tells the young man to sell everything he has, to give him to the poor and to follow him. “To this, the man’s face fell,” said the Gospel. “He left sad because he had great richness.”
THe study overall of development Exhibits many interesting models and will undoubtedly stimulate additional research for the years to come. But you don’t have to wait for this to apply the results to your life, especially if you are a young adult living in a rich and post-industrial country. Here are three immediate things you can do:
1. Put close relationships with family and friends before practically everything else. As far as possible, avoid using technological platforms for interactions with these relatives; Focus on face-to-face contact. Humans are made to refer to each other in person.
2. Consider how you could develop your inner life. Given the tendency to be a none, which I wrote in a previous column, it may seem a counter-cultural decision. But let us largely define spirituality as beliefs, practices and experiences that are not confined to organized religion – even a philosophical journey that can help you transcend the daily version and find the goal and the meaning.
3. Material comfort is excellent, but they don’t replace what your heart really needs. Money cannot buy happiness; Only meaning can give you this.
The latter is a truism, I know. But truisms have the merit of being true – and the flourishing investigation reveals how we are in danger of forgetting these important truths. Sometimes, cold and hard data is what we need to remind us of what we have always known but by coming to neglect.
