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.

  • Chestnut@lemmy.world
    720·
    8 months ago

    Pick any point in the last hundred years and you’ll have the world coming apart because of global conflict, assassinations and bombings, or the threat of nuclear catastrophe, all under a backdrop of environmental destruction and pollution. Despite all this the previous generation is reported to be happier

    Everything you listed is legit, but it’s our ability to serve up fresh horrors at all hours of the day that has changed.

    What’s worse, is that social media gives us the feeling that we’re well informed when we’re actually not. Think of all the people you know who you think are well informed. Journalists, experts, even some bloggers. They didn’t get that way by scrolling for content on social media all the time.

    All that to say that I think anyone who uses social media should consider how their media diet effects them

    On a personal level it’s one of the reasons I try to use things like reddit (or Lemmy) less and fill my life with things that are more enriching, like books and music

    • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
      213·
      8 months ago

      Or maybe… JUST maybe… its because COL was cheaper for older generations and they made more money to boot

      Having time and money to travel, own a car, and own a house at the same time on a minimum wage job was entirely possible in the 1950s.

      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
        41·
        8 months ago

        I’d just like to mention that that is a very US-centric perspective. Of course it’s not social media, but in the 1950s the average person who was just graduating from the place I did was fighting the 8th Mechanized Army of the Soviet Union. Things did not improve immediately after.

        Point is, the relative welfare of the US was built on the fact that Europe was devastated in WWII, and then squandered once the wealthy saw they can’t keep accumulating wealth at the same pace after Europe was back in one piece.

        That said, the boom-bust cycle is seeing us worse and worse every iteration and the 100 obscenely wealthy people better and better off. So maybe that’s the problem.