
Young People Are Happier Than They Used to Be - cJ0th
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/the-age-happiness-connection-is-breaking-down/414349/?single_page=true
======
carsongross
It's very strange that even the authors of the study are taking this headline
position. If you go and look at the actual paper:

[http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/10/194855061560...](http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/10/1948550615602933.full.pdf+html)

You will see that 18-29 year old self-reported happiness is flat when compared
with the last thirty years, off the post-1975 lows of 2005, but below the 1985
and 1990 measurements:

[http://i.imgur.com/VXpYCy7.png](http://i.imgur.com/VXpYCy7.png)

 _Older adult_ happiness, however, is breaking decidedly to the downside.

One can only conjecture why this research is being spun as "happier young
people" rather than "less happy old people".

~~~
aakilfernandes
Might have something to do with this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-news-
spreads-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-news-spreads-
faster-on-twitter-and-facebook.html?pagewanted=all)

Also the trend seems stronger the younger you go. My guess is 18-29 is too
broad a range to show the real trend.

[http://imgur.com/q1WtBPe](http://imgur.com/q1WtBPe)

------
ryandrake
> One reason for this shift may be a collective rise in how well Americans
> expect their lives to go. Happiness is sometimes defined as reality divided
> by expectations

Is it really expectations rising, or reality falling? I think it's a
combination. I know my expectations used to be sky high, and yea my younger
years were optimistic. But reality still hit like a ton of bricks.

When I was in my late teens, I was relatively certain I'd be retired as a dot-
com multi-millionaire in 10 years or so. Throughout my 20s, I thought, well
all I need to do is work my ass off in a tech company and, even if I'm not
retiring early, at least I'll be rocking an upper class lifestyle with a few
vacation homes! Then, I reached 30 and thought, jeez, I hope my standard of
living at least ends up a little better than my parents' one day. Now that I'm
closing in on 40, I'm wondering if I'll even be able to afford to raise a kid
let alone have anything left to retire with.

~~~
beachstartup
really? you _expected_ all that? shit. all i ever wanted was a sports car and
a decent apartment, and i have that after quite a bit of work. i've
entertained the possibility of striking it big, but never expected it. it's
still a goal i work toward but if i were to crash and burn tomorrow i'd
probably just go find work on a boat somewhere tropical and warm.

~~~
ryandrake
High expectations, no grasp of statistics, and a total misunderstanding of
just how much of a role luck plays in everyone's outcome.

That was back when the first dot-com bubble was rapidly inflating, and it
seemed that all you had to do was put in a few years at Netscape, Sun or SGI,
and then go found a startup, and you'd be a guaranteed success. People really
believed this!

In reality, the job environment consisted of those few known companies plus
this big spread of unknowns (much like today, actually, except back then they
were actually hiring). Nobody knew which ones would go out of business, which
ones would succeed, and which ones would mean Maseratis for their early
employees. I mean nobody had a clue. If you graduated in Comp sci or Comp eng
or EE, you basically just rolled the dice and picked one, and that ended up
being the difference between doing astoundingly well and just putzing along
after 20 years.

~~~
itgoon
Heh. Yea, I remember all that. If you know how to spell "HTML", you were
certain to be a billionaire by 30.

------
randomname2
I wonder how this ties in with the increasing trend of young people living
with their parents. In 1999, a quarter of all 25-year-olds lived with their
parents. By 2013 this number has doubled, and currently half of young adults
live in their parents home. [1]

[1] [https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-
economy/2015/october/mille...](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-
economy/2015/october/millennials-living-home-student-debt-housing-labor)

~~~
tomp
I've often been thinking how an ideal living situation for me would be a
commune-like collaboration between good friends - each (or each couple) having
their own space, but in the same building so it's easy to meet, share chores,
etc. Something like in the series Friends.

Definitely beats commuting for 30mins to another side of the city just to meet
for a 2hour dinner.

~~~
davnicwil
With the exception of 'good friends' (unless you're lucky) you're just
describing a houseshare.

This is what everyone does in their 20s (and probably becoming the norm for
most people through their 30s too) in cities in the UK, London in particular,
because rents are so high there is literally no alternative that doesn't
involve spending most of your salary on rent.

Even with a houseshare, a 30 min commute is not just normal but actually,
rather good! You're usually nowhere near the centre. Again, this is
particularly true of London.

I'm sorry to deflate you on this one but I can tell you, having lived in
houseshares for years, it is absolutely not an ideal living situation.
Everyone in one wants their own place, but can't afford it without moving way
out of the city, or saving nothing, or living somewhere truly awful, or some
combination of the above. It's not a choice but a corner you're backed into by
the market.

If you're contemplating this as something which is optional, you are lucky
indeed, and I'd advise you to stick with your current, non-shared, living
arrangements :-)

~~~
corin_
There's a middle ground between living in the same house (your houseshares)
and living 30+ minutes away from friends. As your parent described it "like in
Friends".

Obviously comes with it's own downsides - it's not so easy out side of TV to
think "right, these are the 5 people I want to live near", and not neccesarily
easy to find somewhere to live that gives you the space each of you want (e.g.
separate appartments) while still being suitible for everyone in your group.

Personally I wouldn't want to live in a houseshare, but in the same appartment
building as good friends? Sure.

------
timdellinger
Being young used to involve lots of boredom - technology has changed all that.

Being older used to mean having a career - the economy being in the toilet has
changed all that.

------
pcurve
Kids are exposed to more information than before to keep them stimulated, but
they are also guided down predetermined paths more than before.

Child-rearing has become more data-centric than ever. Parents naturally want
to do what is best for their children, which means eliminating all the
uncertainties, and sticking with winning formulas.

So while we pay lip-service to celebrating diversity, in reality we're
actually going in the opposite direction towards convergence, and risk-
aversion.

Kids are happy because they are constantly stimulated, and the guided rearing
has led them to believe in certainty of future.

Unfortunately, there is now less 'slack' in the society and economy to
accommodate serendipity. And that's what the grown-ups face in the real world.

------
marincounty
I stumbled upon this site a couple of years ago--maybe more? I don't add much
to discussions, and embarrassing use it as therapy. Thanks guys for not being
too hard on me.

For so long, I didn't even know how certain features work. I still haven't
even read the rules. That would probally explain why forever I didn't know
what you guys were talking about with down/up votes. The arrows weren't on my
screen. I guess I was banned? They are now there, but I wish the only arrow
was a up arrow. Never saw the need for the down arrow?

I only access this site when I'm on my iPad. I guess it's just habit.

I never come back to a post, unless I ask a question. Just don't like to
argue, and unless we are talking about the poor, or animal abuse, I don't want
to get all riled up.

I did look into this making a HN type site, but haven't succeeded. It would
not clone HN. It would just be for a niche group of people, interested in old
mechanical watches-- basically their repair. When I found out this site was
built with lisp, I immediately got a book on lisp. I still haven't got through
it either. See the pattern; I don't follow through.

I can honesly state, I believe this is the best site on the Internet, and I'm
so glad Paul Graham decided to build it, and not change it up too much. Thank
you Mr. Graham!

~~~
valarauca1
>For so long, I didn't even know how certain features work. I still haven't
even read the rules. That would probally explain why forever I didn't know
what you guys were talking about with down/up votes. The arrows weren't on my
screen. I guess I was banned? They are now there, but I wish the only arrow
was a up arrow. Never saw the need for the down arrow?

You unlock privileges as you gain karma.

------
SimeVidas
All those cat videos are paying off.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It may sound like a joke, but there might be something to it. It's probably
hard to measure, but I can't imagine the easy access to lightweight mood-
improving content doesn't have an impact of people. Personally, I don't browse
cats too often, but I've experienced many times how a single picture of a cute
cat sent by someone can keep me smiling for a long while.

~~~
vinceguidry
I think this is the tail wagging the dog here, akin to saying that easy access
to violent video games makes people violent.

Culture can affect mood, but I think mood affects culture much more strongly
than the other way around. We mostly seek out things that validate the way we
already feel inside, not go, "I'm feeling pretty crappy today, let me go watch
some cat vids to cheer me up." If something comes along that doesn't feed into
our current state, we tend to ignore it.

We had the Internet for a lot longer than we've had cat videos. It wasn't that
we couldn't have had them or that none existed, they just weren't all that
popular. There was a definite turn in the 2000s where people, and the
Internet, suddenly got a lot happier.

My theory is that Internetting before Facebook was mostly a solitary thing
that loners would do to get away from lives they otherwise hated. With
Facebook the masses came, and so everyone all of a sudden had to cater to a
wider audience. People who really do want to get away from humanity have their
4chans, but they're in the minority now. Reddit would have been a very
different place in the late nineties.

------
amelius
This contradicts studies showing that people who spend a lot of time on
Facebook are unhappier [1]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new-
stud...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new-study-links-
facebook-to-depression-but-now-we-actually-understand-why/)

~~~
herbig
No it doesn't. The first study is relative to people in the past, the other
study is relative to people in the present.

------
bronz
The result of this study really resonates with me. The accuracy of the
conclusions it draws may be questionable, but it resonates none the less. I
think that we may be finally experiencing the consequences of our
irresponsible behavior in earlier decades. Many good changes have been brought
about, sure. But we threw away the sanctity of the family unit. We taught
everyone that making a modest living is for "losers." We let our schools
become daycare centers. And in many ways I feel that we lost our morality. And
now that all the money is gone it doesn't work anymore.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _And now that all the money is gone it doesn 't work anymore._

There is more global wealth than at any point in human history, and it's still
growing. A financial crisis and a decade of "economic stagnation" are nothing
in the grand scheme of things.

~~~
meric
Increasing inequality sucks the wealth into the top. At first, most citizens
in developed countries benefits from rising inequality as the wealth from
poorer countries are channeled into the country. As inequality rises, the
bottom levels start to lose wealth to the upper levels. As it rises past your
neighbourhood, you'll see your neighbourhood getting poorer, while the
countries' richest get richer and richer. That's why there's more global
wealth than at any point, still growing, but it looks like everyone is getting
poorer, because almost everyone is. Not saying that's good or bad, maybe it's
even necessary in our society for inequality to continue to rise and then
collapse. Many communist experiments have already been tried.

EDIT: All conjecture.

~~~
enjo
Even if that's true, you're average person on earth is generally better off
than their parents were. In the United States it's not quite as cut and dry,
but in general you are likely at least as well off as your parents. Inflation
adjusted wages have been relatively flat, not decreasing (unless new data I
haven't seen suggests otherwise).

At a macro scale people in the United States aren't getting poorer, they're
just not getting relatively richer over time.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Inflation adjusted wages have been relatively flat, not decreasing

Inflation adjusted median household income peaked in 1999, and its current
level is below what it was in 1997. [0] _Mean_ household income has done
better, because the very good results at the top influence the mean, but have
no impact on the median.

Real hourly wages for middle- and low-income workers have been stagnant for
decades; over a ~3 decade period dropping slightly for low income workers and
gaining slightly for middle-income workers. (And lower for both categories
than they were a decade ago.) And real hourly wages for young college
graduates are below what they were in the late 1990s.

And, in the same time as _wages_ have dropped, the key non-wage benefit
(employer health coverage) has also dropped, with fewer recently-employed
young graduates (of high school and college, measured separately) having
employer-sponsored insurance than in the past. [1]

> At a macro scale people in the United States aren't getting poorer, they're
> just not getting relatively richer over time.

No, other than capitalists and a narrow slice of elite workers, they're
actually getting poorer.

[0]
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N)

[1] [http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-
stagnation/](http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

~~~
refurb
Not sure I'd be referencing a study by EPI....

 _There are several reasons why the Top 1% has done so much better, says Josh
Bivens, EPI’s research and policy director. These include tax cuts for the
rich, deregulation of Wall Street and big increases in executive compensation.
At the same time, the weakening of unions and the failure of the minimum wage
to keep up with inflation depressed the wages of the middle class._

~~~
tanderson92
> Not sure I'd be referencing a study by EPI....

Why not? Besides which, the rest of your post is not a defense that the bottom
99% has fared well, it is itself an explanation for why the 1% has done
extraordinarily well. On the backs of union workers and the middle class I
might add.

------
pinkunicorn
About damn time. From 17(23 now), I've kept reading news that my generation is
flawed in someway or the other. First time I'm reading a news article which
says otherwise. This makes me happy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's your (our) generation that will be trashing the next one in the press
now. Standard conflict-of-generations stuff.

------
acosmism
moochers

------
Shivetya
Possibly we are letting this your special, your opinions carry weight, others
should not hold views you find offensive, and such, will come back to bite us
in a few years.

Letting kids think they are special is one thing, but the idea of going about
it by not offending them and excusing them of failure by redirecting blame as
is the current trend isn't going to lead to happy adults, if anything their
fall is going to be harder

