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.
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…
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.”
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.