US Gen Zers are becoming more miserable — despite happier youth elsewhere | Latest Tech News
Red, white and feeling blue.
Turns out that Gen Zers aren’t universally sad — they’re just sullen in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Outside those 4 international locations, people under 25 reported growing emotions of happiness over the last decade, according to the 14th version of the World Happiness Report, launched Wednesday.
Gen Zers are particularly sad in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a new report finds. Rawpixel.com – stock.adobe.com
Authors of the annual report aren’t sure why there’s a happiness hole, but they consider it might need to do with social media use. It appears that these feeds are probably not nourishing younger minds, our bodies or souls.
“We still don’t know why the youth happiness drop has been so much larger in those countries than elsewhere,” report founding editor John F. Helliwell, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, told The Post about the US and the three other cheerless international locations.
“It is not because social media use is much higher there than elsewhere, as it is almost universal everywhere among Gen Z,” he added. “Some of the increase may reflect differences in how social
media are used in those countries, all of which are in the English-speaking orbit.”
The report — which is based on Gallup World Poll data and other sources — linked heavy social media use to decrease well-being, but that affiliation could be very dependent on the consumer, the platforms they visited, the scope of their usage and their length of usage.
US teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours a day scrolling through social media, according to Gallup data from 2023.
Young people who use social media for less than an hour a day had the very best ranges of well-being, the report discovered — even more than social media abstainers.
Heavy social media use is driving Gen Z unhappiness, the report discovered, though there are some caveats. Monkey Business – stock.adobe.com
That could also be because social media has been shown to foster social connections and a sense of belonging even as it fuels intense social comparability, anxiety and depression.
Gen Zers aren’t the only morose Americans. The World Happiness Report ranks over 140 nations based on a three-year average of high quality of life assessments.
The report’s authors also contemplate GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, strength of friendships, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.
Finland — home of free schooling and inexpensive health care — leads the world in happiness for a ninth consecutive 12 months, with an average rating of 7.8 out of 10.
You is perhaps stunned to be taught that people are more joyful in Israel (No. 8), Kosovo (No. 16), Slovenia (No. 18), United Arab Emirates (No. 21) and Saudi Arabia (No. 22) than in the US (No. 23).
The US ranked twenty fourth in 2024, twenty third in 2023, fifteenth in 2022, sixteenth in 2021 and twentieth in 2020.
“When job and housing prospects look dim, and polarization is growing, these are real reasons for changes in feelings,” Helliwell said.
“Overall rankings are driven down by the youth unhappiness, but are not the whole story, since there are some echoes for those in older age groups,” he continued. “But for the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the drops are mainly among the young.”
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