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Happiness project

Riley Glas

3 years ago

5

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Date created:05/23/2019

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Why are teens today less happy than previous generations?

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Why are teens today less happy than previous generations?

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These days, it seems like teens are less happy than previous generations. This is a question that has troubled many over the years. Many studies have linked the epidemic to technology and the internet. This is because a study that has been conducted since 1991 asks teens to rate their general happiness and how they usually spend their free time. The less happy teens are and time spent on the internet have a strong correlation.

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We'd all like to be a little happier.

The problem is that much of what determines happiness is outside of our control. Some of us are genetically predisposed to see the world through rose-colored glasses, while others have a generally negative outlook. Bad things happen, to us and in the world. People can be unkind, and jobs can be tedious.

But we do have some control over how we spend our leisure time. That's one reason why it's worth asking which leisure time activities are linked to happiness, and which aren't.

In a new analysis of 1 million U.S. teens, my co-authors and I looked at how teens were spending their free time and which activities correlated with happiness, and which didn't.

We wanted to see if changes in the way teens spend their free time might partially explain a startling drop in teens' happiness after 2012 - and perhaps the decline in adults' happiness since 2000 as well.

A possible culprit emerges

In our study, we analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders that's been conducted annually since 1991.

Every year, teens are asked about their general happiness, in addition to how they spend their time. We found that teens who spent more time seeing their friends in person, exercising, playing sports, attending religious services, reading or even doing homework were happier. However, teens who spent more time on the internet, playing computer games, on social media, texting, using video chat or watching TV were less happy.

In other words, every activity that didn't involve a screen was linked to more happiness, and every activity that involved a screen was linked to less happiness. The differences were considerable: Teens who spent more than five hours a day online were twice as likely to be unhappy as those who spent less than an hour a day.

Of course, it might be that unhappy people seek out screen activities. However, a growing number of studies show that most of the causation goes from screen use to unhappiness, not the other way around.

In one experiment, people who were randomly assigned to give up Facebook for a week ended that time happier, less lonely and less depressed than those who continued to use Facebook. In another study, young adults required to give up Facebook for their jobs were happier than those who kept their accounts. In addition, several longitudinal studies show that screen time leads to unhappiness but unhappiness doesn't lead to more screen time.

If you wanted to give advice based on this research, it would be very simple: Put down your phone or tablet and go do something - just about anything - else.

It's not just teens

These links between happiness and time use are worrying news, as the current generation of teens (whom I call "iGen" in my book of the same name) spends more time with screens than any previous generation. Time spent online doubled between 2006 and 2016, and 82 percent of 12th-graders now use social media every day (up from 51 percent in 2008).

Sure enough, teens' happiness suddenly plummeted after 2012 (the year when the majority of Americans owned smartphones). So did teens' self-esteem and their satisfaction with their lives, especially their satisfaction with their friends, the amount of fun they were having, and their lives as a whole. These declines in well-being mirror other studies finding sharp increases in mental health issues among iGen, including in depressive symptoms, major depression, self-harm and suicide. Especially compared to the optimistic and almost relentlessly positive millennials, iGen is markedly less self-assured, and more are depressed.

A similar trend might be occurring for adults: My co-authors and I previously found that adults over age 30 were less happy than they were 15 years ago, and that adults were having sex less frequently. There may be many reasons for these trends, but adults are also spending more time with screens than they used to. That might mean less face-to-face time with other people, including with their sexual partners. The result: less sex and less happiness.

Although both teen and adult happiness dropped during the years of high unemployment amid the Great Recession (2008-2010), happiness didn't rebound in the years after 2012 when the economy was doing progressively better. Instead, happiness continued to decline as the economy improved, making it unlikely that economic cycles were to blame for lower happiness after 2012.

Growing income inequality could play a role, especially for adults. But if so, one would expect that happiness would have been dropping continuously since the 1980s, when income inequality began to grow. Instead, happiness began to decline around 2000 for adults and around 2012 for teens. Nevertheless, it's possible that concerns about the job market and income inequality reached a tipping point in the early 2000s.

Somewhat surprisingly, we found that teens who didn't use digital media at all were actually a little less happy than those who used digital media a little bit (less than an hour a day). Happiness was then steadily lower with more hours of use. Thus, the happiest teens were those who used digital media, but for a limited amount of time.

The answer, then, is not to give up technology entirely. Instead, the solution is a familiar adage: everything in moderation. Use your phone for all the cool things it's good for. And then set it down and go do something else.

You might be happier for it.

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What might explain the unhappiness epidemic?

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We'd all like to be a little happier. The problem is that much of what determines happiness is outside of our control. Some of us are genetically predisposed to see the world through rose-colored glasses, while others have a generally negative outlook. Bad things happen, to us and in the world.

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Are some people genetically inclined to be unhappy?

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Are some people genetically inclined to be unhappy?

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A study led by Meike Bartels of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands her research points to up to 20 places in the human genome that could control happiness. This means that some people could be genetically predisposed to being less happy.

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A human's level of happiness is linked to their genetic makeup, according to a researcher who carried out groundbreaking work in the area-but it's nearly impossible to modify genes to boost your contentment.

In an interview with CNBC at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Meike Bartels described herself as a "scientist on a mission." She's the university research chair at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and last year published a paper that, for the first time, linked genetics to happiness.

In a first ever study, Bartels and a group of researchers studied nearly 300,000 people, sampling DNA material as well as measures of well-being. Looking at human genomes, which contain the genetic material that determines an organism, the study found links between genes and feelings. There were three genetic variants for happiness, two that account for differences in symptoms of depression, and eleven locations on the human genome that may account for varying degrees of neurotic behavior.

When the study was published, there were two points on the human genome that Bartels said could be linked to human happiness. As the sample size grew, Bartels revealed on Saturday that the researchers have now found 20 areas on the genome linked to happiness.

However, Bartels said that even though genes are linked to your levels of happiness, external environmental factors can actually influence how those genes exhibit themselves. She is now focused on uncovering the extent of that dynamic.

"My main aim is to get a better hold of the environment. We think we know a lot about the environment but we do not. Most environmental factors are genetically influenced," Bartels told CNBC.

Knowing the location of specific genes opens up questions about the ability to modify a person's genetic make-up. If you know what to change to be happier, why wouldn't somebody in the people in the future make sure they are full of happiness genes?

Because it'll be nearly impossible, Bartels said. She added that there'll be a "couple thousand" genetic variants linked to happiness so it'll be "too complex" to start altering that much DNA, but she declared she's up for the task.

"I am not afraid," the professor said.

Meanwhile, learning about the genetics of happiness and how the environment affects that could be the key to better health and education, which could be customized to each individual person in the world.

"I think when we realize people are genetically different, we can start customizing more than we do now," Bartels told CNBC.

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A scientist has discovered why happiness might very well be genetic

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A human's level of happiness is linked to their genetic makeup, according to a researcher who carried out groundbreaking work in the area-but it's nearly impossible to modify genes to boost your contentment. In an interview with CNBC at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Meike Bartels described herself as a "scientist on a mission."

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Many people today seem to have the mindset that happiness is just something that comes and goes and doesn't really matter that much. According to William Schultz Ph.D., happiness is just that. He explains his opinion on how happiness is not a vital part of life in his article. I do not agree with his views, I believe that happiness is what guides us to do great things.

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Is happiness overrated?

I don't know if it is. On one hand, what could anyone want more than happiness? Isn't happiness what we're after? Don't we do all those things we do hoping for happiness as an end result, a mainlined dose of congratulations?

Maybe not. I started mulling this over after reading a New Yorker review of a biography of Koestler, who was no happiness fan. Nor was Freud, of course, who said the two aims of life were love and work (or, more precisely, sex and ambition). Freud also famously quipped that the most anyone could hope for in this world was what he depressingly called "ordinary unhappiness." So, even good loving and good work did not equal happiness.

Some years ago I wrote an article on Oscar Wilde, who, I felt, unintentionally articulated a workable theory of personality. Anyway, for Wilde, the goal and basis of human existence was self-expression and the "intensification of personality." What we want is to be who we naturally are; and also to enlarge who we are by spreading out like human omelettes. Self-expansion, in other words.

Wilde's ideas dovetailed with Buddhism in interesting ways, I discovered. Now Buddhism, unsurprisingly, flies the whole mess into the sea (to quote The Shins). Goal-lessness is key. One does not seek happiness; one does not seek period. Non- attachment to any idea or state. The way is not difficult--only there must be no wanting or not-wanting. Middle-way everything.

I'm curious what evolutionary psychologists think. The goal, in their view, is to maximize reproductive potential. Very Freudian at root, I know. But where does happiness fit in? Is happiness more valuable than, say, anxiety (according to the evolutionists)?

One more tangent. Not everyone has the same chance of being happy. The research is very clear on that. In scores of studies, happiness (or its synonym, positive affect) correlates positively with extraversion; it is negatively correlated with neuroticism. And both extraversion and neuroticism are strongly heritable. Want to be happy? Then be an extravert.

I guess my instinct is to say happiness is overrated. I also believe intelligence is overrated, but that's another story. Happiness even gets in the way of success. As poet Philip Larkin once said, "Happiness writes white." It takes the lift and the wound out of creative work. One needs the wound. No wound, no high art.

Anyway, I couldn't complain about being happy. But I think I'd like to be other things more.

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Is happiness overrated?I don't know if it is. On one hand, what could anyone want more than happiness? Isn't happiness what we're after? Don't we do all those things we do hoping for happiness as an end result, a mainlined dose of congratulations?

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In many inspirational quotes about happiness, they say how happiness is a choice and only you can be in control of it. I agree with these quotes. Only you are in control of  how you choose to live your life.

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“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
― Aristotle

Aristotle, a great Greek philosopher, says that we only have control over our own happiness. Nobody else can change our mindset or effort toward the pursuit of happiness.

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Aristotle Quotes (Author of The Nicomachean Ethics)

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799 quotes from Aristotle: 'Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.', 'It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.', and 'What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.'

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Everybody has a different definition of happiness. Many people define it as being wealthy or having other materialistic things. But many people that are wealthy and have a lot of expensive things still aren't happy. So, what makes a person truly happy? A study by The Independent shows that people that are generally happy have a few key things in common. The people that responded that they were generally happy have strong relationships with a significant other or a family member. They also prefer to have more time than money, but they have enough money to pay the bills and live comfortably with their families. The study also shows that happy people tend to exercise more. The more you exercise, the more endorphins are released so exercise is another key element to living a happy life. So happiness to most happy people is living peacefully with a significant other and practicing a healthy lifestyle, and being able to go out and see the world.

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Everybody wants to be happy.

That's why the science of happiness has gained more attention in recent years -researchers have started to produce reports on happiness around the globe, and positive psychology, which focuses on what makes individuals and communities thrive, has skyrocketed in popularity.

At this point, we actually know a fair amount about how certain behaviours, attitudes, and choices relate to happiness, though most research on the topic can only find correlations.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Researchers think that roughly 40 percent of our happiness is under our own control; the rest is determined by genetics and external factors. That means there's a lot we can do to control our own happiness.

Here are nine happiness-promoting behaviours backed by science.

1. Relationships are essential. A major study followed hundreds of men for more than 70 years, and found the happiest (and healthiest) were those who cultivated strong relationships with people they trusted to support them.
Source: The Harvard Study of Adult Development
2. Time beats money. A number of studies have shown that happier people prefer to have more time in their lives than more money. Even trying to approach life from that mindset seems to make people more content.
Source: Business Insider
3. But it helps to have enough money to pay the bills. People's well-being rises along with income levels up to an annual salary of about $75,000, studies have found. (That number probably varies depending on your cost of living, however.)
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
4. It's worth stopping to smell the roses. People who slow down to reflect on good things in their lives report being more satisfied.
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5. Acts of kindness boost the mood. Give your friends a ride to the airport or spend an afternoon volunteering. Some research has shown that people who perform such acts report being happier. Source: Review of General Psychology
6. Breaking a sweat is about more than burning calories. Studies show that increased levels of physical activity are connected to higher levels of happiness. Exercise tends to help mitigate the symptoms of some mental illnesses as well.
Sources: American Psychological Association, BMC Public Health
7. Fun is more valuable than material items. People tend to be happier if they spend their money on experiences instead of things. Researchers have also found that buying things that allow you to have experiences - like rock climbing shoes or a new book to read - can also increase happiness.

Sources: Social Psychology Bulletin
Read more: * Online mattress startup SIMBA is 'continuously' raising money and got another £2 million in May Read the original article on Business Insider UK. © 2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
* A solution to job-stealing robots is staring us right in the face
* A neuroscientist says the female brain is the boardroom's largest untapped resource

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Science says happier people have these 9 things in common

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Everybody wants to be happy. That's why the science of happiness has gained more attention in recent years -researchers have started to produce reports on happiness around the globe, and positive psychology, which focuses on what makes individuals and communities thrive, has skyrocketed in popularity.

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What is the importance of happiness in our lives?

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What is the importance of happiness in our lives?

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According to Jeff Durham, a psychologist, Happiness is what gives us our inclination to achieve our goals in life and also allows us to make others happy. The saying, "Surround yourself with people who reflect who you want to be" applies here. By being happy, we can help others on their pursuit of happiness.

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Why happiness is important and how we can all choose to adopt a sense of being happy and replace negative meanings we have placed on the world in order to lead far more enriched lives which we are in control of.