Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
scientificamerican.com
Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
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Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#2Hey, Gen Z. Gen X here. I personally think this whole "young adulthood is the happiest time of your life" is some sort of bizarre Boomer artifact, and certainly wasn't in play in the late '80s or '90s. I was told that repeatedly when I was a teenager, but it certainly wasn't the case for me or most of the people I knew when I was a young man, 35 years ago. We were all totally blindsided by how bad the high school experience was, and for many of us, the college experience was bad as well.
The good news is that as we became independent from our families and the institutions that we were committed to, and found paths in our work and family life to be productive, the majority of us became totally normal, functional people. Would I say "happy"? Sometimes but certainly not always - for almost all of us. Life has its way, with health and work and family issues that larger social or economic issues will never have any influence over, regardless of the era you grow up in.
But this article says that people are least happy at 50. So, I'm 50. Am I happy? Not, like, happy happy. But am I OK? Yeah, sure, I've figured things out, have my own family, it's all turned out OK.
Am I happier than any point in young adulthood in the late '80s and early '90s? Absolutely.
This whole "best years of your life" as a teen or young adult thing is... nonsense. It has nothing to do with the possibilities of the human experience. For some people? Sure, let them have their fun. But I don't want to sound like Dan Savage, but, for everyone, it can get better. Chart your own path, work it out for yourself.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#3Hey, Gen Z. Gen X here. I personally think this whole "young adulthood is the happiest time of your life" is some sort of bizarre Boomer artifact, and certainly wasn't in play in the late '80s or '90s. I was told that repeatedly when I was a teenager, but it certainly wasn't the case for me or most of the people I knew when I was a young man, 35 years ago. We were all totally blindsided by how bad the high school exp…
Oh, well I guess If you're OK that's all that matters.
What's the point of anecdotes if the subject is about statistics.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#4Is the u shaped curve just a proxy for financial condition?
Young people starting out didn’t make much but eventually earned more saved and could look forward to a house and affording a family
The U curve is lowest when career starts plateau or decline, financial demands for college couple with a mortgage, and then once kids launch and mortgage is paid off (because you could afford to buy in your 20s), happiness rises.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#5It has apparently escaped the notice of the authors of this article that in 2022 we had just begun to recover from a once-in-a-century global pandemic that lasted two years, killed eight million people (so 30% more than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust), left countless thousands living with debilitating long-term symptoms, and permanently deprived an entire cohort of once-in-a-lifetime formative experiences, like graduating high school or going to the prom, and also left them with vastly greater uncertainty about their future financial prospects. Furthermore, if you are 17, then all of that represents a much higher percentage of your conscious experience than if you're 50 or 70, so why on earth would anyone be surprised that 17-year-olds in 2022 report lower life satisfaction than 17-year-olds from 2005-2018?
Furthermore, the rest of the variation is highly questionable. The vertical scale on the graph is compressed. The actual difference in the alleged U is only about 0.1, or 3% of the absolute scale value of 3.3. That is a tiny difference. I'd frankly be surprised if it was even statistically significant, let alone indicative of an actual underlying systemic change.
So I'm calling shenanigans here.
UPDATE: I searched for "pandemic" rather than "COVID" so I missed this:
> Later, as he put it, he “thought that everything was COVID.” Now, Blanchflower says, he sees that was an error. “COVID extended trends that had existed before,” he says.
But the data presented do not support this conclusion at all. There are no "trends that had existed before" in the data since all pre-covid data is grouped together in a single data set.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#6Hey, Gen Z. Gen X here. I personally think this whole "young adulthood is the happiest time of your life" is some sort of bizarre Boomer artifact, and certainly wasn't in play in the late '80s or '90s. I was told that repeatedly when I was a teenager, but it certainly wasn't the case for me or most of the people I knew when I was a young man, 35 years ago. We were all totally blindsided by how bad the high school exp…
Oh, well I guess If you're OK that's all that matters. What's the point of anecdotes if the subject is about statistics.
Statistics come after "lies" and "damn lies".
I can also confirm that adolescence sucks. You have many important experience but quality of life just isn't there.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#7Obligatory "please do not discount suvivorship bias in your results".
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, well I guess If you're OK that's all that matters. What's the point of anecdotes if the subject is about statistics.
Statistics come after "lies" and "damn lies". I can also confirm that adolescence sucks. You have many important experience but quality of life just isn't there.
Well for me adolescence was pretty OK. Had my fun, played games all day after school (which itself was alright too) and that continued well into my college and even few years after that. In college I had a blast, really the best years of my life from "careless freedom" point of view. Never ever will I live like that again, it is not sustainable in the long run, but it was really fun when I was under 25. I continued the lifestyle later, but the satisfaction with my life went rapidly down, because I wanted something deeper. Today, at 30, with wife and a child, I don't have so much fun as I used to, life is more stressful and busy, but at the end of the day it is more satisfying and I would not want it otherwise.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#9It has apparently escaped the notice of the authors of this article that in 2022 we had just begun to recover from a once-in-a-century global pandemic that lasted two years, killed eight million people (so 30% more than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust), left countless thousands living with debilitating long-term symptoms, and permanently deprived an entire cohort of once-in-a-lifetime formative experiences…
Also consider the fatality rate for youth was low compared to elderly, so it must have looked like we threw their education and recreation in the wood chipper for grandma, when normally at least in modern times sacrifices are made by adults to the children not the other way around.
Re: Young adulthood is no longer one of life's happiest times
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Statistics come after "lies" and "damn lies". I can also confirm that adolescence sucks. You have many important experience but quality of life just isn't there.
Well for me adolescence was pretty OK. Had my fun, played games all day after school (which itself was alright too) and that continued well into my college and even few years after that. In college I had a blast, really the best years of my life from "careless freedom" point of view. Never ever will I live like that again, it is not sustainable in the long run, but it was really fun when I was under 25. I continued t…
For some reason, college was super stressful for me emotionally. I was struggling academically, then commuting to part-time work while trying to contain personal issues creeping up on me.
Yes, there was its fun, such as golden age of PC games, pre-Facebook internet and the whole 2007 thing; but my life is far less stressful nowdays, even though I too have family and kids.