Happiness, Ranked and Revealed

Photo by Government of NCT of Delhi, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The remark attributed to Benjamin Disraeli that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics” needs a modern updating to include “rankings.”

Oh, how the internet information age ever loves to rank anything and everything. Make a ranking, make sure to include – or exclude – something or someone that will instantly garner a reaction, and voila, instant content for the engagement media model.

Among other things being ranked, and thus discussed, is the World Happiness Report 2024, which true to its name attempts to rank happiness across the globe by country broken down by age cohort. The United States of America did not fare well:

NPR:

North America does not fare as well overall. As a nation, the United States dropped in the global ranking from 15th to 23rd. But researchers point to striking generational divides.

People aged 60 and older in the U.S. reported high levels of well-being compared to younger people. In fact, the United States ranks in the top 10 countries for happiness in this age group.

Conversely, there’s a decline in happiness among younger adolescents and young adults in the U.S. “The report finds there’s a dramatic decrease in the self-reported well-being of people aged 30 and below,” says editor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor of economics and behavioral science, and the director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University.

This drop among young adults is also evident in Canada, Australia and, to a lesser extent in parts of western Europe and Britain, too. “We knew that a relationship existed between age and happiness, but the biggest surprise is that it is more nuanced than we previously thought, and it is changing,” says Ilana Ron-Levey, managing director at Gallup.

“In North America, youth happiness has dropped below that of older adults,” Ron-Levey says.

The over 60 crowd of Americans have the country ranked 10th in the world. The under 30 contingent of Americans rank their country only 62nd. This has brought much discussion and hand wringing over the generation gap of happiness and the old tried-and-true question of “what is wrong with the youths these days.” As Kyla Scanlon pointed out on Twitter, “This is a massive change from 2010, when the two groups were equally happy. Happiness has fallen for everyone – but now the young are the least happy age group.”

Setting aside questions about rankings in general and the methodology of this data set in particular, which you can read in detail here, if we take this information at face value, what should we make of it?

To address a problem, you have to be able to define it. Part of the issue is in the nomenclature of what is and isn’t “happy” to start with. The etymology of the term happiness is full of lingual variations on luck, chance, circumstances, fortune, and so forth. The theme throughout is clear though; happiness is a mental state tied very much to surrounding factors outside of someone’s control.

Researchers note that part of the generational split has to do with older folks generally being more settled in life in many ways, along with the lived wisdom and perspective gained, than younger folks still finding their way in the world. The “under 30” is probably too broad since the shift from teens to young adults is a massive change from being cared for to caring for yourself. But still, it’s completely reasonable to understand young adults figuring out careers, trying to learn finances, worrying about living arrangements, debating things like children and relationships, and a further list of things bombarding them in real time could get to the point they aren’t even sure if they are worrying about the right things. In short, younger folks will feel far less control than older, more established folks who have a lifetime under their belts. Of course, such struggles would make a dent in “happiness” feelings comparatively.

But why the big change from 2010 then?

There is an old tale of a certain old preacher greeting his departing congregation after a service. A visibly anxious and upset young person took the outstretched hand, and in reply to a query of how they were doing came the reply “Oh, I’m ok under the circumstances.” To which the old preacher looked down over his glasses and with complete sincerity and conviction asked, “What are you doing under there?”

Meditate on it for a moment…

If happiness is tied to circumstance, both in terminology and in real-world impact, a useful tool for discerning would be sorting what can and cannot be controlled. The average person can’t control inflation and prices, has minimal say over world events, and in America has just one vote out of nearly 200 million to affect the political process. All classic points of frustration and drags on “happiness” to varying degrees for time immemorial .

What has changed, greatly, is the informational intake of under 30 Americans. To be under 30 years of age is to be in the cohort who has lived totally in the internet information age and has fully come of age in the social media era. This cohort can barely remember a pre-smartphone era, and the tech usage that older generations have adapted to are the native language and environment for them. In many ways, the under 30 cohort is the first generation who, through technology and social media, has grown up with almost total control of their informational intake. Their feeds, phones, and devices are custom tuned — both by themselves and the designs of companies and outlets capitalizing thereof — to give the information they want to consume on demand, constantly.

While it is inarguably true that some events are outside the control of folks, the perception of what is going on in the wider world is more under their own control than at any time in history. Happiness, and understanding why younger Americans are not “feeling it” right now, has to include the conversation of carefully cultivated social and news media intake. At least digitally, many folks are not doing well under the circumstances because they have downloaded more circumstances upon themselves than they can do anything about. Meanwhile, real world concerns like rent/mortgage, family, career, finances, and the like not only aren’t abated, but get amplified since every conversation or Google search for information will fill the forced advertisements algorithms with ammo to bombard them further.

It’s not that the kids aren’t alright; it’s that the kids don’t have much of a chance of catching the vapor that is “happiness” when their native ecosystem is designed to extract more than in imparts. The circumstances of modern life have those chasing “happiness” digging out of a generationally specific digital hole that everyone is having to learn about and adjust to on the fly.

There is a reason those old-timers talked more about joy than happiness. While the latter is a ship sailing the roiling seas of circumstances, the former comes from places of contentment and satisfaction that starts within oneself and then outwardly manifests in all other things. Philosophers, religions, experts, and gurus of various descriptions all have endless methods and theories on how to achieve both joy and happiness. But for the common folks just trying to get by, and not worrying about the World Happiness Rankings since they have bills to pay and mouths to feed, maybe the ranking should go something like this:

1) Things I can control
2) Things I can’t control

There should be a huge gap in bandwidth spent between the two, with almost all the exerted effort towards the first one. Social and news media, not to mention the politicians and crazymakers, make money and gain influence off constantly selling the shock, outrage, and fear of things outside almost everyone’s control. The flippant “Well, you can’t control it so don’t worry about it” also isn’t helpful here, since plenty things you can’t control can jack your life up in an instance. But the bandwidth one spends on those things is controllable, especially when it comes to online.

Whatever the fancy medical term for the brain-body link to things you can take action on has to be infinitely more healthy — physically and mentally — than the brain-device connection that has no outlet other than doomscrolling for more to worry about.

Folks of any age who master the tasks within their own sphere of self, family, local community, not only will have little time for outside noise and nonsense but make for better members of society and citizens of their country at large for doing so. They can keep proper perspective on the issues at hand that greatly affect the lives of those around them, using the privilege of a life well led to notice the real issues and injustices around them that need fixing. Those folks, engaged and informed, can then be the drivers of circumstances more than the chronically irrationally anxious who never get out from under the circumstances. Or at least have the perspective that maybe that blaring headline isn’t in good faith and the reader’s best interest.

But that path is hard. It takes a lot of work, effort, and commitment. That path doesn’t trend well. Doesn’t fit neatly on a spreadsheet of folks who can be “influenced” by the influencer class.

Would such a path and lifestyle lead to “happiness?”

Depends on your definition.

Fortunately, how you define “happiness” is completely up to you. Just don’t outsource your happiness exclusively to a screen, or Google, or social media, so you give yourself a fighting chance.