Americans are unhappier than ever
In a video clip that’s garnered more than 1 million views on Instagram, Erin Jackson, a standup comedian, offered her assessment of the state of our union. “Our country is like the hot girl in high school who let herself go,” Jackson said. “But then she shows up at the reunion and all the other countries are standing around, like, ‘Yoooooooo, did y’all see America? She going through it.”
Yes, she is.
For the first time since the World Happiness Report released its inaugural findings in 2012, the United States has dropped out of the top 20, landing at 23. That’s eight spots lower than last year. Are you happier today than you were four years ago? A decade ago? If you live in America, the answer is probably no — especially for people under the age of 30.
While a happiness report seems like fodder for latenight comedians, there’s a very serious undercurrent here. For the first time, this year’s report, compiled by various organizations including the United Nations, Columbia University, and Gallup, emphasizes a focus on “the happiness of people at different stages of life.” The report reveals an alarming divide between Baby Boomers over 60 and those who’ve not yet turned 30 — Gen Z and millennials born in the late 1990s.
Logic would seem to dictate that youth would be the time when happiness is at its most bountiful. It should be a period of energy and optimism. But in the 143 countries surveyed, Americans under 30 ranked 62nd, pulling down the nation’s happiness rating. Boomers, by contrast, came in 10th.
And what’s driving the downturn in overall happiness among young Americans is what researchers call “the inequality of well-being.”
“Inequality in the distribution of happiness reflects inequalities of access to any of the direct and indirect supports for well-being, including income, education, health care, social acceptance, trust, and the presence of supportive social environments at the family, community, and national levels,” they wrote. “People are happier living in countries where the equality of happiness is greater.”
It concludes that “well-being and happiness are critical indicators of a nation’s economic and social development, and should be a key aim of policy.” In other words, people can’t bootstrap their way to happiness — which should say all that one needs to know about why this country finished out of the top 20. (For the seventh consecutive year, Finland claimed the top spot.)
Of course, especially for younger generations, social media consumption has been shown to have a negative impact on happiness and mental health. Having a device always within reach that, with the tap of an app, will feed its users a steady diet of beautiful homes, perfect bodies, and glamorous lives can breed personal dissatisfaction with one’s own status. Few can measure up to that much rigorous editing and methodical curation.
But young people don’t necessarily want the houses they flick by on social media. They want a home they can afford, something that with today’s outrageous housing prices is largely unattainable. They want lives unsaddled with massive student loan debt. They want rights that are protected instead of eroded. A generation raised on mass shooting drills in their schools want to feel safe when they go to a movie theater, a concert, or a supermarket. They want policies and laws that work for and protect their lives.
A 2022 survey conducted by Making Caring Common, a Harvard Graduate School of Education project, found that 45 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 reported a general “sense that things are falling apart.”
A nation that fails its young people is dooming its future.
But even exacerbated by the COVID years of fear, turmoil, sickness, and more than 1 million deaths — something this nation has been loath to fully process in its rush to get back to “normal” — this decline in American happiness isn’t sudden. Neither is the inequality that continues to drag this nation down.
We are the only nation that codifies as an unalienable right “the pursuit of happiness.” But as this report makes clear, unless widespread inequality is eradicated, that pursuit will remain a reality well beyond America’s grasp for generations to come.