Today is apparently International Happiness Day, so there was really only one choice for the Second Floor Hallway Playlist this morning (although now that I say this, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” would also have been acceptable). This coincides with a new report that shows, among many other things, that the United States is no longer in the global top 20 when it comes to self-reported happiness, owing in large part to the decline among young people. If you considered only Americans over 60, we would be in the top ten; if you considered only people under 30, we would rank 62nd, between the Dominican Republic and Peru.
Why young people are so unhappy is open to a great deal of interpretation, so everybody can use it as evidence to support their preferred hobbyhorse. If you think that young people as a group are spoiled, overprivileged brats who don’t know how good they have it, this all but proves it (this is not my explanation, by the way). If you believe that the U.S. is on the precipice of becoming a dystopian wasteland, then you may wonder how older people could be so blind. For me, I wonder about the effects of cell phones.
When comparing the top 12 happiest countries among those under age 30, and the top 12 with the most smartphone addiction, there’s no overlap. This is cherry-picking the data to some degree; Israel is 2nd in youth happiness and 13th in smartphone addiction, and if we went up to 20 on each list we’d have to add at least Switzerland and Australia.
I’m not really arguing that cell phones are the cause of young Americans’ unhappiness. But we continue to learn more about the relationship between frequent cell phone use and our sense of well-being. Just within the last two weeks, Pew Research published a study showing that teens feel happier and more peaceful when they don’t have their phones.
Maybe, as a way of celebrating International Happiness Day, we could consider the degree to which the supercomputer we carry around is making us happier; and if not, what we could do about it.