Carol Graham writes:

Young people around the world are experiencing an unprecedented crisis of unhappiness and poor mental health. Many observers blame the expansion of social media that began in 2012-13, as well as the long-term negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the social lives of the young, and no doubt those things have exacerbated the decline in mental health. But the causes of the current crisis run deeper. They have to do with the increasingly uncertain futures that the young face due to the changing nature of jobs and the more complex skill sets required to succeed in them; extreme political polarisation and misinformation; an erosion of global norms of peace and cooperation; the uncertainties posed by climate changes; and the decline in traditional civil society organisations – such as labour unions and church groups. Meanwhile, families play a bigger role in providing financial and social support in poor and middle-income countries than in rich ones, serving as a buffer in the face of this perfect storm of trends.

There are many ways in which this crisis of unhappiness expresses itself. One is the recent disappearance of a long-established U-shaped curve in the relationship between age and happiness. Until recently, the nadir or low point was in the mid-life years, and both the young and the old had higher levels of happiness and other dimensions of wellbeing. This relationship held in most countries around the world, except for those that are extremely poor, have high levels of political violence, or both. Yet, since 2020, the relationship has become a linear upward trend in many countries in North America and Europe – and several in Latin America and Africa as well as Australia. This means that the least-happy group in these countries is now the young (those aged 18-34) and the happiest are those over the age of 55.

A more extreme manifestation has been the increase in suicides, rise in reported anxiety and depression, and ‘epidemic’ levels of loneliness among the young, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The US already has a crisis of ‘deaths of despair’; first identified as a problem of middle age by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in 2015, such premature deaths due to suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol and other poisonings are now being seen in greater numbers in the young, especially those Americans between the ages of 18-25. Youth unhappiness trends are particularly extreme in the US, in part due to its much more limited social support system for those who fall behind, the exorbitant costs of higher education and healthcare, and very high levels of gun violence – including in schools. As a result, there is a large and growing mortality gap between Americans with and without college degrees. Those with degrees live eight more years, on average, than those without. These are potentially overwhelming challenges for young people to navigate.

This crisis matters because of the human costs, such as reduced longevity and significant gaps in quality of life, because those with mental illness are much less likely to complete higher education, and more likely to be in poor health and experience homelessness and other kinds of deprivation. They are also less likely to be in stable jobs and/or long-term relationships. Yet it also has deeper and more far-reaching implications as it reflects a lack of hope for the future among an entire generation in many countries, suggestive of a broad systemic failure that we do not fully understand. [Continue reading…]