Report finds falling happiness among youth of North America and western Europe, but rise in sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe

Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.

Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.

Murthy spoke to the Guardian as new data revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders, with the same “historic” shift expected to follow in western Europe.

Declining wellbeing among under-30s has driven the US out of the top 20 list of happiest nations, the 2024 World Happiness Report revealed.

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Younger people are increasingly seen as a resource to be harvested by their parents and grandparents. They are expected to go into debt to start their careers, go into more debt to buy exorbitantly priced houses from the older generation, and pay into a Social Security program they will never see a dime of, all while having to save for their own retirement. And I bet their parents will expect their kids to build an addition to that mythical house when the parents get to be too old to take care of themselves.

    Their grandparents complain they don’t work hard enough or spend money on frivolous things, while failing to see the hole that Gramps put the younger generation in, so the olders can continue to be on the government dole in retirement.