Life satisfaction and happiness at a decline among young people -report

For people of a certain age, the times of their youth is the one they most long for. But in a new study commissioned by the United Nations (UN), today's young people no longer view their youth as the happiest time of their lives.

The Guardian reports that a new paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that the last decade has seen a decline in “life satisfaction and happiness” among young adults, with the researchers describing it as a “crisis in wellbeing among the young.”

The study involved survey responses from young people in the United States the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with young people and particularly young women experiencing lower satisfaction and happiness over the past 10 years.

David Blanchflower, one of the researchers, told The Guardian that the growth of social media, cyberbullying, and body shaming online could be connected to the drop, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“The young have become isolated. It's also not so much that people are sitting there on the phone, it's what they're not doing. They're not going out as much; playing with their friends, interacting with others, or having as much sex,” he said to The Guardian.

The collapse in happiness and wellbeing could have economic effects, according to Blanchflower.

“The economics of this are a really big deal. Potentially this relates to the kids withdrawing from school; then they go out of the labour force. Presumably it will affect your performance at school, it might well impact global productivity,” he said.

This is not the first time that alarm bells have been rung when it comes to the mental health of young people. As far back as 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) put out a report that said nearly one billion people now have a mental disorder.

The report also pointed out the inadequacy of current mental health responses around the world. It points out that on average, countries around the world only allocate two percent of their health budget to mental health, despite the high number of mental health issues such as suicide, which is a major cause of death for young people around the world. The study also points out that for most countries, there is only one psychiatrist for every 200,000 people.

Social media has also been previously linked to the development of depression, regardless of personality. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports found that no matter the personality, social media use was closely associated with the participants developing depression in varying degrees. People with high agreeableness were 49 percent less likely to become depressed than people with low agreeableness. Meanwhile, people with high neuroticism were twice as likely to develop depression compared to those with low neuroticism.

Here in the country, the National Center for Mental Health said that 867 of 3,006 calls made to its crisis hotline during the first quarter of 2021 was related to suicide. Suicide-related calls during the same period in 2020 were only at 100.

RELATED GALLERY: Celebrities open up about depression, anxiety, and other mental health
issues