Mental health crisis ‘means youth is no longer one of happiest times of life’

The UN study found that life satisfaction and happiness had fallen among young people over the past decade, and particularly among young women.

For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. 

Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts.

In a new paper commissioned by the United Nations, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.

Whereas happiness was once considered to follow a U-shape — with a relatively carefree youth, a tougher middle age and a more comfortable later life — the experts in wellbeing say our satisfaction now rises steadily with age instead.

“The U-shape in wellbeing by age that used to exist in these countries is now gone, replaced by a crisis in wellbeing among the young,” according to the paper published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

Analysing responses to surveys in the United States, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the study found that life satisfaction and happiness had fallen among young people over the past decade, and particularly among young women.

It highlighted the rise of smartphones and social media, suggesting the trend coincided with the growth of internet usage, with the impact on happiness visible in surveys across the six countries and in several other nations worldwide.

'The young have become isolated'

“This may end up being a lost generation,” said Mr Blanchflower, a former Bank of England policymaker. 

He said there had been a sharp drop in wellbeing in the US and Britain in particular, and pointed to the growth of social media, cyberbullying, and body shaming online.

“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," Mr Blanchflower said.

I don’t think there is any doubt you have an absolute global crisis. Young people are in deep disarray and trouble. And the question is what do we do about it? And we don’t know' 

A leading British labour market economist now at the prestigious US Dartmouth College, Mr Blanchflower had written a paper in 2020 looking across almost 150 advanced and developing countries and found the same U shape in happiness applied everywhere. 

However, he now says he missed the collapse in youth wellbeing from about 2013 in survey data, before starting to work with Ms Twenge, who is a leading expert on the subject.

“I looked and I thought, ‘Oh shit, she’s right.’ What had happened is a really big deal. It wasn’t covid, it had started before that, but that extended it after 2020.” 

Other studies have drawn links between the youth mental health crisis and intergenerational inequality , unregulated social media, insecure employment and the climate crisis. Young people are also increasingly like to be outside the jobs market with mental health conditions.

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Mr Blanchflower said the collapse in youth wellbeing could have vast social and economic consequences. 

“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 added.

He said the UN had commissioned further research to identify whether the phenomenon could be found elsewhere around the world. 

“The UN sees this as a huge global crisis,” he added.

“We always thought that as life becomes more realistic, happiness declines because of pressures, then you realise life isn’t so bad. We’re having to rethink that entire thought.”

The Guardian