How many people think today's children are having better lives than the last generation? 25% of US university students on antidepressants.
We optimize for a big GDP number but never for a population happiness level.
Are they on anti-depressants because life has gotten worse or because of decreasing stigma resulting from greater accessibility to better-informed patients? Until the turn of the century, just mentioning you saw a shrink in any sincere capacity would get you funny looks in most parts of the country.
> Unfortunately it involves stopping staring at screens 10 hours a day, which is the funds supporting half of this forum's careers.
There's an old joke where a reporter asks a bank robber why he robs banks. The latter's response: "Because, that's where the money is". The bank and bar of today is the Internet. It's what funds and facilitates most social ventures, even the ones that take place IRL.
Happiness isn't a quality you can optimize for on a national or global scale as it's a purely individual affair.
This right here is exactly what's wrong. People are put into impossible conditions and then blamed when they can't magically make themselves happy with the arrangement.
Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
> Tell me, are animals happy to be in a zoo? Why not? Why can't they just make themselves happy?
Not every animal views a zoo (or for that matter, a farm or a pet-owner's house) as a prison. For a significant population of zoo animals, life in captivity is the only life they know. For the most part, they are as happy and content as they are well-fed.
Not if they are given a space which is too small and not stimulating enough for them, then they just pace around for their whole lives.
The conditions that make someone miserable are just as variable. Some of the most content people possess little education and are mired in the throes of poverty. If you started a national misery program where the government impoverishes its population left and right, there would still be a minority who find enjoyment, even thrive, in such circumstances.
You need to factor in alcohol and drug use rates for previous generations, crime rates of youth and so it. It is not that current situation is optimal, but when I was young, you would not get antidepressants even if you actually desperately needed it. The taboo against admitting even to yourself that you might have mental health issue was too high.
Conservative minded people like to complain about lack of risk taking among youth ... but quite a lot of risk taking was pure self destruction or destruction of whoever you got pregnant (if you was a guy).
Is it because they're emotionally worse off, or is it because pharma is advertising them more aggressively, kickbacks, etc
https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/mental-healt...
Increased pharma pushing is an easy scapegoat, but it would have to be making these youth more depressed before they were ever taking antidepressants.
Social media and phones have been disconnecting real interactions and pushing people onto fake digital "connections." Then when people are more lonely than ever, we're now pushing them "AI bot connections" to help loneliness, purely because VC's see $ in it, basically giving desperate people soda to help their hunger.
It is like a hyper version of de Tocqueville now. No matter how poor someone is, they still don't feel that far from being rich and famous in America.
This creates enormous status anxiety coupled with the reality of student loans and inflation it is a really bad deal for young people's mental health.
We're living in a world system where almost all societies are based on the idea that one class of people has a right to the labour of almost all the rest. I'm not sure why you suggest furthering it is a solution to our current predicaments.