Young people are supposed to be the happiest among us. Increasingly, they are not.
Today’s epidemic of youth despair shows a departure from decades of previous research. Historically, youth and adolescents tended to score higher on markers of wellbeing. Middle-age people — who carry the stressors associated with being parents, having a mortgage and caring for aging parents — have always tended to report lower levels of flourishing. Senior adults completed the U-shaped wellbeing curve as they reported higher levels of flourishing. Now data confirms that the left (youthward) side of this U-shaped wellbeing curve has collapsed.
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