Young adults are now the most miserable people – Scientists

Scientists have discovered that young adults are now the most miserable people worldwide, completely debunking the idea of the ‘midlife crisis’.

A new study published Wednesday revealed that individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 were the unhappiest group in the US, the UK, and across 44 other countries.

Historically, research has shown that happiness tends to dip in middle age, usually in someone’s 40s, and then rises again during old age.

However, scientists in the US and UK determined that the mental health of Generation Z has been getting worse since around 2014, and the trend became even more pronounced during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the researchers didn’t single out a specific cause for the group’s declining happiness, they noted broader issues like skipping school more often, challenges in learning, and more young adults dropping out of the workforce due to mental health problems.

They also found that young women were experiencing worse mental health than young men, which may be tied to higher rates of anxiety and depression among females.

In the US, young women saw the biggest increases in unhappiness, with levels of despair rising from 5.6 percent in 2009 to 9.3 percent by 2024.

The team noted that despair was a severe state of poor mental health where someone feels extremely stressed, depressed, or emotionally overwhelmed for an extended period of time.

From 1993 to 2014, only 3.7 percent of Americans reported feeling despair, but that rose to 6.7 percent by 2024. Among young people under 25, however, it nearly tripled from 2.9 percent to eight percent.

Globally, the trend toward worsening mental health among the youngest adults was just as alarming.

Across 44 countries, researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and University College London found that 48 percent of Generation Z were at risk for mental health issues.

Over 13 percent of those under 25 described themselves as ‘distressed,’ compared to just 5.6 percent of all other participants in the study.

Happiness researcher Martijn Hendriks of Erasmus University in the Netherlands said: ‘Today’s young adults have spent much more time in front of a screen since childhood than previous generations.’

According to NL Times, Hendriks suspected that this key difference from older generations has led younger people to excessively compare themselves to others online, often resulting in negative beliefs about their lives.

Moreover, Hendriks, who was not involved in the study, noted that younger adults don’t have the same amount of money saved as older Americans do.

That means they’re often struggling more to afford basic essentials like food and shelter.

‘Home prices have risen sharply, and older generations have particularly benefited from this. They have much more wealth, while young adults struggle to buy a first home,’ Hendriks explained.

For the US portion of the study, published in the journal PLOS One, the team analyzed data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a massive phone survey conducted by the CDC between 1993 and 2024.

Over 400,000 people participated in the phone interviews every year. Researchers asked people how many days in the past month their mental health was ‘not good.’ Those who said all 30 days were classified as being in ‘despair.’

Although the results stemmed from thousands of interviews over 30 years, the team cautioned that their study relied on people’s self-reported mental health, which can be subjective and vary based on mood, memory, or cultural differences when it comes to expressing their feelings.

Still, the results bucked the trend of middle-aged people seeing the biggest rises in unhappiness, particularly between the ages of 40 and 50.

In fact, the new study revealed that older adults between 45 and 70 were the happiest compared to all age groups.

In the US, these older adults reported significantly better mental health than young adults under 25 and had the least despair, with levels staying stable or slightly better than younger generations over time.

Elderly adults over 70 also displayed higher levels of happiness than young adults under 25. Globally, despair dropped to very low levels (less than one percent) for those over the age of 65.