the depression of the 20s

For decades, psychology and economics have accepted a “universal truth” about our life satisfaction: happiness is U-shaped. According to this theory, we are happy in youth, we hit rock bottom in middle age (which is the famous midlife crisis) and we regain joy in old age. But this just broke completely.

The study. A study published in PLOS ONE has come to blow up the consensus that existed. After analyzing data from more than a million people in 44 different countries, the conclusion is clear: the unhappiness curve has disappeared.

Goodbye midlife crisis. What has been found is a major structural change in how we experience life in our life cycle. This marks the end of the hump shape, where if we made a graph of unhappiness the maximum peak was located at 40-50 years. Now, the graph is a line that goes down.

The data points in the United States to a pretty serious situation. In 1993, only 2.9% of young people under 25 years of age claimed to suffer from a situation of ‘despair’, which is defined as having a whole month of poor mental health. In 2023 this figure shot up to 8%, surpassing the middle-aged groups that historically led the statistics.

The gender gap. Although deterioration is widespread in youth, Blanchflower’s study focuses on an alarming gap. In the United Kingdom, UKHLS data collected between 2009 and 2023 show that the percentage of young women with serious mental health problems rose from 4.4% to 12.7%.

In this case we are not talking about temporary sadness, but rather clinical metrics of anxiety and depression, which are extremely serious mental illnesses. In this way, the study suggests that the so-called “quarter-life crisis” has completely displaced the mid-life crisis.

The reasons. It’s tempting in this case blame COVID-19 of all this phenomenon and how it affected mental health, but the data suggests that the pandemic was only an accelerator that enhanced something that was on the table.

There are many important points to take into account to understand what is happening in the mentality of young people, such as economic precariousness, job uncertainty or even difficult access to housing. A perfect breeding ground for young people to begin to present major mental problems when they see that they cannot reach their goals such as having a stable job and a home.

The impact of technology. We must not forget that generation Z was practically born with a cell phone under their arm, but it has also caused them to be one of the most isolated generations. In the case of Spain, the studies They point out that 69% of young people have felt alone at some point, regardless of the number of followers they have on social networks or the number of social interactions.

Among the factors that cause this is the difficulty of emancipating oneself but also the difficulty of creating quality bonds with other people. All of this due to the instability of not always being in the same job or having to change location to develop specific studies.

A great challenge. We are facing a global paradigm shift, and this leads to great strain on public health systems. This quarter-age crisis also coincides with a increase in suicides among young Spaniardsso mental health services must be strengthened to address this epidemic of unhappiness that is being perceived among the younger population.

In short, we are experiencing a global paradigm shift and this also conditions changes in happiness levels in different age ranges.

Images | Mathias Reding Anthony Tran

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