Nine years in a row. Every spring, Oxford sociologists, together with Gallup, publish their global happiness report, and every spring it turns out that the most satisfied people live where it is dark and cold for half the year, and the ideal social distance at a bus stop is five meters, Ukr.Media reports.
Finland is first again. As usual, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden followed.
Costa Rica somehow jumped to fourth place, up from twenty-third. No gloomy fjords, just ocean and endless “pura videa” that probably works as well as Scandinavian hygge.
But the so-called “first world” is somehow not laughing. The USA ended up in 23rd place, Britain slipped to 29th. For the first time in a long time, no English-speaking country is in the top ten. And if you read the numbers, it becomes clear why. Their youth is rapidly losing the joy of being.
Researchers surveyed one hundred thousand people in 140 countries and came to a conclusion that might seem comical if it weren't so sad: social media is methodically eating away at the psyche of those under twenty-five.
The report directly identifies teenage girls in Western Europe and English-speaking countries as the most vulnerable group, with those who spend five or more hours a day watching movies showing such a drop in life satisfaction that it feels like an epidemic of mass comparison neurosis.
I admit, it's not difficult for me to understand the mechanics of this process. Even with my strengthened psyche, sometimes ten minutes of contemplating someone's filtered faces, perfect breakfasts and Maldivian vacations are enough to feel a slight, viscous fatigue from humanity. And when you're fifteen, and your brain is marinated daily in algorithmic feeds, where the main currency is visuals and influencers, there are few chances of coming out of there with normal self-esteem.
Researchers, by the way, write this: platforms created purely for communication do not cause harm. The poison is precisely the algorithms that push an endless stream of someone else's idealism.
Interestingly, in South America or the Middle East, young people also don't get off their phones, but their happiness levels don't drop as much. Perhaps street life there is still louder than virtual life, or family ties are held together by something stronger than shared reels.
As for Ukraine, no miracle happened. In this year's report, we remained in 111th place out of 147 countries. Unlike the Western world, where the joy of being is stolen by perfect pictures on Instagram, the reasons for our collective fatigue are much more real and cruel. Here, completely different metrics of happiness operate.
The most ironic fact from this report: the happiest people weren't those who deleted all their apps and went to live in the woods. Complete digital isolation now just makes you marginal, which isn't much fun either. The happiest people are those who spend less than an hour a day on social media. A homeopathic dose of digital noise.
The only problem is that the average teenage scrolling statistic is now two and a half hours, and this time is only increasing.
It's no wonder that governments around the world are starting to discuss banning social media for minors. It's unlikely to work—children have always found a way to get around artificial fences faster than adults can build them.
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