E23 - Causes of Youth Unhappiness and What to Do About It? (And Our Top 5 Movies on Existential Happiness)

In this episode we follow up our interview with Dr. Danny Blanchflower by discussing the possible causes of the observed decreased happiness among America's youth.After Alvin tells a brief story about an internet scam he encountered while selling his car, we have a research discussion on the possible causes of the unhappiness epidemic (12:53). We discuss Jonathan Haidt's hypothesis about how smart phones and social media use have led to the unhappiness epidemic among young people, Peter Gray's hypothesis about how these trends in unhappiness are actually linked to the lack of autonomous outdoor play available to our younger generation, and Alvin provides an epidemiological perspective on this issue.We then discuss some of the recommendations put forth by Jonathan Haidt about how we might reduce device and internet usage for children and adolescents, and we highlight the recent recommendation from the Surgeon General to put warning labels on social media sites and Governor Gavin Newsome's announcement about his goal of banning phones in all California Schools (54:45).Finally, we do our combined Are You Not Entertained segment and Midlife Crises Top 5 List, where Alvin and I choose our top 5 movies related to happiness/existential growth (74:35). (Spoiler alert: we discuss the major plot points of these movies in detail)  Email: [email protected] Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023 Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation: https://jonathanhaidt.com/anxious-generation/ Peter Gray's paper on autonomous/independent play and youth happiness: https://www.petergray.org/_files/ugd/b4b4f9_f2cb98d004af4ebf9644c8daa30b040e.pdf Surgeon General's warning on social media use: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html Gavin Newsome's call to ban cell phones in CA schools: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/us/california-newsom-smartphone-ban.html