As a foreigner living in Finland, people here don't necessarily have more, but they behave like the proverbial fisherman.
An ambitious CEO moves to a small coastal town, living right on the beach to "optimize his lifestyle." Every evening, he sees a local fisherman sitting on his deck, playing guitar and watching the sunset with his family.
After a week, the CEO approaches the fisherman and says, "You know, if you spent less time playing guitar and more time fishing, you could buy a second boat."
The fisherman asks, "Why would I do that?"
"To catch more fish, sell them, and buy a whole fleet! Then you'd be rich," says the CEO.
"And then?" asks the fisherman.
"Then you could retire, move to a quiet beach, and play guitar all evening!"
The fisherman smiles and says, "What do you think I'm doing right now, while you're trying to figure out the ROI on my hobby?"
"14 1 Now, there was a certain Cineas, a man of Thessaly, with a reputation for great wisdom, who had been a pupil of Demosthenes the orator, and was quite the only public speaker of his day who was thought to remind his hearers, as a statue might, of that great orator's power and ability. Associating p387 himself with Pyrrhus, and sent by him as ambassador to the cities, he confirmed the saying of Euripides, to wit, "all can be won by eloquence
That even the sword of warring enemies might gain."
2 At any rate, Pyrrhus used to say that more cities had been won for him by the eloquence of Cineas than by his own arms; and he continued to hold Cineas in especial honour and to demand his services. It was this Cineas, then, who, seeing that Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing an expedition at this time to Italy, and finding him at leisure for the moment, drew him into the following discourse. "The Romans, O Pyrrhus, are said to be good fighters, and to be rulers of many warlike nations; if, then, Heaven should permit us to conquer these men, how should we use our victory?" 3 And Pyrrhus said: "Thy question, O Cineas, really needs no answer; the Romans once conquered, there is neither barbarian nor Greek city there which is a match for us, but we shall at once possess all Italy, the great size and richness and importance of which no man should know better than thyself." After a little pause, then, Cineas said: "And after taking Italy, O King, what are we to do?" 4 And Pyrrhus, not yet perceiving his intention, replied: "Sicily is near, and holds out her hands to us, an island abounding in wealth and men, and very easy to capture, for all is faction there, her cities have no government, and demagogues are rampant now that Agathocles is gone." "What thou sayest," replied Cineas, "is probably true; but will our expedition stop with the taking of Sicily?" 5 "Heaven grant us," said Pyrrhus, p389 "victory and success so far; and we will make these contests but the preliminaries of great enterprises. For who could keep his hands off Libya, or Carthage, when that city got within his reach, a city which Agathocles, slipping stealthily out of Syracuse and crossing the sea with a few ships, narrowly missed taking? And when we have become masters here, no one of the enemies who now treat us with scorn will offer further resistance; there is no need of saying that." 6 "None whatever," said Cineas, "for it is plain that with so great a power we shall be able to recover Macedonia and rule Greece securely. But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?" Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: "We shall be much at ease, and we'll drink bumpers, my good man, every day, and we'll gladden one another's hearts with confidential talks." 7 And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument, he said: "Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves."
8 By this reasoning of Cineas Pyrrhus was more troubled than he was converted; he saw plainly what great happiness he was leaving behind him, but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he eagerly desired." https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/...
> ... but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he eagerly desired. (Power)
Yeah that last bit is key. As MLK said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. You can't just sit at the beach, because humans are hungry animals and you're probably somewhere in that chain (Rome → Italy → Sicily → Carthage → Greece).
OK, but now that we're in this comfortable position that puts us at liberty to chat with friends and family and drink huge amounts of booze on a beach, what is it all for? What are we going to do next? Invade Italy maybe for instance?
The abstract: “ It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.”
I guess a Buddhist point of view would be that any emotion/feeling should not be held on to. (It is best to feel and let all things pass, I think, but to consider it a disorder to "hold on" to happiness doesn't seem right...I am not well-read enough about it to know if it can in fact cause suffering)
Yes. The argument is something like at some point in the future the conditions causing the happiness will be gone (probably quite soon, happiness is fleeting) and so will the feeling. If that transition away from happiness upsets you then it will cause suffering so you shouldn't cling to it.
There's a related sutta (MN87) with some dicussion about how love, which is generally an even more pleasent feeling than happiness, causes suffering if clung to because we are all inevitably separated from our loved ones.
I have a feeling our collective leg is being pulled:
"The behavioural components of happiness are less easily characterised but particular facial expressions such as 'smiling' have been noted"
"Certainly, if television soap operas in any way reflect real life, happiness is a very rare phenomenon indeed in places as far apart as Manchester, the East End of London and Australia. Interestingly, despite all the uncertainty about the epidemiology of happiness, there is some evidence that it is unevenly distributed
amongst the social classes: individuals in the higher socio-economic groupings generally report greater positive affect which may reflect the fact that they
are more frequently exposed to environmental risk factors for happiness."
FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual question:
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
This is one of those things that just is not true, no matter what sort of evidence is presented, because actual humans can go walk outside their door and see it isn't.
Denmark has ranked as one of the happiest countries for years running, but, Dane here, we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast. There are also deep cultural factors at play that make Danes more likely to mask that everything is fine when it isn't. We have an extremely high incidence of cheating on our partners, which, surprise, comes from a talent for deception, both toward self and others, and we are extremely emotionally avoidant, which results in our nationally very high rate of alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
These happiness indexes are a complete sham and don't observe the full spectrum that goes into how cultures present themselves versus lived reality.
Pretty good question I would say. It’s rating your life on a scale of 1 to 10. That being said it doesn’t gauge actual happiness. For instance the Nordic countries have very high levels of depression with a third of the some countries being on antidepressants. As a whole I would say on a day to day basis people are much more ebullient and happy seeming in a lot of other places like the Mediterranean. I would wager that this doesn’t capture the percentage of time people are “happy”.
It looks to me that this refers to a 272 page PDF report [0] on the theme "Happiness and Social Media" and the Executive summary explains that it is about much more than that simple question.
It's especially hard to express "happiness" across languages. It's a word that is hard to define and generally has no perfect synonyms between languages. It ranges broadly from "present feeling of contentment" to "ultimate feeling of fulfillment in life," and it seems like the survey is aiming for the latter aspect. Therefore the ladder analogy is a decent way to communicate that.
An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself relatively high.
Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
Quantifiable example: most recent jobs report we lost 100k+ full time jobs. Biggest job less since COVID. Or the fact our increase in GDP per capita is the (second?) worst in the OECD in the last 10 years. Worse than Japan, Italy, the UK and all the other laggards...
> Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
The Missing Middle podcast went into this in a recent episode, and it's age-dependent: older folks are happier (i.e., they have purchased homes), while younger folks are less happy (cost of living). We Canadians basically have age-dependent wealth-class nowadays.
Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post. Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness. Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.
Here's the more important data point - Canada lost to the USA in three 2026 Winter Olympic Hockey finals. The whole country is hanging their collective heads in shame...
Doesn't that almost imply the happiest countries in the world have a lack of imagination on what could be better? Or maybe they don't suffer from comparison (the thief of joy) as a culture.
I'd argue it's likelier that people are more informed about their absolute position globally. Any screen gets you the mental image of the top of the ladder. So happy people would end up scoring themselves low, because there's a globalized vision of wealth nowadays.
Besides there's a difference in life self-evaluation and experienced happiness, so the report really is a misnomer.
I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would give a much higher rating than currently.
I think social media is being wrongly made in to a scapegoat
Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking certain other things that may have existed in the past.
Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void of some of these things that don't exist elsewhere otherwise but doesn't act as an equivalent replacement
Social media companies are actors that actively compete for the attention of young people. That does result in collapsing third spaces and social events because it’s easier/cheaper to just post on IG or hang out on discord.
I was not an athlete growing up. Didn't do much in organized sports. But all three of my kids play a team sport. It does wonders for them. I really helped them get out of the pandemic. But having them outside several hours a week, working with peers and other adults, practicing new skills. Really cool to see and I think it really helped their mental health (and by extension, my own).
Yes! I do think playing team sports (for kids and adults) is incredible for mental health. Exercise, learning new skills and socialization all rolled into one fun package. I honestly think that's why Crossfit has become popular. It's essentially an after school sport for adults.
It seems to be a bit of both working in tandem. Social media companies are in a race to the bottom of what is socially acceptable to drive as much engagement as possible. But a lack of third spaces also pushes folks into that cycle.
> social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at
I see all kinds of active third spaces, but never any young people in them.
I get that it is hard to bootstrap now. Trying to convince a 20 year old that they should hang out with a 70 year old to get the ball rolling for more 20 year olds to show up is not an easy sell, but when I was 20 (just before the emergence of social media) these same third spaces were full of people of all ages. It was bootstrapped once upon a time.
You’re 100% right that third places didn’t go anywhere. I do volunteer work and fact is, teens have incredibly short attention spans now due to instant media in their pockets. On the rare occasions I get a volunteer that isn’t a grey beard, the young person (usually dragged to the place by an adult) sits in a corner on their phone. Most put in absolute minimum effort so they can get on their device asap.
The kids aren’t dumb or uninteresting or anything like that, they are just plain addicted to phones. The rare volunteer kid that puts 100% effort in is usually a homeschool type with no electronic devices or someone in the top 1% of their class or something like that.
The attention economy is real, and it’s dominated by phones and by those that were born in it.
The term 'social media' has changed a lot over time. The attention grabbing kind we have today is a very different beast than what we started out with; no ads and only a chronological timeline showing posts from your network.
The original kind was genuinely connecting people and adding value. The current one is in effect isolating and driving people and groups apart.
Luckily, the original kind did not vanish. I find a lot of joy hanging out on the fediverse. I spend far less time on it than what I did on Twitter of FB back when I still had accounts there, but that is a good sign.
Social media is too generous term to use when describing products from Meta, TikTok, Snap, X etc. It is an ad platform that also, occasionality, shows you what your friends are up to.
We should come up with a better term than 'social media' when describing platforms that has reached the last stage of enshitification.
> On average, heavy social media use (more than five hours per day) is associated with lower wellbeing. Heavy users are significantly more likely to report higher stress and depressive symptoms, and believe they are worse off than their parents, compared with non- or moderate users.
I like this framing of social media use in the same terms as drug use. There are significant risks to this activity that so many people are ambivalent toward. Depression is not a condition you want to have, and here's this activity that causes it (or at least significantly contributes to it). And yet, so many persist!
You quote correlation and then jump to causation. Any high quality evidence for causation that make you confident it's not depression that drives SM use (or something else entirely driving both)?
If you only followed my country's subreddit (New Zealand) you would believe we live in hell, it's the most miserable time in our nation's history and nobody has a future here. Of course this doesn't resonate at all with my own personal experience in my life. We rank 11th, unchanged year on year.
It’s interesting to see a country’s internal rank of its own happiness against how I would rank them using my worldview.
Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly.
Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially against women), so seeing them just above the US is surprising.
IMO, everyone on Earth has to reconcile with their current circumstances and make the choice to go about life with a positive or negative disposition in spite of those circumstances.
Another big surprise is Mexico. It seems like every day there's another gory story about a bunch of people disappearing or getting shot in a gang war. But they're the second-highest ranked in North America at #12, behind only Costa Rica.
Israel I think is similar to Costa Rica in that whatever problems Israelis have, they look around at their neighbors and realize how much worse it could be.
It had a huge drop in positive emotions due to the war with Gaza in 2023. Actually, negative emotions were higher than positive which is sad and expected.
But the index includes many metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy.. so any short conflict will not have outsized effect.
Do the Saudi Arabia numbers count all of the foreign workers who are brought in to do the dirty jobs for low wages and treated like dogs? Or are only citizens counted?
In Israel they use happiness as a rebellion. You try to kill them, you say what you want, but they don’t care, they stay happy. It fuels their enemy’s rage.
As it's selfreporting and it's more about expectations than actual happiness a finnish dude only needs to think that life is just incredible compared to what he sees at the other side of the border to selfreport a 10 in happiness
I haven't travelled there but I grew up in Poland and still visit. US feels very capitalistic to me. I feel the pace is slower in Poland. In US I feel the need to produce. Might be just me.
This is how I feel as a Canadian. It's just a border between us, we've got issues of our own but on one side life seems much more transactional and individualistic in a somewhat repulsive way. I'm sure it's not unique to them, and I'm sure it's not uniformly pervasive. I rarely feel like a true foreigner while I'm in the country, but there's just this unsettling feeling of distrust coupled with a drive to consume that I don't feel when I'm north of the border.
Well, that's just inherent in the question which asks someone to imagine the best possible life vs. the worst possible life. In a society with lots of room to grow you aren't at the higher rungs. In a society with no progress possible you're at the top easily.
Young people with difficult housing affordability and general high cost of living is dragging down the score. Boomers that own their homes are more satisfied:
Except the biggest drop was among teenage girls. Housing affordability and cost of living isn't usually yet a concern to most teenagers, and to the extent that it is a concern, it is equally a concern to teenage boys who haven't felt the same decline in happiness.
Speak to anyone in China and they're less happy this year because the economy is heavily depressed. This is not reflected in the chart. COVID doesn't even appear on most countries' charts despite huge impact globally. I am very skeptical of their process if it results in such questionable macro-narratives. I wonder if their interviewees are "business owners capable of answering the phone in English" or some similarly skewed dataset.
If you happen to be based in the capital of the happiest country in the world and want to be even happier, we have a Hacker News meetup: http://bit.ly/helsinkihn
Considering the state of The Netherlands over the last two decades, I can't help but feel this report is straight up bullshit. The only way I can see The Netherlands rank this high is by only asking two people and some sheep in the middle of nowhere.
An increase in right-wing extremism and racism, public transportation that is falling apart and ridiculously expensive, the water quality going downhill due to pollution, costs increasing far more than neighboring countries for seemingly no solid reason, a complete disregard for the climate and the EU regulations we're supposed to meet, and a lot more.
As a foreigner living in Finland, people here don't necessarily have more, but they behave like the proverbial fisherman.
An ambitious CEO moves to a small coastal town, living right on the beach to "optimize his lifestyle." Every evening, he sees a local fisherman sitting on his deck, playing guitar and watching the sunset with his family.
After a week, the CEO approaches the fisherman and says, "You know, if you spent less time playing guitar and more time fishing, you could buy a second boat."
The fisherman asks, "Why would I do that?"
"To catch more fish, sell them, and buy a whole fleet! Then you'd be rich," says the CEO.
"And then?" asks the fisherman.
"Then you could retire, move to a quiet beach, and play guitar all evening!"
The fisherman smiles and says, "What do you think I'm doing right now, while you're trying to figure out the ROI on my hobby?"
I guess the difference is play the guitar all day instead of just in the evening.
"14 1 Now, there was a certain Cineas, a man of Thessaly, with a reputation for great wisdom, who had been a pupil of Demosthenes the orator, and was quite the only public speaker of his day who was thought to remind his hearers, as a statue might, of that great orator's power and ability. Associating p387 himself with Pyrrhus, and sent by him as ambassador to the cities, he confirmed the saying of Euripides, to wit, "all can be won by eloquence
That even the sword of warring enemies might gain."
2 At any rate, Pyrrhus used to say that more cities had been won for him by the eloquence of Cineas than by his own arms; and he continued to hold Cineas in especial honour and to demand his services. It was this Cineas, then, who, seeing that Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing an expedition at this time to Italy, and finding him at leisure for the moment, drew him into the following discourse. "The Romans, O Pyrrhus, are said to be good fighters, and to be rulers of many warlike nations; if, then, Heaven should permit us to conquer these men, how should we use our victory?" 3 And Pyrrhus said: "Thy question, O Cineas, really needs no answer; the Romans once conquered, there is neither barbarian nor Greek city there which is a match for us, but we shall at once possess all Italy, the great size and richness and importance of which no man should know better than thyself." After a little pause, then, Cineas said: "And after taking Italy, O King, what are we to do?" 4 And Pyrrhus, not yet perceiving his intention, replied: "Sicily is near, and holds out her hands to us, an island abounding in wealth and men, and very easy to capture, for all is faction there, her cities have no government, and demagogues are rampant now that Agathocles is gone." "What thou sayest," replied Cineas, "is probably true; but will our expedition stop with the taking of Sicily?" 5 "Heaven grant us," said Pyrrhus, p389 "victory and success so far; and we will make these contests but the preliminaries of great enterprises. For who could keep his hands off Libya, or Carthage, when that city got within his reach, a city which Agathocles, slipping stealthily out of Syracuse and crossing the sea with a few ships, narrowly missed taking? And when we have become masters here, no one of the enemies who now treat us with scorn will offer further resistance; there is no need of saying that." 6 "None whatever," said Cineas, "for it is plain that with so great a power we shall be able to recover Macedonia and rule Greece securely. But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?" Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: "We shall be much at ease, and we'll drink bumpers, my good man, every day, and we'll gladden one another's hearts with confidential talks." 7 And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument, he said: "Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves."
8 By this reasoning of Cineas Pyrrhus was more troubled than he was converted; he saw plainly what great happiness he was leaving behind him, but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he eagerly desired." https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/...
> ... but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he eagerly desired. (Power)
Yeah that last bit is key. As MLK said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. You can't just sit at the beach, because humans are hungry animals and you're probably somewhere in that chain (Rome → Italy → Sicily → Carthage → Greece).
If you want peace, prepare for peace.
OK, but now that we're in this comfortable position that puts us at liberty to chat with friends and family and drink huge amounts of booze on a beach, what is it all for? What are we going to do next? Invade Italy maybe for instance?
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Well, someone once tried to get happiness classified as a psychiatric disorder:
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/ (1992)
The abstract: “ It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.”
I think that's more of an attempt to get a lack of a sense of humour classified as a psychiatric disorder.
I guess a Buddhist point of view would be that any emotion/feeling should not be held on to. (It is best to feel and let all things pass, I think, but to consider it a disorder to "hold on" to happiness doesn't seem right...I am not well-read enough about it to know if it can in fact cause suffering)
Yes. The argument is something like at some point in the future the conditions causing the happiness will be gone (probably quite soon, happiness is fleeting) and so will the feeling. If that transition away from happiness upsets you then it will cause suffering so you shouldn't cling to it.
There's a related sutta (MN87) with some dicussion about how love, which is generally an even more pleasent feeling than happiness, causes suffering if clung to because we are all inevitably separated from our loved ones.
I have a feeling our collective leg is being pulled:
"The behavioural components of happiness are less easily characterised but particular facial expressions such as 'smiling' have been noted"
"Certainly, if television soap operas in any way reflect real life, happiness is a very rare phenomenon indeed in places as far apart as Manchester, the East End of London and Australia. Interestingly, despite all the uncertainty about the epidemiology of happiness, there is some evidence that it is unevenly distributed amongst the social classes: individuals in the higher socio-economic groupings generally report greater positive affect which may reflect the fact that they are more frequently exposed to environmental risk factors for happiness."
...pretty hilarious if you ask me :)
FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness in the actual question:
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
The Howtown channel had a video on this last year, 'One weird metric picks the world's "happiest country"':
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1--c2r8HE
They link to their sources:
* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFO-3Sq5-rorCWBIKwuR-Spk...
Specifically the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale ("Cantril Ladder") is used:
* https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/2/9/what-is-cantril...
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/122453/understanding-gallup-use...
It's been around since 1965, so it's presumably been studied a lot and the pros and cons of it explored in the literature.
This is one of those things that just is not true, no matter what sort of evidence is presented, because actual humans can go walk outside their door and see it isn't.
Denmark has ranked as one of the happiest countries for years running, but, Dane here, we hoover up antidepressants like it was our breakfast. There are also deep cultural factors at play that make Danes more likely to mask that everything is fine when it isn't. We have an extremely high incidence of cheating on our partners, which, surprise, comes from a talent for deception, both toward self and others, and we are extremely emotionally avoidant, which results in our nationally very high rate of alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
These happiness indexes are a complete sham and don't observe the full spectrum that goes into how cultures present themselves versus lived reality.
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Pretty good question I would say. It’s rating your life on a scale of 1 to 10. That being said it doesn’t gauge actual happiness. For instance the Nordic countries have very high levels of depression with a third of the some countries being on antidepressants. As a whole I would say on a day to day basis people are much more ebullient and happy seeming in a lot of other places like the Mediterranean. I would wager that this doesn’t capture the percentage of time people are “happy”.
It looks to me that this refers to a 272 page PDF report [0] on the theme "Happiness and Social Media" and the Executive summary explains that it is about much more than that simple question.
[0] https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR26.pdf
Its hard to frame a question across languages and cultures.
The ladder metaphor isn't the worst.
It's especially hard to express "happiness" across languages. It's a word that is hard to define and generally has no perfect synonyms between languages. It ranges broadly from "present feeling of contentment" to "ultimate feeling of fulfillment in life," and it seems like the survey is aiming for the latter aspect. Therefore the ladder analogy is a decent way to communicate that.
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An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself relatively high.
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Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
Quantifiable example: most recent jobs report we lost 100k+ full time jobs. Biggest job less since COVID. Or the fact our increase in GDP per capita is the (second?) worst in the OECD in the last 10 years. Worse than Japan, Italy, the UK and all the other laggards...
> Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6 and about to fall to the bottom.
The Missing Middle podcast went into this in a recent episode, and it's age-dependent: older folks are happier (i.e., they have purchased homes), while younger folks are less happy (cost of living). We Canadians basically have age-dependent wealth-class nowadays.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s
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Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post. Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness. Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.
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Here's the more important data point - Canada lost to the USA in three 2026 Winter Olympic Hockey finals. The whole country is hanging their collective heads in shame...
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Doesn't that almost imply the happiest countries in the world have a lack of imagination on what could be better? Or maybe they don't suffer from comparison (the thief of joy) as a culture.
>a lack of imagination on what could be better
I'd argue it's likelier that people are more informed about their absolute position globally. Any screen gets you the mental image of the top of the ladder. So happy people would end up scoring themselves low, because there's a globalized vision of wealth nowadays.
Besides there's a difference in life self-evaluation and experienced happiness, so the report really is a misnomer.
that's also why I much prefer the HDI (Human Development Index), it tracks more meaningful metrics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would give a much higher rating than currently.
Do you mean normal like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, and George W. Bush?
I think social media is being wrongly made in to a scapegoat
Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking certain other things that may have existed in the past.
Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void of some of these things that don't exist elsewhere otherwise but doesn't act as an equivalent replacement
Social media companies are actors that actively compete for the attention of young people. That does result in collapsing third spaces and social events because it’s easier/cheaper to just post on IG or hang out on discord.
I was not an athlete growing up. Didn't do much in organized sports. But all three of my kids play a team sport. It does wonders for them. I really helped them get out of the pandemic. But having them outside several hours a week, working with peers and other adults, practicing new skills. Really cool to see and I think it really helped their mental health (and by extension, my own).
Yes! I do think playing team sports (for kids and adults) is incredible for mental health. Exercise, learning new skills and socialization all rolled into one fun package. I honestly think that's why Crossfit has become popular. It's essentially an after school sport for adults.
It seems to be a bit of both working in tandem. Social media companies are in a race to the bottom of what is socially acceptable to drive as much engagement as possible. But a lack of third spaces also pushes folks into that cycle.
> social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at
I see all kinds of active third spaces, but never any young people in them.
I get that it is hard to bootstrap now. Trying to convince a 20 year old that they should hang out with a 70 year old to get the ball rolling for more 20 year olds to show up is not an easy sell, but when I was 20 (just before the emergence of social media) these same third spaces were full of people of all ages. It was bootstrapped once upon a time.
Why did the young people stop coming?
You’re 100% right that third places didn’t go anywhere. I do volunteer work and fact is, teens have incredibly short attention spans now due to instant media in their pockets. On the rare occasions I get a volunteer that isn’t a grey beard, the young person (usually dragged to the place by an adult) sits in a corner on their phone. Most put in absolute minimum effort so they can get on their device asap.
The kids aren’t dumb or uninteresting or anything like that, they are just plain addicted to phones. The rare volunteer kid that puts 100% effort in is usually a homeschool type with no electronic devices or someone in the top 1% of their class or something like that.
The attention economy is real, and it’s dominated by phones and by those that were born in it.
Because of social media, there are less teenagers hanging out at the malls. Shops close down. It forms a feedback loop
Well they’re also closing down because most people buy the vast majority of their stuff online now.
The term 'social media' has changed a lot over time. The attention grabbing kind we have today is a very different beast than what we started out with; no ads and only a chronological timeline showing posts from your network.
The original kind was genuinely connecting people and adding value. The current one is in effect isolating and driving people and groups apart.
Luckily, the original kind did not vanish. I find a lot of joy hanging out on the fediverse. I spend far less time on it than what I did on Twitter of FB back when I still had accounts there, but that is a good sign.
Social media is too generous term to use when describing products from Meta, TikTok, Snap, X etc. It is an ad platform that also, occasionality, shows you what your friends are up to.
We should come up with a better term than 'social media' when describing platforms that has reached the last stage of enshitification.
Are you positing that not-young people aren’t suffering from the same?
> On average, heavy social media use (more than five hours per day) is associated with lower wellbeing. Heavy users are significantly more likely to report higher stress and depressive symptoms, and believe they are worse off than their parents, compared with non- or moderate users.
I like this framing of social media use in the same terms as drug use. There are significant risks to this activity that so many people are ambivalent toward. Depression is not a condition you want to have, and here's this activity that causes it (or at least significantly contributes to it). And yet, so many persist!
You quote correlation and then jump to causation. Any high quality evidence for causation that make you confident it's not depression that drives SM use (or something else entirely driving both)?
If you only followed my country's subreddit (New Zealand) you would believe we live in hell, it's the most miserable time in our nation's history and nobody has a future here. Of course this doesn't resonate at all with my own personal experience in my life. We rank 11th, unchanged year on year.
It’s interesting to see a country’s internal rank of its own happiness against how I would rank them using my worldview.
Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly.
Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially against women), so seeing them just above the US is surprising.
IMO, everyone on Earth has to reconcile with their current circumstances and make the choice to go about life with a positive or negative disposition in spite of those circumstances.
Another big surprise is Mexico. It seems like every day there's another gory story about a bunch of people disappearing or getting shot in a gang war. But they're the second-highest ranked in North America at #12, behind only Costa Rica.
Israel I think is similar to Costa Rica in that whatever problems Israelis have, they look around at their neighbors and realize how much worse it could be.
Maybe they're ranking themselves so high because they're not in the "bunch of people gorily disappeared."
It had a huge drop in positive emotions due to the war with Gaza in 2023. Actually, negative emotions were higher than positive which is sad and expected. But the index includes many metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy.. so any short conflict will not have outsized effect.
> But the index includes many metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy..
No it does not. It's one question without regard to GDP, life expectancy or anything else.
There might have been a huge drop due to the atrocities on October 7th which caused the Gaza war.
Perhaps all the Saudi men are very happy.
Do the Saudi Arabia numbers count all of the foreign workers who are brought in to do the dirty jobs for low wages and treated like dogs? Or are only citizens counted?
In Israel they use happiness as a rebellion. You try to kill them, you say what you want, but they don’t care, they stay happy. It fuels their enemy’s rage.
No they just call you an antisemite and ask America to bomb you.
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Yes, maybe. It's the old jewish way of dealing with being powerless in exile. You try to hit us, we smile and joke. It's not healthy.
I think it's now more about gaining power as a nation and not being at the mercy of those who seek to destroy us.
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Too bad there's no one to shield Israel's neighbors from experiencing the consequence of theirs, eh?
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You would think that Finland's unemployment rate (10%+) would influence its ranking, but that's not the case at all.
As it's selfreporting and it's more about expectations than actual happiness a finnish dude only needs to think that life is just incredible compared to what he sees at the other side of the border to selfreport a 10 in happiness
Could also explain Israel
Nordic countries have better safety nets.
I haven't travelled there but I grew up in Poland and still visit. US feels very capitalistic to me. I feel the pace is slower in Poland. In US I feel the need to produce. Might be just me.
This is how I feel as a Canadian. It's just a border between us, we've got issues of our own but on one side life seems much more transactional and individualistic in a somewhat repulsive way. I'm sure it's not unique to them, and I'm sure it's not uniformly pervasive. I rarely feel like a true foreigner while I'm in the country, but there's just this unsettling feeling of distrust coupled with a drive to consume that I don't feel when I'm north of the border.
Well, that's just inherent in the question which asks someone to imagine the best possible life vs. the worst possible life. In a society with lots of room to grow you aren't at the higher rungs. In a society with no progress possible you're at the top easily.
It's sad to see Canada drop so much, as much as Congo, Malawi and a bunch of other war torn places.
Young people with difficult housing affordability and general high cost of living is dragging down the score. Boomers that own their homes are more satisfied:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s
Except the biggest drop was among teenage girls. Housing affordability and cost of living isn't usually yet a concern to most teenagers, and to the extent that it is a concern, it is equally a concern to teenage boys who haven't felt the same decline in happiness.
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https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
GDP per capita doesn't show wealth disparity, which is much higher in the US and causes unhappiness.
Speak to anyone in China and they're less happy this year because the economy is heavily depressed. This is not reflected in the chart. COVID doesn't even appear on most countries' charts despite huge impact globally. I am very skeptical of their process if it results in such questionable macro-narratives. I wonder if their interviewees are "business owners capable of answering the phone in English" or some similarly skewed dataset.
If you happen to be based in the capital of the happiest country in the world and want to be even happier, we have a Hacker News meetup: http://bit.ly/helsinkihn
Endless captcha loops for me whenever I click on a chapter.
Not using any VPN or proxy, no CF DNS, nothing like that.
https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR26.pdf
Crazy to see Afghanistan at the bottom and Iran is not even on the list.
Iran is there - #97
- Major reminder that the world happiness report is a sham https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/the-world-happiness-report...
Considering the state of The Netherlands over the last two decades, I can't help but feel this report is straight up bullshit. The only way I can see The Netherlands rank this high is by only asking two people and some sheep in the middle of nowhere.
Besides the housing problems, what would you say are the biggest developments in the Netherlands over two decades?
An increase in right-wing extremism and racism, public transportation that is falling apart and ridiculously expensive, the water quality going downhill due to pollution, costs increasing far more than neighboring countries for seemingly no solid reason, a complete disregard for the climate and the EU regulations we're supposed to meet, and a lot more.
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