Why are so many young people unhappy?

"Hello guys, Brittany here.

I'm a mess. I'm not doing well at all today. I'm really angry and torn, and I just want to go back to bed, but I have to work because I need to make some money. I also just realized I haven't taken my medication in two days, so that might be contributing to this too. I’m like, literally don’t know what to do."

"Why are so many young people unhappy? To quote just one example, Reuters reported in 2019 that suicidal thoughts, severe depression, and self-harm rates among U.S. college students more than doubled in less than a decade. And unhappiness isn't limited to Americans; as social commentator Kay Heimowitz recently wrote, Germans are lonely, French bon vivants are lonely, and even Scandinavians are lonely. The British Prime Minister recently appointed a Minister of Loneliness. People have more money, better health, better housing, more education, and live longer than at any other time in history. But people, especially young people, are more unhappy than at any other time since data started being collected.

Why? There are many reasons. The rise of drug and opioid addiction, less human interaction due to constant cellphone use, and young people’s fears about their future are the most commonly offered explanations. But the biggest reason is the loss of values and meaning. Let’s start with values, and I’ll focus on America. The United States was founded on two sets of values: Judeo-Christian and American. This combination created the freest country with the most opportunities and the most prosperous in world history. This is not chauvinism. It’s a fact. That’s why people from all over the world have wanted to immigrate to America and still do. One of the most important values of the United States was to keep the government as small as possible. This allowed non-governmental institutions, such as Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions Clubs, book clubs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, bowling leagues, musical societies, and, of course, churches, to provide Americans with friends and help those in need.

But as the government has grown, many of these non-governmental groups have diminished in number or simply disappeared. Another set of values is known as middle-class or bourgeois values. These include marrying before having a child, forming a family, getting a job, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and patriotism. All of these have been attacked by the U.S. elites with the following results: the majority of millennial births are from unmarried women. However, according to a 2018 Cigna study, single parents are generally the loneliest Americans."