😊 Young Americans are getting happier

• The percentage of university students with symptoms of depression has decreased from 44 percent in 2022 to 38 percent in 2024.
• Studies show that this trend applies to American youth in general, with decreasing rates of depression and suicide.
• The improvement comes after more than a decade where young people's mental health deteriorated according to almost all measurements.

Broader trend among young Americans

After more than a decade of worsening mental health among young Americans, new data shows that the trend has now reversed. A study led by UCLA professor Daniel Eisenberg shows that the proportion of university students with depression symptoms has decreased from 44 percent in 2022 to 38 percent in 2024.

Analyses of seven different national surveys conducted by The Economist show that the improvement extends far beyond universities. According to data from the National Health Interview Survey, the proportion of young adults reporting feeling depressed at least once a week has decreased from 16.5 percent in 2022 to 13.3 percent in 2023.

The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who say they don't enjoy life has also dropped from 28.8 percent in 2021 to 24.7 percent in 2023. The suicide rate among 18- to 25-year-olds has decreased to 16.1 per 100,000, which is slightly lower than the levels from 2017 to 2019.

Previous deterioration

The current improvement comes after a long period when young people's mental health deteriorated according to almost all measurements. In 2022, one in six American adults under 25 reported feeling depressed at least once a week, more than twice as many as ten years earlier. Nearly one in ten adolescents reported having received a depression diagnosis.

In 2021, more than one in five teenagers reported suffering from a "major depressive episode," defined as a two-week period when they were too sad to perform everyday activities. Around 40 percent of high school students said they had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

Causes of both deterioration and improvement

Researchers have struggled to explain why young people have become so unhappy. A popular theory, first proposed by Jean Twenge at San Diego State University and popularized by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at NYU, is that social media is to blame.

Katherine Keyes from Columbia University suggests that part of the increase in mental health problems may be due to changes in how they are defined. Young Americans are both more open about sharing their problems and have different ideas about what qualifies as poor mental health.

Regardless of the cause, there are now signs that the constant increase in mental health problems has stalled or even reversed. The causes of this improvement are still unclear, but the use of social media has not decreased...

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