If You're Happy and you Know it....

AP along with MTV did a recent study asking young people if they were happy. Its always fun to come up with a blanket study – but according to this mornings Forum with Michael Krasny on NPR who had Michael Greco an MTV Vice President talking further about the study – apparently they asked deeper questions rather than a yes or no and they did a kind of listening study where they actually examined things closer.

“The study found that overall, most American young people (aged 13-24) report being happy with their lives and are optimistic about the future. 65 percent of respondents say they are happy with the way things are going in their lives in general and 62 percent think they will be happier in the future than they are now.

“Parents, Family and Relationships - Parents are seen as an overwhelmingly positive influence in the lives of most young people. Remarkably, nearly half of respondents mention at least one of their parents as a hero. When asked "What one thing in life makes you most happy?" 46 percent of respondents say spending time with friends, family and loved ones.

This one is VERY interesting to me:

“Religion and spirituality are an integral part of happiness for most American young people. 44 percent say that religion and spirituality are either a very important or the single most important thing in their lives, with more than one in ten reporting the latter. And those for whom religion and spirituality play a bigger role in life tend to be happier. 80 percent of those who say spirituality is the most important thing in life say they are happy with life in general, compared with 60 percent of those who say that spirituality is not an important part of life at all.”

I think this is a key moment to mention Lauren Sandler’s book again. If you look at the sense of community and connectivity among young people that are immersed in faith based activities in right wing – or non-right wing – church environments you find that they are more likely to be happy.

The next two points in the study talked about extensively on Forum with a woman named Jean Twenge who authored Generation ME: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled and more Miserable Than Ever Before a book about how the Millennial Generation is all about themselves and considers themselves to be special and is one of the most narcissistic generations of all time. So – first off based on Jean’s book she is going to be against the MTV survey to begin with because it disproves that her theories are valid.

According to Jean’s research for her book

“I’ve found data on what Boomers were like when they were young in the 1960s and 1970s and compared it to data on young people from the 1990s and 2000s.”

So… this was how we felt ten or so years ago – and given the age group that she is focusing on:

“I keep only those that used a normal population of a specific age – usually college students or children.” this is from her Research section

So – I speculate if this is even MY generation – the Millennial Generation but rather Generation X the generation before ours. I guess what Jean means when she says "Today's Youth" is actually "Yesterday's Youth." Too I find it a little difficult to compare Boomers with Gen X without taking into account the cultural context of “the appearance of happiness” vs. actual happiness… but I digress…

I found Jean’s commentary about us as unbelievably offensive, outdated, and inconsistent with reality. Forum had another young woman who was a little closer to our demographic than what Jean was talking about, who talked extensively about the kind of upbringing we’ve had and how we were raised to believe that we are special that we are meaningful that the world is in our hands which is why we have to go to college and be better, smarter, and faster – thus creating our “competitive culture” and the generation of “soccer moms.”

Point 3 in the MTV Survey “Fortune and Fame - Money and its relationship to the happiness of young people is a complicated issue. Almost no respondents mentioned anything financial or material as a source of happiness when asked an unaided question about what makes them happy. But many young people report financial woes as a source of unhappiness. In looking to the future, 70 percent say they want to be rich - and nearly half think it's at least somewhat likely they will be someday - but just 29 percent want to be famous. Only 17 percent think they will be famous.”

Jean sees this as a main point of narcissism - because we want to be rich and famous. She mentions at one point that if you look up special in the dictionary you’ll see that the actual definition of special does not lend itself to the majority of us who consider ourselves to be special. According to Jean – we’re not special…. Sorry..

For the record I still think every one of our readers here on FM is special….

The young woman who clearly had our backs - says that what she sees daily is a community who rather than thinking about "being rich" is just thinking about being stable or "not being poor." I would like to see further data on what those surveyed considered to be rich - because what they could actually mean is "comfortable" - which is what I long to be and assume I will be some day.

The reality is that the word “special” as defined by academics or Merriam Webster is miles away from what we grew up hearing/watching from The Church Lady and this guy (who is now special enough to run for Senate.) One only needs to exist in our culture to learn that the definition of “special” goes far outside the realm of what Jean and a 1980’s sociological definition thinks it does. What does Jean think about the Special Olympics?

The final point of the study:

“Technology - Cell phones, the Internet and other technologies are integrally woven into the lives of today's young thirds say they make people happier. Half of those young people polled say the Internet alone helps them feel happier. And contrary to popular views of technology as a source of stress, many young people would be more stressed out without technology, with nearly half saying they never turn off their cell phones - even when they're trying to chill out.”

I can see how to the older bifocal laden eye that sees our use of technology as indicative of a certain level of narcissism among the generation. Rather than assuming that someone who has a blog or uses MySpace is focused on themselves, I think a better question for these folks is “why do you do this” and I think the answer you’d receive would be drastically different from a narcissistic answer.

And lets not forget that the newness of the technology is replacing old communication and interaction among young people. While Jean probably had a diary – today social diary is called a blog. It enables you to write your personal thoughts while engaging your peers in collaboration and participation in each other’s lives.

The idea of being in constant contact with peers even in uncomfortable situations can give a feeling of safety to young people. Before this technology, we were suffering a more post-modern cold war isolationist culture.

So, while I won’t claim to know everything I think seeing the big picture of the culture is step one before dissecting it and labeling its parts – because ultimately you’ll have a bunch of dissected parts that don’t fit together to make an accurate representation of the whole.

This is a main reason I think the MTV/AP survey might be more accurate than normal studies – it examined 13-24 year olds from January until final discussions that occurred in April of 2007. This kind of study and opinions based on this are more timely and by people who need to know everything possible to market their product to us… which makes me think its probably pretty accurate.

Another topic that is notable among this study are the gender breakdowns of “stress levels” which can be seen here - and leave it to the conservatives to boil it down to young people Church and Family.