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Not only is life satisfaction high, optimism about the future is also very high: > Notably, even as current life satisfaction has increased in recent months, a

Not only is life satisfaction high, optimism about the future is also very high: > Notably, even as current life satisfaction has increased in recent months, anticipated life satisfaction remains elevated compared with pre-COVID levels. These results are striking in contrast to the increasingly cynical outlooks we see on sites like Reddit and even HN. It seems like every comment section is full of negative comments about how terrible everything is or how terrible it's going to be soon. Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective.

refurb 5y ago
Social media reflects a small slice of the population (like <1%) and it seems to overwhelmingly attract negativity. I would even argue it’s a bit of an outlet for people who aren’t that negative in their everyday life.
eps 5y ago
It's very much debatable which perspective is "more grounded." Especially when one of them is based on ignoring an unprecendented economic bubble and hoping for the best. No reasonable person in rudimentary touch with reality can have elevated "anticipated life satisfaction" in this context.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > No reasonable person in rudimentary touch with reality can have elevated "anticipated life satisfaction" in this context. This is a perfect example of the internet cynicism I was referring to. There's a general vibe on sites like Reddit and HN that the average people are wrong and they shouldn't be happy because everything is actually terrible and they just haven't figured it out yet. Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid and just accept that maybe people really are doing well?
  - humbleMouse 5y ago
    Are we going to have any arctic ice left? That’s the type of question that keeps me from being too jovial.
  - meowkit 5y ago
    > Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid This is really hard to do given my conversations with most people in real life. There is a shocking obliviousness to climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc. Not to say people don’t know climate change is happening - they just aren’t aware of any details beyond surface level memes. Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. But also a reminder that frustration and outrage drive content algorithms, so its no surprise that kind of content dominates the text based social media.
    - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
      Long ago, my dad checked out of news media entirely, and the effect on his mental health was incredible. Personally, I don't think I can turn a blind eye to the rest of the world, but IME those that do are generally much happier.
      - heckingoodtimes 5y ago
        What do they say again? > Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t grasp this when my HS English teacher imparted this on us, but having consumed much of the trending Reddit content, it makes a lot more sense these days.
        nitrogen 5y ago
        When we all first hear this expression we assume that ignorance is a bad thing, thus we should not be like all the blissfully ignorant. But maybe it was really advice -- don't expand your circle of awareness too far beyond your circle of influence.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      To be honest, I think there might be a point where if you’re too plugged in to environmental social media, you end up opposing fairly practical approaches to solving it because increasingly-niche concerns. The “good is the enemy of the better” effect. Normie: “Oh cool, electric cars are improving that means less pollution and i spend less on gas!” Too-online environmental person: “But ACKSHUALLY, electric cars are terrible because theoretically lithium might have some environmental impact and we need to ban all cars if we REALLY care about the environment, so electric cars are bad because they’re stopping us from banning all cars.” Normie: “Solar power is good; I heard a little bit about climate change, so I’m glad some people are working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” Left Caucus of Nevada: “ Arevia Power withdrew their application for the Battle Born Solar project. Congrats to @saveourmesa and the other activists who put in the work to keep the community healthy, safe, and whole” https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=20 https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=...
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  You can both acknowledge economic bubbles and have life satisfaction. It's as simple as not tying your own happiness onto gargantuan systems well outside your individual control. I bristle when others captured by internet outrage loops suggest that I too must share their outrage or I'm unreasonable, out of touch, etc. Did you recognize that you have become a recruiter for social media algorithms?
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I estimate around 20%-30% of the country has a mental health issue ranging from depression to narcissism to outright sociopathy and misanthropy. And they occupy a disproportionate amount of social media, etc congregating and spreading their sad world views everywhere. I think it’s difficult for people with these types of issues to cope with problems that are out of range for any one person to fix, for coming to terms with change, and to fixate on these things. Just bring in a constant panic state while everything seems so out of control. It’s sad because it’s just a very bad way to spend a life when there’s so much good and beautiful everywhere. The internet was great before everyone got in the pool and 30% of them started pissing in it.
- tayo42 5y ago
  I think your mixing up two different questions. This article is asking is your personal life good. Im generally happy with my own life and think it'll get better, that doesn't mean I think the world is on a good path. I think I can live a decent life independent of whatever is going on in the world at large. Like even if there is an economic bubble what does that really mean for you? Is your long term personal life satisfaction really tied to the economy? Maybe you'll have a bad year like 2008 did to some but you'll probably bounce back
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >I think your mixing up two different questions. That's what the pollster and reporter want you to do. This has become an extremely common method of polling manipulation, and I can't believe more people don't see right through it.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  Why is it a bubble?
  - username90 5y ago
    This study is from June, USA still paid a lot of stimulus money in June. Being happy from stimulus money is a bubble, it wont last.
    - l33t2328 5y ago
      When will it not last till? There will always be another crash...
MattGaiser 5y ago
Nobody is going to go on an Internet forum to proclaim how great their life is.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Most of my Facebook and Instagram is full of other people sharing good things about their lives. I know the cynical internet commenters will insist it's all fake and that they're only putting on a show, but the reality is that most people in my circles are doing quite well and are generally happy. I'm also part of several online communities and even forums where most people are doing well. There's nothing about the internet that requires people to bias toward being negative and cynical. The cynicism does tend to collect in certain internet bubbles and especially certain cites that cater to outrage-as-entertainment (e.g. front page of Reddit)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - adventured 5y ago
    Job openings are at ~9.2 million in the US and there has been a persistently healthy wage increase over the past five or six years for the bottom half of the laborforce due to the labor demand vs labor supply imbalance. It all goes a long ways toward bolstering optimism for the mass public. If the US ever gets around to properly improving its healthcare mess, these ratings would soar.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Facebook and Instagram are primarily about showing. They are less discussion forums. I post some positive life news on Facebook. I would never go around HN posting similar news.
    - detaro 5y ago
      People do show (on-topic) things they are proud of on HN, people regularly share their own stories, and not just bad ones, in reaction to submissions. Not really life news, no, but still positive content.
im_down_w_otp 5y ago
That will undoubtedly have the opposite of the intended effect for me. Real world interaction is where I get to learn that wild fires are supposedly being caused by migrant workers, where I get yelled at for wearing a mask during a pandemic, have my kids teased for the same, discover that people I used to think were reasonable adults are actually anti-vaxxers, and interact with depressingly insane inflated residential & commercial real estate markets. My online interactions are probably principally responsible for maintaining the threads of idealism that are hanging on. That said, I also spend zero time on Facebook, Instagram, etc., and near zero time on Twitter. So, neither my real world nor online world interactions are necessarily representative of much.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- anonfornoreason 5y ago
  Ahh yes sounds like a pile of good reasons to hide in not real life, enjoy!
- l33t2328 5y ago
  In the real world I’ve never heard anything resublime those claims, or been yelled at for wearing a mask.
  - im_down_w_otp 5y ago
    That's fortunate. Dalliances with the rural expanses of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho have not been so encouraging for me lately.
mrfusion 5y ago
Is it possible reddit is mostly bots at this point?
- utdoctor 5y ago
  Is that even up to disagreement? The main subs certainly are
- hereforphone 5y ago
  To be fair many of the bots (those with a conservative world outlook) were banned years ago.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Bots that they know of.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Reddit has plenty of conservatives. And crackdowns did closed lefty abusive subs too.
noobermin 5y ago
They should show the results broken down by age. I think you'll see the vast majority of happy respondents being baby boomers.
mercy_dude 5y ago
I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. I am from Greenboro, WI and I can tell you it’s the opposite among the population in the areas I grew up. Most young people like me who had more than a high school degree have moved away and ones that are left there are either in some kind of struggling business or are plain into dark places dealing with addictions (alcohol and opioid). Even people like me who did move to the cities, I don’t see how the optimism can be so high. I mean I work in tech and have pretty much accepted that I am forever priced out of the housing market I am in. The school district system of where I live also doesn’t look very promising so my kids will have a better education (and future). Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Nothing stopping the elites from pumping out fake polls to keep us distracted from how bad things are getting.
  - tag2103 5y ago
    A new flavor of bread and circuses with added "appeal to authority" goodness.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    Do you have evidence the poll is faked, or does it just go against your confirmation bias?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. It's easy to confuse our own personal bubbles with the general population. There's nothing inconsistent about you living in an area with low life satisfaction and a poll that says 60% of people across the entire country have high life satisfaction. The way you describe your home town sounds depressing and it's easy to believe that they wouldn't be part of the 60% of Americans rating themselves as thriving in this poll. However, what you're describing is very far from the norm for towns in America. Occurs too often, yes, but it's not what life in the average American city looks like. > Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. The entire Bay Area represents around 2% of the US population. It's not expected that a national poll would reflect the realities of a single geographic region. That said, I have several friends and extended families starting families in the Bay Area who are very happy with their circumstances. > Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt. The poll said 60% of Americans see themselves as "thriving". That doesn't meant that no one is struggling. It's important to look at these polls as ways to get a glimpse of life outside of our own bubbles. It's also important to view them as a distribution rather than a binary outcome.
blippage 5y ago
"Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ tl;dr: it's getting better. We're living longer, homicides are down, fewer wars and autocracies, etc..
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  This entire thread is a proof of how many people on HN constantly downvote anything that is not rage-worthy.
lrdswrk00 5y ago
Looking at raw numbers if always much more telling than cherry picked stats intended to sell an emotional narrative. 50-60% of 300 million+ people “thriving” means what for their other 40-50% of 300 million? Comments like yours lead me to the same conclusion. I’d suggest people interact outside their usual filter bubble specifically, online or real.
eulers_secret 5y ago
I skimmed the article, but I think this disconnect may be due to demographics. Reddit skews very young, and I think things are harder for youth. The older generation has seen their housing values explode over the last decade, same with their retirement accounts. Many are “paper rich”. Younger people aren’t established, they see high housing prices and feel the “American dream” was stolen from them. They see the current market values, and think they “missed out” on the rise. After all, will we see another decade of this kind of prosperity? Could be a kind of FOMO. I do agree that stepping away from social media is important. Reddit has a lot of folks with a victim mentality (victims of “the system” - represented by capitalism), and that idea is easy to cultivate in oneself. It has a kernel of truth, but I think people ruminate and it doesn’t do any good.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Reddit and Twitter skew young, urban, and educated. It seems like these people are the least happy, because they feel like they deserve more. My in laws out in smaller Oregon cities, who mostly didn’t go to college or went to the local state school, seem pretty happy. One took on a lot of debt for college and is an unhappy progressive activist.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I don't buy this. I know plenty of unhappy rural people and unhappy uneducated people. And statistically, going by social issues they don't do well either.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      I disagree. City life is full of stress. Want to go to a nursery to pick up some plants in Oakland, CA? It will take ya 2.5 hours, not to mention finding parking on the street and then dealing with 'asshole' customer service - there is no incentive to improve because hey they have a lot of people buying plants and if you don't like it, go somewhere else. This is just a small slice of what's wrong with city life from today's errands I had to run. Traffic, population density, constant fear of crime and someone breaking into your car, everything just takes longer and the noise itself takes the joy out of life. My parents live in rural California and it is the most beautiful, impossibly gorgeous place with a sense of tranquility in the air. Life moves slowly and at a nice pace. Everyone is nice to one another. And this isn't some rich neighborhood.
baybal2 5y ago
> These results are striking in contrast to the increasingly cynical outlooks we see on sites like Reddit and even HN. It seems like every comment section is full of negative comments about how terrible everything is or how terrible it's going to be soon. Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective. A very simple explanation is rising salaries for manual labour, and unprecedented stimulus cheques.
ekster 5y ago
I have noticed on social media that the cynical, assholes, grumpy, and those that want to take others down a peg are quite loud but in the minority. Typically when you run into one they have a comment history where they are just being a jerk all day every day to all comers. Normal people have good or bad days and it might come out in different ways on different days, but there is a surprising number of people out there just being hateful on the internet all day like it’s their job. And the vast majority of them have statues of philosophers as their avatars, which I still don't quite get.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration. And the less one has going on in the rest of their life, the more time one has to spend arguing online. The volume of posting doesn't indicate how right someone is or how reflective their experiences are of reality, just how much time they have to dedicate to the task of commenting. As a useful mental trick, I substitute "commenters" with "bored people on the internet" sometimes to remind myself of the source.
  - mancerayder 5y ago
    > Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration Yes. It's right there (it takes three seconds to pull a phone out of a pocket), and it's instantly a way to talk to people. Sometimes there's no one else there. Also, in American culture you're not supposed to be negative in social situations. Always positive, always chirpy. Maybe that is why it's so toxic online. Because similar to the Victorian age and sexual repression, the always-positive leads to a toxic sublimation into Internet anonymity? I'm just tossing this out there as a thought. A counter would be, the entire world is toxic online.
- ssss11 5y ago
  Specifically on reddit and twitter, the few times I’ve used them, they seem to be filled with assholes. It seems that these people have no release for their views in the real world and for some reason these social sites are suitable places (from their perspective)
kwhitefoot 5y ago
What is the standard error on these measurements? And what is the variance, that is does the mean satisfaction represent the majority or are there, say, two populations, one very optimistic and the other less so. Perhaps that could explain the outlook seen on HN, etc.
paulddraper 5y ago
This is relief. I believe humanity's condition is getting better and better. But I am surprised most others think so too.
missedthecue 5y ago
I guess happy optimistic people have better things to do than spend their day commenting on Reddit. Bit of selection bias maybe.
fxtentacle 5y ago
It seems to be human nature that people are more happy to talk about misfortune than about lucky events. 60% are thriving. But the 40% that are not probably have a much stronger opinion about things. So you'll hear the loud "minority".
hdivider 5y ago
"These results are striking in contrast to the increasingly cynical outlooks we see on sites like Reddit and even HN. It seems like every comment section is full of negative comments about how terrible everything is or how terrible it's going to be soon. Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective." Agreed, 100%. It's amazing how HN, Reddit and other places select so strongly for the pessimism of the intellect, but quickly shoot down the optimism of the will. Without the latter (informed by the former, sure), civilization would never have advanced this far. Sure, we need realism. And knowledge of what will go wrong. But find the positive -- otherwise, it's more like a withdrawal of people's energy. Thankfully, like you mentioned, the real world, away from these artificial rectangles, is often way more empowering. :)
mancerayder 5y ago
I don't know if HN folks, on average, are grumpy and negative and mean. They might get feisty in a particular debate and there are a lot of sky-is-falling type articles. However, I find Reddit straight-up mean. I rarely participate, and if I do, it's more around specific hobbies, real estate and stock type forums. From the mods all the way down, there's a certain take-ya-down-with-one-liners personality type that seems to just predominate. Similar to Twitter. I'm sure there are good subs, but I'm really curious what it is about Reddit that leads to toxicity on seemingly neutral topics. I always thought it was the young age, but honestly a lot of these people are adults and not teens (teens don't frequent real estate investment subs).
derbOac 5y ago
There's three concerns I have about this, the Cantri measure as it's applied. One is that it's one question. Just one question to summarize your life. The second is that the ends of the scale has always seemed sort of odd to me: "he top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you." Someone who is depressed is probably going to shift a bit in their evaluations of the top and bottom. That is, someone who is visibly and diagnosably depressed will probably imagine a worse best possible life, and also maybe even worse worst possible life. So you could be pretty darn depressed and still rate yourself as moderate. If your options go from "depressing" to "unmentionable hellscape" you could still rate yourself as a 7. Are most people doing this? Maybe not, but it's an odd way to frame the question and leads itself to that. The final concern I have is how many of these are on the phone. If someone randomly called me on the phone to ask, would I go there even if I was really depressed? Probably not. I guess I see these results as pretty interesting but really difficult to interpret. It's like trying to gauge global ocean temperature changes from one temperature reading in your local bay.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  Reddit skews young, and I’ve definitely noticed the younger generation likes to commiserate. There’s also this pervasive sense of doom that the environment and the economy is going to collapse.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
    There's a pervasive sense of stagnant wages, unaffordable homes, etc in first world and developing countries. In China, it's tangping. In America, it's my step sibling having 0 desire to move out of our parents home (e.g., "Millennials kill X" headlines). Your options are to try very hard, and maybe secure a barely conventional middle class life, or not try. And for people who aren't a fit for the knowledge economy, the second is the optimal choice.
    - muzani 5y ago
      That might explain the ratings. COVID has begun a kind of shift. Those in the upper class are getting it hard. Real estate traders are screwed. Those who pay minimum wage are having difficulty hiring, especially with the number pf deaths from those exposed to it. Things like bus driving come with hefty hazard pay now.
john_moscow 5y ago
I think, this is trickier. Happiness generally consists of 2 components: hedonistic (short-term, "had a great meal" type) and eudaimonic (long-term, "I am doing the right thing and am confident about my future" type). What's happening for at least a decade is that the sources of hedonistic happiness are becoming more accessible(tasty food, booze, entertainment, substances), while things that used to bring eudaimonic happiness are either becoming unaffordable (property ownership, raising kids, financial independence), unpopular (long-term relationships, religion) or economically uncompetitive (small businesses). The media is doing its best to distract people and convince them that they don't want all those long-term things, but you can't really fool the human nature. The tensions are rising, although it may all look great on paper. A more interesting and objective metric would be the suicide rates, but I couldn't easily find anything more recent than 2019.
- yann2 5y ago
  There is a Gross National Stupidity index thats been on the rise for a while now. So the poll really makes sense.
- maroonblazer 5y ago
  The study appears to factor in short-term vs long-term happiness. Specifically, they ask respondents to project forward 5 years into the future: >For its Life Evaluation Index, Gallup classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering" according to how they rate their current and future lives
- uyt 5y ago
  Another problem is because of hedonic adaptation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation People might actually feel happier when moving from a miserable state to a better state compared to being in a good state all along. So we are seeing the effects of people being grateful that recovery is happening, not that the world has already recovered.
RickJWagner 5y ago
I'm usually optimistic, and I think there are bright days ahead. But about this poll-- it seems like it happened before Delta version of Covid got traction. I think if they hold the same survey today, they'll get different results.
muzani 5y ago
My observation is business owners are unhappiest. They're subject to restrictions. Workers don't want to work in the office anymore. People who took minimum wage jobs are dead and more expensive, with bus drivers and janitors getting double pay for danger. Real estate is going to take a dip, especially offices. Most of these things are beneficial to the common man. People have demanded revolution for years and looks like they might get it.
xwolfi 5y ago
Yeah it could be a magnet for people to complain in a safe place where everyone will echo it. However, maybe the study here presented has also some hidden selection.
dominotw 5y ago
> Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective. Gallup survey was conducted entirely online but "real world" survey [2] (including ppl without internet connection) says otherwise here "Americans' optimism about country's direction over next year drops nearly 20 points since May: POLL In May, a little more than a third were pessimistic. Now, it is a majority." [1] 1. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-direction-year-drops-20-points/story?id=79036435 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-... 2. https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/outside-covid-19-biden-receives-mixed-approval-ratings https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/outside-covid-19-bide...

refurb 5y ago

Social media reflects a small slice of the population (like <1%) and it seems to overwhelmingly attract negativity. I would even argue it’s a bit of an outlet for people who aren’t that negative in their everyday life.

eps 5y ago

It's very much debatable which perspective is "more grounded." Especially when one of them is based on ignoring an unprecendented economic bubble and hoping for the best. No reasonable person in rudimentary touch with reality can have elevated "anticipated life satisfaction" in this context.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> No reasonable person in rudimentary touch with reality can have elevated "anticipated life satisfaction" in this context. This is a perfect example of the internet cynicism I was referring to. There's a general vibe on sites like Reddit and HN that the average people are wrong and they shouldn't be happy because everything is actually terrible and they just haven't figured it out yet. Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid and just accept that maybe people really are doing well?
- humbleMouse 5y ago
  Are we going to have any arctic ice left? That’s the type of question that keeps me from being too jovial.
- meowkit 5y ago
  > Can we stop acting like these people are wrong or stupid This is really hard to do given my conversations with most people in real life. There is a shocking obliviousness to climate change, plastic pollution, economic problems, healthcare (personal and the system), philosophical/existential inquiries, etc. Not to say people don’t know climate change is happening - they just aren’t aware of any details beyond surface level memes. Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. But also a reminder that frustration and outrage drive content algorithms, so its no surprise that kind of content dominates the text based social media.
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
    Long ago, my dad checked out of news media entirely, and the effect on his mental health was incredible. Personally, I don't think I can turn a blind eye to the rest of the world, but IME those that do are generally much happier.
    - heckingoodtimes 5y ago
      What do they say again? > Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t grasp this when my HS English teacher imparted this on us, but having consumed much of the trending Reddit content, it makes a lot more sense these days.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        When we all first hear this expression we assume that ignorance is a bad thing, thus we should not be like all the blissfully ignorant. But maybe it was really advice -- don't expand your circle of awareness too far beyond your circle of influence.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    To be honest, I think there might be a point where if you’re too plugged in to environmental social media, you end up opposing fairly practical approaches to solving it because increasingly-niche concerns. The “good is the enemy of the better” effect. Normie: “Oh cool, electric cars are improving that means less pollution and i spend less on gas!” Too-online environmental person: “But ACKSHUALLY, electric cars are terrible because theoretically lithium might have some environmental impact and we need to ban all cars if we REALLY care about the environment, so electric cars are bad because they’re stopping us from banning all cars.” Normie: “Solar power is good; I heard a little bit about climate change, so I’m glad some people are working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” Left Caucus of Nevada: “ Arevia Power withdrew their application for the Battle Born Solar project. Congrats to @saveourmesa and the other activists who put in the work to keep the community healthy, safe, and whole” https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=20 https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/status/1418403704047243264?s=...
somehnacct3757 5y ago
You can both acknowledge economic bubbles and have life satisfaction. It's as simple as not tying your own happiness onto gargantuan systems well outside your individual control. I bristle when others captured by internet outrage loops suggest that I too must share their outrage or I'm unreasonable, out of touch, etc. Did you recognize that you have become a recruiter for social media algorithms?
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I estimate around 20%-30% of the country has a mental health issue ranging from depression to narcissism to outright sociopathy and misanthropy. And they occupy a disproportionate amount of social media, etc congregating and spreading their sad world views everywhere. I think it’s difficult for people with these types of issues to cope with problems that are out of range for any one person to fix, for coming to terms with change, and to fixate on these things. Just bring in a constant panic state while everything seems so out of control. It’s sad because it’s just a very bad way to spend a life when there’s so much good and beautiful everywhere. The internet was great before everyone got in the pool and 30% of them started pissing in it.
tayo42 5y ago
I think your mixing up two different questions. This article is asking is your personal life good. Im generally happy with my own life and think it'll get better, that doesn't mean I think the world is on a good path. I think I can live a decent life independent of whatever is going on in the world at large. Like even if there is an economic bubble what does that really mean for you? Is your long term personal life satisfaction really tied to the economy? Maybe you'll have a bad year like 2008 did to some but you'll probably bounce back
- beerandt 5y ago
  >I think your mixing up two different questions. That's what the pollster and reporter want you to do. This has become an extremely common method of polling manipulation, and I can't believe more people don't see right through it.
l33t2328 5y ago
Why is it a bubble?
- username90 5y ago
  This study is from June, USA still paid a lot of stimulus money in June. Being happy from stimulus money is a bubble, it wont last.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    When will it not last till? There will always be another crash...

MattGaiser 5y ago

Nobody is going to go on an Internet forum to proclaim how great their life is.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Most of my Facebook and Instagram is full of other people sharing good things about their lives. I know the cynical internet commenters will insist it's all fake and that they're only putting on a show, but the reality is that most people in my circles are doing quite well and are generally happy. I'm also part of several online communities and even forums where most people are doing well. There's nothing about the internet that requires people to bias toward being negative and cynical. The cynicism does tend to collect in certain internet bubbles and especially certain cites that cater to outrage-as-entertainment (e.g. front page of Reddit)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- adventured 5y ago
  Job openings are at ~9.2 million in the US and there has been a persistently healthy wage increase over the past five or six years for the bottom half of the laborforce due to the labor demand vs labor supply imbalance. It all goes a long ways toward bolstering optimism for the mass public. If the US ever gets around to properly improving its healthcare mess, these ratings would soar.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Facebook and Instagram are primarily about showing. They are less discussion forums. I post some positive life news on Facebook. I would never go around HN posting similar news.
  - detaro 5y ago
    People do show (on-topic) things they are proud of on HN, people regularly share their own stories, and not just bad ones, in reaction to submissions. Not really life news, no, but still positive content.

im_down_w_otp 5y ago

That will undoubtedly have the opposite of the intended effect for me. Real world interaction is where I get to learn that wild fires are supposedly being caused by migrant workers, where I get yelled at for wearing a mask during a pandemic, have my kids teased for the same, discover that people I used to think were reasonable adults are actually anti-vaxxers, and interact with depressingly insane inflated residential & commercial real estate markets. My online interactions are probably principally responsible for maintaining the threads of idealism that are hanging on. That said, I also spend zero time on Facebook, Instagram, etc., and near zero time on Twitter. So, neither my real world nor online world interactions are necessarily representative of much.

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anonfornoreason 5y ago
Ahh yes sounds like a pile of good reasons to hide in not real life, enjoy!
l33t2328 5y ago
In the real world I’ve never heard anything resublime those claims, or been yelled at for wearing a mask.
- im_down_w_otp 5y ago
  That's fortunate. Dalliances with the rural expanses of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho have not been so encouraging for me lately.

mrfusion 5y ago

Is it possible reddit is mostly bots at this point?

utdoctor 5y ago
Is that even up to disagreement? The main subs certainly are
hereforphone 5y ago
To be fair many of the bots (those with a conservative world outlook) were banned years ago.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Bots that they know of.
- watwut 5y ago
  Reddit has plenty of conservatives. And crackdowns did closed lefty abusive subs too.

noobermin 5y ago

They should show the results broken down by age. I think you'll see the vast majority of happy respondents being baby boomers.

mercy_dude 5y ago

I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. I am from Greenboro, WI and I can tell you it’s the opposite among the population in the areas I grew up. Most young people like me who had more than a high school degree have moved away and ones that are left there are either in some kind of struggling business or are plain into dark places dealing with addictions (alcohol and opioid). Even people like me who did move to the cities, I don’t see how the optimism can be so high. I mean I work in tech and have pretty much accepted that I am forever priced out of the housing market I am in. The school district system of where I live also doesn’t look very promising so my kids will have a better education (and future). Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt.

spicybright 5y ago
Nothing stopping the elites from pumping out fake polls to keep us distracted from how bad things are getting.
- tag2103 5y ago
  A new flavor of bread and circuses with added "appeal to authority" goodness.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Do you have evidence the poll is faked, or does it just go against your confirmation bias?
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PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. It's easy to confuse our own personal bubbles with the general population. There's nothing inconsistent about you living in an area with low life satisfaction and a poll that says 60% of people across the entire country have high life satisfaction. The way you describe your home town sounds depressing and it's easy to believe that they wouldn't be part of the 60% of Americans rating themselves as thriving in this poll. However, what you're describing is very far from the norm for towns in America. Occurs too often, yes, but it's not what life in the average American city looks like. > Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. The entire Bay Area represents around 2% of the US population. It's not expected that a national poll would reflect the realities of a single geographic region. That said, I have several friends and extended families starting families in the Bay Area who are very happy with their circumstances. > Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt. The poll said 60% of Americans see themselves as "thriving". That doesn't meant that no one is struggling. It's important to look at these polls as ways to get a glimpse of life outside of our own bubbles. It's also important to view them as a distribution rather than a binary outcome.

blippage 5y ago

"Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ tl;dr: it's getting better. We're living longer, homicides are down, fewer wars and autocracies, etc..

systemvoltage 5y ago
This entire thread is a proof of how many people on HN constantly downvote anything that is not rage-worthy.

lrdswrk00 5y ago

Looking at raw numbers if always much more telling than cherry picked stats intended to sell an emotional narrative. 50-60% of 300 million+ people “thriving” means what for their other 40-50% of 300 million? Comments like yours lead me to the same conclusion. I’d suggest people interact outside their usual filter bubble specifically, online or real.

eulers_secret 5y ago

I skimmed the article, but I think this disconnect may be due to demographics. Reddit skews very young, and I think things are harder for youth. The older generation has seen their housing values explode over the last decade, same with their retirement accounts. Many are “paper rich”. Younger people aren’t established, they see high housing prices and feel the “American dream” was stolen from them. They see the current market values, and think they “missed out” on the rise. After all, will we see another decade of this kind of prosperity? Could be a kind of FOMO. I do agree that stepping away from social media is important. Reddit has a lot of folks with a victim mentality (victims of “the system” - represented by capitalism), and that idea is easy to cultivate in oneself. It has a kernel of truth, but I think people ruminate and it doesn’t do any good.

rayiner 5y ago
Reddit and Twitter skew young, urban, and educated. It seems like these people are the least happy, because they feel like they deserve more. My in laws out in smaller Oregon cities, who mostly didn’t go to college or went to the local state school, seem pretty happy. One took on a lot of debt for college and is an unhappy progressive activist.
- watwut 5y ago
  I don't buy this. I know plenty of unhappy rural people and unhappy uneducated people. And statistically, going by social issues they don't do well either.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I disagree. City life is full of stress. Want to go to a nursery to pick up some plants in Oakland, CA? It will take ya 2.5 hours, not to mention finding parking on the street and then dealing with 'asshole' customer service - there is no incentive to improve because hey they have a lot of people buying plants and if you don't like it, go somewhere else. This is just a small slice of what's wrong with city life from today's errands I had to run. Traffic, population density, constant fear of crime and someone breaking into your car, everything just takes longer and the noise itself takes the joy out of life. My parents live in rural California and it is the most beautiful, impossibly gorgeous place with a sense of tranquility in the air. Life moves slowly and at a nice pace. Everyone is nice to one another. And this isn't some rich neighborhood.

baybal2 5y ago

> These results are striking in contrast to the increasingly cynical outlooks we see on sites like Reddit and even HN. It seems like every comment section is full of negative comments about how terrible everything is or how terrible it's going to be soon. Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective. A very simple explanation is rising salaries for manual labour, and unprecedented stimulus cheques.

ekster 5y ago

I have noticed on social media that the cynical, assholes, grumpy, and those that want to take others down a peg are quite loud but in the minority. Typically when you run into one they have a comment history where they are just being a jerk all day every day to all comers. Normal people have good or bad days and it might come out in different ways on different days, but there is a surprising number of people out there just being hateful on the internet all day like it’s their job. And the vast majority of them have statues of philosophers as their avatars, which I still don't quite get.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration. And the less one has going on in the rest of their life, the more time one has to spend arguing online. The volume of posting doesn't indicate how right someone is or how reflective their experiences are of reality, just how much time they have to dedicate to the task of commenting. As a useful mental trick, I substitute "commenters" with "bored people on the internet" sometimes to remind myself of the source.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  > Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration Yes. It's right there (it takes three seconds to pull a phone out of a pocket), and it's instantly a way to talk to people. Sometimes there's no one else there. Also, in American culture you're not supposed to be negative in social situations. Always positive, always chirpy. Maybe that is why it's so toxic online. Because similar to the Victorian age and sexual repression, the always-positive leads to a toxic sublimation into Internet anonymity? I'm just tossing this out there as a thought. A counter would be, the entire world is toxic online.
ssss11 5y ago
Specifically on reddit and twitter, the few times I’ve used them, they seem to be filled with assholes. It seems that these people have no release for their views in the real world and for some reason these social sites are suitable places (from their perspective)

kwhitefoot 5y ago

What is the standard error on these measurements? And what is the variance, that is does the mean satisfaction represent the majority or are there, say, two populations, one very optimistic and the other less so. Perhaps that could explain the outlook seen on HN, etc.

paulddraper 5y ago

This is relief. I believe humanity's condition is getting better and better. But I am surprised most others think so too.

missedthecue 5y ago

I guess happy optimistic people have better things to do than spend their day commenting on Reddit. Bit of selection bias maybe.

fxtentacle 5y ago

It seems to be human nature that people are more happy to talk about misfortune than about lucky events. 60% are thriving. But the 40% that are not probably have a much stronger opinion about things. So you'll hear the loud "minority".

hdivider 5y ago

"These results are striking in contrast to the increasingly cynical outlooks we see on sites like Reddit and even HN. It seems like every comment section is full of negative comments about how terrible everything is or how terrible it's going to be soon. Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective." Agreed, 100%. It's amazing how HN, Reddit and other places select so strongly for the pessimism of the intellect, but quickly shoot down the optimism of the will. Without the latter (informed by the former, sure), civilization would never have advanced this far. Sure, we need realism. And knowledge of what will go wrong. But find the positive -- otherwise, it's more like a withdrawal of people's energy. Thankfully, like you mentioned, the real world, away from these artificial rectangles, is often way more empowering. :)

mancerayder 5y ago

I don't know if HN folks, on average, are grumpy and negative and mean. They might get feisty in a particular debate and there are a lot of sky-is-falling type articles. However, I find Reddit straight-up mean. I rarely participate, and if I do, it's more around specific hobbies, real estate and stock type forums. From the mods all the way down, there's a certain take-ya-down-with-one-liners personality type that seems to just predominate. Similar to Twitter. I'm sure there are good subs, but I'm really curious what it is about Reddit that leads to toxicity on seemingly neutral topics. I always thought it was the young age, but honestly a lot of these people are adults and not teens (teens don't frequent real estate investment subs).

derbOac 5y ago

There's three concerns I have about this, the Cantri measure as it's applied. One is that it's one question. Just one question to summarize your life. The second is that the ends of the scale has always seemed sort of odd to me: "he top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you." Someone who is depressed is probably going to shift a bit in their evaluations of the top and bottom. That is, someone who is visibly and diagnosably depressed will probably imagine a worse best possible life, and also maybe even worse worst possible life. So you could be pretty darn depressed and still rate yourself as moderate. If your options go from "depressing" to "unmentionable hellscape" you could still rate yourself as a 7. Are most people doing this? Maybe not, but it's an odd way to frame the question and leads itself to that. The final concern I have is how many of these are on the phone. If someone randomly called me on the phone to ask, would I go there even if I was really depressed? Probably not. I guess I see these results as pretty interesting but really difficult to interpret. It's like trying to gauge global ocean temperature changes from one temperature reading in your local bay.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
Reddit skews young, and I’ve definitely noticed the younger generation likes to commiserate. There’s also this pervasive sense of doom that the environment and the economy is going to collapse.
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
  There's a pervasive sense of stagnant wages, unaffordable homes, etc in first world and developing countries. In China, it's tangping. In America, it's my step sibling having 0 desire to move out of our parents home (e.g., "Millennials kill X" headlines). Your options are to try very hard, and maybe secure a barely conventional middle class life, or not try. And for people who aren't a fit for the knowledge economy, the second is the optimal choice.
  - muzani 5y ago
    That might explain the ratings. COVID has begun a kind of shift. Those in the upper class are getting it hard. Real estate traders are screwed. Those who pay minimum wage are having difficulty hiring, especially with the number pf deaths from those exposed to it. Things like bus driving come with hefty hazard pay now.

john_moscow 5y ago

I think, this is trickier. Happiness generally consists of 2 components: hedonistic (short-term, "had a great meal" type) and eudaimonic (long-term, "I am doing the right thing and am confident about my future" type). What's happening for at least a decade is that the sources of hedonistic happiness are becoming more accessible(tasty food, booze, entertainment, substances), while things that used to bring eudaimonic happiness are either becoming unaffordable (property ownership, raising kids, financial independence), unpopular (long-term relationships, religion) or economically uncompetitive (small businesses). The media is doing its best to distract people and convince them that they don't want all those long-term things, but you can't really fool the human nature. The tensions are rising, although it may all look great on paper. A more interesting and objective metric would be the suicide rates, but I couldn't easily find anything more recent than 2019.

yann2 5y ago
There is a Gross National Stupidity index thats been on the rise for a while now. So the poll really makes sense.
maroonblazer 5y ago
The study appears to factor in short-term vs long-term happiness. Specifically, they ask respondents to project forward 5 years into the future: >For its Life Evaluation Index, Gallup classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering" according to how they rate their current and future lives
uyt 5y ago
Another problem is because of hedonic adaptation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation People might actually feel happier when moving from a miserable state to a better state compared to being in a good state all along. So we are seeing the effects of people being grateful that recovery is happening, not that the world has already recovered.

RickJWagner 5y ago

I'm usually optimistic, and I think there are bright days ahead. But about this poll-- it seems like it happened before Delta version of Covid got traction. I think if they hold the same survey today, they'll get different results.

muzani 5y ago

My observation is business owners are unhappiest. They're subject to restrictions. Workers don't want to work in the office anymore. People who took minimum wage jobs are dead and more expensive, with bus drivers and janitors getting double pay for danger. Real estate is going to take a dip, especially offices. Most of these things are beneficial to the common man. People have demanded revolution for years and looks like they might get it.

xwolfi 5y ago

Yeah it could be a magnet for people to complain in a safe place where everyone will echo it. However, maybe the study here presented has also some hidden selection.

dominotw 5y ago

> Results like this are a good reminder to log off and go interact with the real world for a more grounded perpsective. Gallup survey was conducted entirely online but "real world" survey [2] (including ppl without internet connection) says otherwise here "Americans' optimism about country's direction over next year drops nearly 20 points since May: POLL In May, a little more than a third were pessimistic. Now, it is a majority." [1] 1. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-direction-year-drops-20-points/story?id=79036435 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-... 2. https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/outside-covid-19-biden-receives-mixed-approval-ratings https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/outside-covid-19-bide...