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Canada slips in World Happiness rankings, due in part to social media use
- david-gpu 7mo agoI wonder if they may be confusing cause and effect. The cost of living in Canada's major cities is very high, while salaries are stagnant. The primary cause of that is the elevated price of housing. The result is that large portions of the population, particularly younger folks, barely have the financial means to survive. This plus extreme weather and an absence of third places means they stay home. What do people do, then? Browse the Internet, social media, TV. What else are they going to do, realistically? At least in places like Toronto.
- gedy 7mo agoGovernments and societal institutions love to blame external bugbears. Newspapers are certainly no fans of competition from social media.
- rdevilla 7mo agoI dunno. Leave? The economics increasingly don't make sense here relative to other places in the world. It is a bizarre spin on the situation here but the executive summary from the World Happiness Report does indeed put "social media" front and center. I guess.. No interest in digging into the minutiae right now.
- vchynarov 7mo agoI agree the economics here don’t make sense, but leave where? The rest of the world has increasingly strange, or at least unattractive, economics too. The US is a difficult and long process to get a green card. Other English-speaking countries aren’t necessarily better: Australia seems similar in terms of being a natural resource extraction economy with insanely high real estate prices. Same productivity and salary concerns with the UK.
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- chaostheory 7mo agoNon-English speaking country? One alternative is the Philippines. Most of the population is able to speak English.
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- onetokeoverthe 7mo ago[dead]
- jjmarr 7mo agoIt's trivial to move to the USA on a TN1 from Canada compared to any other visa category. If you have a job letter, you show up to the airport and CBP can issue it immediately. This includes software development which is responsible for GDP growth. Which is why 80-90% of CS students at the University of Waterloo immediately move to the USA after graduation.
- brailsafe 7mo agoIf I could, I wouldn't. The U.S is fine usually to visit, but I wouldn't prefer to live there. Thankfully there are theoretically other alternatives that are much more appealing regardless of absolute earnings. The vibes could be better north of the border, but the U.S gives the ick
- rdevilla 7mo ago> Which is why 80-90% of CS students at the University of Waterloo immediately move to the USA after graduation. I am familiar with this statistic. It explains a lot about the Toronto tech community, especially versus Waterloo's.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago> It's trivial to move to the USA on a TN1 from Canada compared to any other visa category Okay, but as a Canadian, why would I? American seems like a shithole. All of my American friends are trying to get out asap
- jszymborski 7mo agoYou can replace Canada here with almost any other OECD country and this would be accurate.
- david-gpu 7mo agoI encourage anybody to go look at the magnitude of the largest housing bubbles in the past few decades. Canada's ranks near or at the top in any comparison from any source.
- jszymborski 7mo agoHousing affordability has been in the dumps for years now and Canada's happiness ranking was much higher in previous years.
- david-gpu 7mo agoThings are getting worse in a variety of areas, not only housing. But no, it must be that we never heard of social media until two years ago.
- jszymborski 7mo agoI agree that the social media explanation is weak, but the things dragging Canada down are the same amongst most of the western world in my opinion, is all.
- justinhj 7mo agoCBC which gets $1b of tax payer money to promote only the sitting government, which they do none stop, thinks people are unhappy because of social media. Terrible.
- BrokenCogs 7mo agoThe CBC is reporting the analysis of The World Happiness Report - it's not coming to its own conclusions. Maybe you should read the article and original source yourself before making hasty comments.
- justinhj 7mo agoI don't click that garbage I've read enough of their work to know. They are the enemy of Canadians.
- metalman 7mo agoI agree the CBC is a worn out sock puppet, not like when I was a kid and zosky could call ANY world leader and they would pick up the fucking phone eh!
- lm411 7mo agoCBC used to be so excellent. Now we've got a CBC that punishes those that go against their political ideology - funded by the Liberals, with people like David Cameron and Rosemary Barton choosing who gets to be on discussion panels.
- ChrisArchitect 7mo agoSource: https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2026/ https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2026/
- lm411 7mo agoCost of living and the seemingly continuous drop in quality of life are playing a much bigger role than social media use. Trudeau's devastating policies may have done well for the pat-themselves-on-the-back-because-we're-so-great folks, but, the country is really not doing well. Born and raised Canadian, but I lived outside of Canada in a non-OECD country for most of Trudeau's tenure, and returned a few years ago. The changes - almost all for the worse - in Canada during that period are quite astounding. And obvious to me as someone who rarely visited Canada until I moved back. I think Canadians suffer a sort of a "boiling frog" thing, where the changes were gradual enough that they don't realize how much things have turned to crap. My wife and I have already decided that we will leave Canada again once our son graduates high school. We stay here for him so he can be with his friends, and that is the only reason. It's such a shame as the country truly has so much potential to be awesome, and I love the people here.
- applied_heat 7mo agoWhat country will you go to? I’m leaning towards mexico