3 ms·

Young people with good jobs who live in dense urban areas seem uniquely unhappy, though.

subsideuropa 6mo ago
[flagged]
cucumber3732842 6mo ago
So then the obvious follow up question is whether it's the young, the job or the urban area (or all three) that's making them unhappy?
- hattmall 6mo ago
  It's the combination, young people are supposed to be doing fun stuff, and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it. And you went for a less desirable living situation because it was cheap but near the fun stuff which was also cheap. Now the amount of fun stuff in cities is drastically reduced, it costs way more to live and the fun stuff is unreasonably expensive. Just going off of my personal experience, the same highrise I used to rent is roughly 50% more. 2k to 3k. Two of the entire nightlife districts that were very close are completely gone, torn down and converted to high rise buildings with very boring very expensive ground level retail. The few places that remain are expensive, $12 for a drink is normal, maybe a draft beer is $8. In contrast, I could go out any night and find $2-3 drinks. $5 pitcher of beer, and get a solid meal for under $10. Almost all of the sports leagues at the park next to the highrise are gone. The only festivals that can afford to operate depend on high ticket sales and drawing people from out of town which makes huge annoying crowds. And I'm not even going back 10 years, this was like 7-8 years ago. If you go back to like 2010 things were even cheaper and more fun.
  - 9rx 6mo ago
    > and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it. Exactly. Humans crave novelty and hate doing what everyone else is doing. That idea was presented because it was still a fairly novel experience to live in the city. Getting to live in the city was seen as something special. Now it is what everyone does, so it isn't novel anymore. You no longer "need to live in the city" because, generally, you are now already there. The novelty is gone. The happy youth have moved on to living the next big thing. Once everyone else starts to recognize what they are doing, general happiness will temporarily increase again... until that new normal loses its novelty and the cycle repeats once more. It is the tale as old as time. This is ultimately the same reason for why people set out to discover and settle in America in the first place!
- asdfman123 6mo ago
  My theory is that unhappiness is not all the various factors other people are talking about, not fundamentally: not money, not neighborhood design, not living in the city vs. living in the country -- its a deeper spiritual problem. If you really want to understand something you need to integrate all the evidence, of course, and not just the parts that support the easy conclusion. It's under-discussed, because we, the technocratic class, have no tools to measure it and not much language to talk about it.
alexashka 6mo ago
Corporate jobs and happiness are incompatible. If it's any consolation - older people at corporate jobs are also unhappy.

[flagged]

So then the obvious follow up question is whether it's the young, the job or the urban area (or all three) that's making them unhappy?

hattmall 6mo ago
It's the combination, young people are supposed to be doing fun stuff, and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it. And you went for a less desirable living situation because it was cheap but near the fun stuff which was also cheap. Now the amount of fun stuff in cities is drastically reduced, it costs way more to live and the fun stuff is unreasonably expensive. Just going off of my personal experience, the same highrise I used to rent is roughly 50% more. 2k to 3k. Two of the entire nightlife districts that were very close are completely gone, torn down and converted to high rise buildings with very boring very expensive ground level retail. The few places that remain are expensive, $12 for a drink is normal, maybe a draft beer is $8. In contrast, I could go out any night and find $2-3 drinks. $5 pitcher of beer, and get a solid meal for under $10. Almost all of the sports leagues at the park next to the highrise are gone. The only festivals that can afford to operate depend on high ticket sales and drawing people from out of town which makes huge annoying crowds. And I'm not even going back 10 years, this was like 7-8 years ago. If you go back to like 2010 things were even cheaper and more fun.
- 9rx 6mo ago
  > and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it. Exactly. Humans crave novelty and hate doing what everyone else is doing. That idea was presented because it was still a fairly novel experience to live in the city. Getting to live in the city was seen as something special. Now it is what everyone does, so it isn't novel anymore. You no longer "need to live in the city" because, generally, you are now already there. The novelty is gone. The happy youth have moved on to living the next big thing. Once everyone else starts to recognize what they are doing, general happiness will temporarily increase again... until that new normal loses its novelty and the cycle repeats once more. It is the tale as old as time. This is ultimately the same reason for why people set out to discover and settle in America in the first place!
asdfman123 6mo ago
My theory is that unhappiness is not all the various factors other people are talking about, not fundamentally: not money, not neighborhood design, not living in the city vs. living in the country -- its a deeper spiritual problem. If you really want to understand something you need to integrate all the evidence, of course, and not just the parts that support the easy conclusion. It's under-discussed, because we, the technocratic class, have no tools to measure it and not much language to talk about it.

alexashka 6mo ago

Corporate jobs and happiness are incompatible. If it's any consolation - older people at corporate jobs are also unhappy.