1: Arthur Brooks is a specialist in the science of happiness.
But in the fall of 2019, he wasn’t feeling very happy himself.
“I felt very unheimlich,” he writes in his new book The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
Unheimlich?
“That’s a German word that’s hard to translate precisely,” Arthur notes. “It means the gut feeling of uneasiness you get when things just…aren’t right at home.
“Like if you walk into your childhood house after being away at college and sense that something is very wrong. Maybe it smells off, or your parents are acting weird, like they have bad news to tell you.”
What you feel is dread, but you’re not exactly sure what’s causing it or why you feel this way.
After ten years of serving as president of a big nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., Arthur was now working as a professor at Harvard.
He was “home.”
“For me, ‘home’ means campus, because that’s where I find my people,” he writes. “I was born to be a college professor and, in fact, have been on campuses since I was a baby: My dad was a professor. His dad, too. For me, academia is the family business, and mine as well since I took my first professorship nearly thirty years ago.
“The research is interesting and rewarding,” Arthur observes, “but even more, the students are my people—ambitious strivers just starting out on what promise to be terrific careers and lives. They give me energy because they always are so inspired by ideas, so purpose-driven, and so enthusiastic.”
He looked forward to being around students again whose optimism and energy had always inspired him.
But that’s not what happened.
“When I returned, it was very unheimlich,” he notes. “The atmosphere had darkened, as larger and larger percentages of students were suffering from depression and anxiety. At some colleges and universities, more than half of students were receiving mental health treatment.”
His office hours felt more like counseling sessions than tutoring.
“Hope and optimism,” Arthur writes, “seemed like they had been replaced by anger and sadness. And fear.
“Students feared exposure to ideas they found objectionable and made them feel emotionally unsafe, and faculty were terrified to lecture on anything that might offend the students.”
Then things got worse.
The COVID-19 lockdowns shut down most colleges and universities.
“My students languished in their childhood bedrooms in their parents’ homes or lived by themselves in campus housing, as most of their contact with the outside world consisted of Zoom classes, social media, and YouTube videos,” he recalls.
Even after the lockdowns ended, the problems seemed to get worse.
“I saw the crisis on campus,” Arthur writes, “but that was just where it was most obvious and visible to me. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and anger were cropping up everywhere, especially among young adults.”
Suddenly, the news was full of stories about a mental health crisis.
“According to the American Psychological Association,” he notes, “the percentage of American adolescents with symptoms of major depression nearly tripled from 2005 to 2019, while anxiety almost doubled.
“The percentage of American adults of all ages who are ‘not too happy’ about their lives had more than doubled from 2000 to 2023.”
Women, in particular, were suffering: “45 percent of female Americans between ages twelve and twenty-six had received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression by 2024,” Arthur shares.
“From 2004 until 2024, the percentage of women thirty and under who said their mental health was ‘excellent’ plummeted, from 48 percent to 15 percent.”
2: Arthur believes the data points to what he calls a “psychogenic epidemic.”
What is that?
It’s “a phenomenon that causes tremendous suffering but has no organic cause, meaning the onset is social or psychological, not biological,” he notes.
With his background in the science of happiness, Arthur started writing and speaking about this epidemic as he tried to understand its causes.
“And as I did this work,” he writes, “I found something even more mysterious: Those who should be the best off—the hardworking strivers at places like my university—were actually suffering the most.”
He started by looking at the most common explanations.
“A very common one,” Arthur explains, “is that young adults have gotten a bait-and-switch from older generations, who promised them that if they worked hard and played by the rules, they would have a great life.
“Instead, they found that houses are impossibly expensive in the cities that offer the most rewarding jobs, and raising kids gets harder every year. Meanwhile, the social security and medical systems they are paying into will be bankrupt by the time they are old.
“On top of that,” he shares, “there are looming environmental threats, rising inequality, and a host of other problems. Thanks for all the empty promises and the screwed-up world, boomers.”
Others think the problem is with young adults themselves. “With their supposed culture of indulgence, narcissism, and entitlement,” Arthur suggests.
“When many people my age hear the complaint that life is so much worse today, and that they had things so much easier in the old days, they just roll their eyes.
“When their adult kids talk about environmental problems,” he writes, “they recall growing up with smog-choked freeways, burning rivers, and nuclear-bomb drills during the Cold War.
“When they hear how unaffordable housing is, they’re likely to point out the lousy apartment they rented—with a rolled-up futon in the corner and a two-ring burner to cook on—when they were starting out.”
3: But these explanations don’t capture what’s really happening.
“They just blame a deep philosophical and psychological problem on another generation’s selfishness,” Arthur writes. “There’s nothing new about that: Every generation resents their elders and then looks down on ‘kids these days.’
“But this psychogenic epidemic is real and unprecedented,” he states.
Another, more scientific theory? People are spending more time looking down at their phones instead of engaging with the world around them.
“Citing stacks of studies and data in his bestseller The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt of New York University has argued that rather than interacting with other people in real life, young people now look at screens, and that this has led to the explosion of depression and anxiety.”
What does Arthur think about this explanation? He finds Jonathan’s analysis “totally convincing,” he says. “In my own research, I find a clear relationship between social media use and emotional problems.
“As a general rule,” Arthur writes, “the more time you spend looking at your phone, the more depressed, lonely, and anxious you will become.”
The bigger question is: What are people looking for that they aren’t finding as they spend hours scrolling?
“What is it that the young strivers so deeply crave but can’t find? And why can’t they find it?” he asks.
Arthur believes “the overuse of tech is a soothing behavior because something important is absent in their lives—and this behavior is probably also making that something harder to find.
“It’s like alcohol or recreational drugs, which people often abuse when what they really want in life—hope, opportunity, love—is absent, but which makes their problem worse.”
To better understand what was really happening, he decided to ask people to share their stories.
We’ll focus on that tomorrow!
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Reflection: When you reach for your phone to distract yourself, what might you really be seeking—connection, comfort, meaning, or something else?
Action: The next time you find yourself scrolling without a purpose, pause and ask what you actually need. Choose one way to meet that need without your phone.
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