The quarter-life crisis: are you just being dramatic?

If you’ve ever reached out to a grown-up about your struggles with mental health, only to be invalidated and met with condescending remarks like: “You’ve got it easy, just wait till you get to my age” or the age-old remark that all our parents have had the glee of throwing at us at some point or another: “it’s because you’re always on that phone,” then this article is here to reassure you that your struggles are valid. The research now shows that you don’t necessarily have to wait until you reach middle age to experience some of the most trying times of your life.

Experts in wellbeing now say our satisfaction “rises steadily with age instead,” and young people are experiencing less life satisfaction

A study commissioned by the UN found that the previous standard of life satisfaction as a U shape – higher in youth and older age, with a dip in the middle ages, or what is more commonly recognised as ‘the midlife crisis’ – has now shifted. Experts in wellbeing now say our satisfaction “rises steadily with age instead,” and young people are experiencing less life satisfaction and happiness overall. But why has this shift occurred?

In an interview with The Guardian, leading academic David Blanchflower stated: “We always thought that as life becomes more realistic, happiness declines because of pressures, then you realise life isn’t so bad. We’re having to rethink that entire thought.” The study also suggested that “the trend coincided with the growth of internet usage,” which forces us to question whether our parents were right; is it because of that phone? The rise of global interconnectedness due to social media has had many perks in terms of increasing accessibility of information and arguably greater socio-political awareness among young people today than in previous generations. Yet, perhaps the notion of happiness declining as life and its accompanying pressures become more apparent isn’t entirely inaccurate. Life just became more realistic for us earlier than previous generations, as not only do we face the major life experiences that other generations did, like entering the workforce and the prospect of buying houses and potentially starting families in a crumbling economy, we are bombarded with hundreds of cynical and pessimistic opinions about this daily, and on multiple platforms. Moreover, it’s not just that we might scroll through one or two pessimistic TikToks because while we listen, we are also reading comment after comment, which often reinforces this pessimism and forces us to confront the harsh realities that our generation is having to face.

On top of this, the interconnectedness enabled by social media means that we are potentially a lot more aware than previous generations of the direct impact of our government’s actions and decisions. They not only impact our own lives and our own communities, but on people throughout the country. This exacerbates the bleak circumstances that we will have to face in our twenties, when we were told since childhood that this would be the most fun and carefree decade of our lives.

It is important to remember that we must be in control of our phones and algorithms, rather than letting them control us

While the study also points out the connection between the rising use of smartphones and social media and declining happiness levels, Blanchflower is careful to highlight that: “It’s not so much that people are sitting there on the phone, it’s what they’re not doing. They’re not going out as much; playing with their friends, interacting with others.” I feel that this raises an important point regarding phone and social media usage. The usefulness of social media in creating a more socio-politically aware generation is undeniable, but if we don’t compensate for this by touching grass once in a while, and disconnecting from what is honestly, a bleak and pessimistic political and economic climate, our happiness levels will only continue to plummet. It is important to remember that we must be in control of our phones and algorithms, rather than letting them control us. We should not stop increasing our knowledge and understanding of the reality of the world we live in, but we should definitely take more care not to get too caught up in the bleakness. We should try to disconnect more regularly and pay more attention to the positives and opportunities that we do have, rather than focussing all our attention onto what we don’t.

Maybe our parents weren’t entirely wrong; it might just be that damn phone…