There are also other factors that are not easily quantifiable, even though they might be more important: deep connections with other humans, supportive local communities, finding meaning in something outside of yourself, feeling connected to your vocation etc.

Byung-Chul Han would have a lot to say on this matter.

I would argue that by those measures, we are worse than let's say 50y ago.

Materially, most places in the world are better off than 20 years ago, or at least haven't worsened.

But emotionally, people now inhabit virtual places full of relentless negativity. That is the problem.

The "problem" is that it's all comparative, even if in absolute terms you are right - life is undeniably better than it used to be by every metric.

But to give you an example - my grandma had 8 siblings, out of which only 4 survived into adulthood. They mostly died before even turning 1, the typical "one day he was fine, the next day he turned purple and died, the nearest doctor was 2 hours away if your neighbour let you borrow a horse cart, so that's just what it was" case. Her father and her uncle were taken into Auschwitz and miraculously returned but never wanted to talk about the horrors they have seen while there. For the rest of her life she endured living under communism, seeing her peers in other countries have access to riches she could only dream of.

So now when you talk to her, how can you blame her for thinking that kids nowadays are spoiled, if they have everything provided for them, they have never experienced physical violence of any kind, but they are all depressed and sad about life being shit and saying how it was better in the good old days.

Like, from her perspective, it's impossible to understand.

But also, from the kids perspectives nowadays, all they know is a world where the "old" people have houses, jobs, stable incomes, and they cannot even hope for any of it. 50 year mortgages, 700 job applications with no interview, social media blasting images of a life that they know they can't ever have.....of course they are depressed. Just showing them stats that say "you live better, comfier, safer andd healthier lives than pretty much anyone else ever in the history of humanity" is not going to help if all they know is how much "worse" they have it than the people who came before them.

I’m 20 years older than I was in 2005. My kids moved out of state, and I barely get to see them. My hip hurts most of the time.

Of course I’m joking, but people do generally look back fondly on their youth. I think that’s a big reason for the perception that everything is awful now compared to the recent past.

To quote one of my favorite movies: “In prison I learned that everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality... but the perception of reality”

We are much more constantly aware of the chaos of our world through social media. And in regards to mental illness, perception is reality.

That and of course, housing prices. Jebus, 20 years ago I paid $400 per month for a studio apartment in the downtown of a major city.

I do find this an interesting retort though. I would argue that if a few numbers go one way, and broad sentiment goes another way, things _have_ gotten worse. Like this whole argument on “life’s gotten worse” is inherently subjective so subjective measures have more validity.

Housing costs, social life (2005 is pre-iPhone), the value of an education, future outlook for careers/jobs, the mere existence of certain jobs pre-AI (i.e. writing), political polarization, to name a few off the top of my head.

To take the example of a minor little necessity like shelter, housing affordability is far worse today than it was 20 years ago, despite the fact that we were near the peak of a huge credit-driven housing bubble at that time.

> Throughout time, people have complained that technology is ruining the world. Before AI it was the internet, and before that it was TV, nuclear power, and so on.

What if throughout time they have been right ? Any proof thst while tech brought longer lifes and more material wealth, we haven’t just spiraled down for a while in term of mental wellbeing, sense of meaning, sense of belonging etc ?

That’s obviously not true of every piece of tech (I.e. it’s hard to imagine how antibiotics or replacing a coal plant by a nuclear power plant could have negative impact of people’s mental wellbeing) but it could be true about technology in general. It’s not a stretch to believe that technologies that radically transform what a day in the life of a human being looks like, can also have an impact on said human beings life.

Our bodies and mind, have been finetuned for living in nature and hunting gathering, with a small group consisting of our families and friends for millions of years. Now we live a sedentary life, for many away from family and without any sense of community, in large, noisy, devoid of nature cities having to do day in day out the same job that is more and more compartimentalized and less and less concrete and meaningful, only to go home and sit in front of a tv to be bombarded by ads trying to induce fomo, or god forbid, doom scrolling on tik tok for hours.

If it just so happened that those two modes of life generate the exact same levels and qualities of stress in our little brains, that would be quite the coincidence.

Look at every stat around mental health: anxiety, depression, sense of meaning etc. They are all getting worse over decades. And if you think it’s caused by people just complaining more than before, look at how the rate of people willing to kill themselves, that’s the ultimate truth. All worsening.