Being successful and happy
March 20th has been designated as the International Happiness Day since 2012.
Oxford Wellness Institute publishes the World Happiness Report with data from 147± countries regularly since 2012. Looking back in history we notice great economic strides making people wealthier than ever before. People are well educated and living longer too. Science and technology have contributed in improving the living standard of people globally indicating a success in overall human development. No doubt, there are rich and the poor, and sick and healthy everywhere, nevertheless overall progress cannot be denied. A question one must ask is, are people happy though?The idea of happiness is subjective, relative and contextual. Happiness is not a permanent state of mind as it depends on a lot of circumstances - personal and exogenic influences, both of which change with time. Does economic success or being powerful contribute to happiness? If economic success is key to happiness, one would expect all the billionaires to be happy. Are they? Maybe not, as they want more billions. If being powerful is the key to happiness one would expect all our leaders to be happy. Are they? Maybe not, as they want more power, possibly for ever! Forget the rich and powerful, what about the average people, youth and children, are they happy?
People experience stress, anxiety, loneliness, feeling of voidness, lack of personal fulfillment and financial inadequacy, which varies widely depending on social, cultural and economic factors. Overall, people seem not as happy as they can be. When you walk around streets, markets and travel in public transport it is impossible not to notice homelessness, destitutes and people with a feeling of anger and impatience in everyday life, including among people looking well to do. What is causing people to be stressed, a bit confused, and even a look of misery at times? These are the ones we see in streets; there must be many more hidden in their homes or wherever they live away from the public space. There may be regional differences but this problem is everywhere with a varying degree of ubiquity.
Fuel to the fire of unhappiness
We live in a fiercely competitive world where people are chasing an elusive dream set by someone else - parents, peers, friends, social media, etc. which may collide with one's own idea of happiness and dream. Such pressure simply has become unavoidable obstacles on the way to happiness. Besides the pressure there are many interrelated reasons that make people unhappy such as societal polarisation, lack of stable job, family breakdown, not being able to provide a decent living for the family, rupture of social cohesion and loneliness due to lack of stable relationship. On many occasions people intuitively compare lifestyle with others and set unrealistic milestones despite not being able to afford, triggering self-torment. These are not new reasons for lack of happiness. To these existing reasons that sparks unhappiness, internet technology has become a new fuel to the fire of unhappiness.
Advances in cyber technology have swallowed job markets of semiskilled and even many skilled labour including in white collar category. The shrinking of jobs has gone much more beyond traditional automation in mechanical works and cashiers' jobs. Semiskilled and many skilled talents in banking, insurance, telecom, and customer technical service have all been absorbed by automated online services. The growth in the job market is largely limited to highly skilled technical fields only. Wages of low paying unskilled and semiskilled jobs remain stagnant resulting in widening of income disparity, a real reason for people to be unhappy as their income is not able to match rising cost of living - health care, housing, daily grocery and other incidental needs. Head on collision to that is the rise in all forms of taxes for the average person while the rich and the powerful are shielded with bureaucratic umbrellas protecting their tax brackets.
Privatisation has helped economic boom in many countries but it seems to have gone too far with big firms taking over medium and smaller firms thus killing competition. For example, when production, import, distribution and outlets of groceries and medicines are controlled by a handful of private firms, it results in price fixing. The governments should at least be able to regulate pricing of basic necessities such as food, medicine, water and energy. It is one of the biggest failures of the capitalist economy and a reason for a lot of people to be unhappy.
Social media, a new drug
The World Happiness Report (WHR 2025) narrated a rise in pessimism and sharp drop in benevolent acts of people. The report also stated continuous decline in household size. According to WHR, 19 percent of young adults feel lonely and have no one to confide in for social support. We must ask how much of these psychosocial problems are related to social media marketing of unachievable dreams besides other social and economic problems people are experiencing?
Based on service provider data there are 7.2 bn active smartphones in use (may include multiple devices ownership), at the end of 2025. Majority of people basically live and sleep with their devices. First thing people do in the morning is check their phone(s). There are ~3.1 bn users of Facebook, 2 bn Instagram users and 1.8 bn TikTok users. Needless to say, the Lords of these Social Media groups do not disclose the user data but based on user logged in data collected by DataReportal, the daily users of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok falls on the following age range: 27%, 35-43% and 47-63% of users between 13 to 24 years of age respectively. The other major users are, 25 to 34 years: 27-34% Facebook, 30-35% Instagram and 20-28% TikTok.
Social media has facilitated sharing news, views, messages, pictures and videos globally with the touch of a button, including press releases of our Dear Leaders. All social media carries free and subscription-based news portals. But it also carries an infinite amount and variety of misleading misinformation, disinformation, ad-based video clips and messages showing glamorous lifestyles, holiday destinations, famous eating places, best clothing suitable for your personality for different seasons, stories about famous celebrities for you to emulate, etc. There are addictive videos, games including gambling and other web-based games which one can play, some for free other for a fee. There are marketings of personal beauty products that can magically smoothen your wrinkled skin in one week, reduce several pounds of weight in weeks with a special supplement or by sticking a patch on your belly. Social media have become even more aggressive with the application of the AI in pushing video ads 24/7 with AI created beauties in a language of your choice. The traditional saying 'what you see is what you believe' is no longer true. Unfortunately, people fall for such lies and gimmicks easily. One can continue to click and scroll until one's fingers are tired and the brain starts to hallucinate.
Are there solutions?
What people see, read and hear in social media raises expectations and self-comparison; when such expectations are not met, they, especially children and youth become unhappy resulting in many emotional and psychosocial problems. Social media has diverted their time and cognition away from the real world. There are numerous studies demonstrating the negative impacts of social media resulting in mental disorder, anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem and so on among children and youth in many countries. The research also proved a positive dose-response relationship with higher impact with higher usages, especially among girls (WHO, 25 Sept 2024). Are there solutions? Maybe. Few countries have initiated banning smartphones in schools. It is like a band-aid on heart surgery. Smart devices are not the problem; they are actually useful. The problem is lack of regulations on what should and should not be allowed in social media. The authorities should take actions on fake advertising, misinformation and disinformation. The technology to track the origins of such messages exist but no country has taken any initiatives in taking actions against this citing freedom of information as people's rights. Is freedom of information more important than the lives of children and youth? You be the judge.
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Are you happy or unhappy?
ReplyDeleteThe annual rankings of the world’s happiest and least happy countries make for interesting reading. One cannot help noticing that the nations consistently topping the happiness charts are, by and large, the same countries that provide the bulk of UNICEF’s funding. Meanwhile, those at the bottom, the perennial “least happy”, are the very places where much of that funding is spent.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, a certain logic to this: prosperous, stable societies tend to generate both the resources and the political will to support international aid, while fragile states struggle with the very conditions that make people unhappy in the first place. Yet the persistence of this pattern, year after year, raises an uncomfortable question.
If development assistance is working as intended, should we not expect at least some movement in the global happiness landscape? Should the list of chronically unhappy countries remain so static? At what point does the lack of change become a signal rather than a coincidence?
This is an invitation to reflect on whether the tools, assumptions, and incentives of the aid system are aligned with the outcomes we claim to seek. If happiness is a proxy for well‑being, dignity, and opportunity, then its stubborn immobility in many countries ought to give us pause.
Perhaps the real question is not why the happiest countries keep giving, but why the least happy remain so unchanged despite decades of effort. That, surely, is food for thought.
Thanks, Thomas, for your observations. I think the state of happiness is a complicated state of mind. At the personal level it is decided by many personal characteristics, including greed. At the national level, which is the focus of the report, depends on countries’ political and economic stability. Costa Rica is among the top five happiest countries although it is not among the ‘giving’ countries. The idea of happiness as described in the report depends on many external factors as much as internal ones. External factors such as direct or indirect political interference, economic interest of foreign ‘friends’ in resource rich countries, etc. Many such countries are fighting terrorism, which appears out of nowhere, which then calls for external ‘assistance’. Who is funding the terror groups. Looking at the countries at the bottom of the list almost all countries are suffering from lack of political stability, which influences people’s income and personal security. There is no reason for so many resource rich counters to be unhappy. The short answer is political instability. Ramesh
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