Great News - Americans Are At Our Most Unhappy As We've Been In 50 Years
FOX 5 - Spoiler alert: 2020 has been rough on the American psyche. Folks in the U.S. are more unhappy today than they’ve been in nearly 50 years.
This bold — yet unsurprising — conclusion comes from the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. It finds that just 14% of American adults say they’re very happy, down from 31% who said the same in 2018. That year, 23% said they’d often or sometimes felt isolated in recent weeks. Now, 50% say that.
The survey, conducted in late May, draws on nearly a half-century of research from the General Social Survey, which has collected data on American attitudes and behaviors at least every other year since 1972. No less than 29% of Americans have ever called themselves very happy in that survey.
Good news, we've never been more sad! That probably goes without saying, but a survey has now confirmed it. 2020 is the saddest year on record, we did it folks. All it took was a world-wide pandemic, no movies, no sports, no travel, no outdoor activities, no seeing friends, all your grandparents dying, and riots in every major city, but we are officially at our all time lowest. BOOM.
But why is this good news?
Easy.
Because now there is nowhere to go but up. What a freeing feeling that is. Historically it will not be worse than this year, so you have a reason to be optimistic moving forward. You have a reason to think that next year will be your year. That you'll see more, do more, create more, explore more. Because even if you do the bare minimum, it's still more than you were able to do this year, and that my friends is what we call a success.
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It is still, STILL, weird to think about. We're still pretty locked down in NYC. COVID rates are low as they have been here, but are still rising in other parts of the country. Like, back in March we would throw pity parties about how sad and lonely we are...that hasn't really changed, but people have either 1) adjusted, or 2) decided to pretend everything is fine when it's not. I don't know about everyone else but I definitely still have days when I go through the motions. When I get angry, mad, frustrated, etc. When I think about changes I want to make in my life because this entire thing happened.
And so I guess that's what 2021 is for. Making changes, getting happy, being more positive, experiencing life. And again, even if you only do 1% more, it's still an improvement. Because fuck 2020. What a dumb ass year it has been.