Research shows that young adults are the unhappiest age groupBlanchflower's most recent working paper, co-authored with Alex Bryson and Xiaowei Xu, shows a change in the pattern, with happiness starting off low in young adulthood and increasing with age. Alongside other researchers, Blanchflower analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. But Wimsatt Childs agrees with Blanchflower that social media likely plays a role in this new pattern of unhappiness. "What social media has done in a lot of ways is it has amplified concerns that were already well underway," she says. Social media — apps like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok — floods people with information and can lead to comparison among peers on a larger scale, she adds.

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Persons: David Blanchflower, Blanchflower, Alex Bryson, Xiaowei Xu, Amber Wimsatt Childs, Wimsatt Childs, I'm Organizations: Dartmouth College, Research, Scientific, Centers for Disease Control, Yale School of Medicine Locations: U.S