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Are the tech improvements truly the cause? Or are you just becoming less happy/content as you age. The stereotype of a crotchety old person comes to mind.

The Douglas Adam's quote comes to mind https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/39828-i-ve-come-up-with-a-s...

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”




I did a quick google and found

> The total number of teenagers who recently experienced depression increased 59% between 2007 and 2017. The rate of growth was faster for teen girls (66%) than for boys (44%).

(https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/12/a-growing-n...)

So that's some evidence that we really are getting less happy. I would say the biggest change over that time period is smart phones became ubiquitous.


This quote comments on our prejudices about technology, but has nothing to say about whether or not a given development in technology is actually good or bad. Things don't always have to just keep getting better, and often, in practice, they don't. So, the challenge is to firewall our immediate response to something in tech from our overall evaluation of it.


People actually get happier as they get older though. I think above 45ish.


It's less that they cause unhappiness, than that they often do little to improve it. Different, not better.




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