The Truth About Generational Differences

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It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales Odu is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odu at odoo. com ODOO We know that week nights are not for the week But are you gonna throw in the kitchen towel and order takeout? No way. You've got Landa Lakes butter, a skillet, and a plan Landa Lakes Eat it like you own it Pushkin If you're a fan of my work or of this podcast, you've probably heard the story of how I got interested in happiness research in the first place. If not, here's a very quick version. Back in twenty eighteen, I was an Ivy League psychology professor minding my own business when I started noticing that something was changing on college campuses The students I saw in my classes day after day, year after year Over time, they seemed different. They were more stressed, less joyful, more overwhelmed Less happy, more depressed. wayay less resilient and way more anxious I got so worried about this generation of college students that I decided to drop everything and fully retrain in the science of happiness just so I could help them As I worked with students more closely, I found myself thinking, manan, the kids today What's up with them? Why are they so different than the generations that came before them Why are young people today so messed up As I became more of an expert on the science of happiness, IGa asked a lot of these very same questions I gave interview after interview, emphatically claiming that the kids today weret different that they were doing worse than any generation before them. It turns out that this is a crisis Nationally for our young people right now. Over fifty percent of college students say they feel hopeless most of the time. Over sixty percent of college students report feeling overwhelming anxiety most days. I used strong phrases like the mental health crisis. I saw the college student mental health crisis, collllege student mental health crisis. This is the mental health crisis that our students and our young people are facing nationally I shared study after study showing just how much young people's well being had worsened over time. Academic stress is one of the highest we've seen kind of historically since we've been measuring this. And I wasn't alone Even now it feels like nearly every article you see about the kids today involves some scholar talking about how messed up they are. Some of those scholars even get pretty judgy. arguing not just that the kids today are struggling, but that they're coddled or lazy I tell you all of this to set up just how hot of a hot takeake today's happppiness hot Take is going to be Because today's happiness hottake is this I'm starting to think that the kids today are allright. or at least as alright as the kids in any generation have ever been Now you may be thinking, wait, Laurie, after all those interviews, do you really think you had the youth mental health crisis wrong? Well, get ready to find out because we're gonna go on a bit of an adventure, a deep dive into what our minds get wrong when it comes to judging the kids today, and what we can do to give them a bit more compassion Aans are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction You're listening to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. kid growing up in the nineteen eighties. College student mental health expert Alexis Redding had a very special connection with the action movie hero, Indiana Jones. My childhood dog was named Indiana Jones The reason why my childhood dog was named Indiana Jones is that my father was an archeologist Having an archeologist's dad during the Indiana Jones era would come to define a lot of Alexis's childhood Every afternoon after school Alexis would head to the museum where her father worked She'd find ways to entertain herself, as her dad spent hours methodically trying to figure out stories of the past that were hidden in small bits of bone and pottery But Alexis's real introduction to archaeology came when she turned eight years old and got a chance to travel to her father's field site at the Great Pyramid of Giza He and his team spent several decades actually running the Guiza Plateau Mapping proroject, which was unearthing the workers' village the human beings who raised the pyramids and telling the stories of their lives Up until that point, what my father did was a little bit vague, but I didn't understand what it meant to be in the field. I hadn't seen that up close and it was eye opening to see how meticulous the work was, you know, literally using paint brrushes and toothbrushes to move bits of sand away. and the amount of enthusiasm he had over finding it trashed up because with such a treasure trove of information when you're an archaeologist of the layer after layer human life and and what is left behind The fictional character, Indiana Jones famously fell in love with archaeology when he first visited his father's Egyptian field site Did that visit to Giza set Alexis onto a similar path It was Fascinating and entirely not for me Archaeology involved dealing with a lot of dust. And Alexis was not a fan of dust, But she did inherit her father's passion for figuring out hard academic puzzles And the hard academic puzzle Alexis took on is the subject of today's happappiness Hot takeake. the mental health of kids these days. I study the experience of young adults navigating transitions, the transition from high school into college, from college into the workforce and I specialize in mental health and wellbeing during those processes. Alexis is the faculty co chair of Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. and the editor of a new book entitled Mental Health in College, What Research tellells Us About Supporting Students. Texas is therefore very well versed in the way that adults typically talk about the kids today There is a narrative that somehow this generation is so decidedly different than the generation that came before Alexis bought into this narrative herself when she was beginning her doctoral studies She knew about all the data, showing that rates of depression and anxiety were on the rise in modern students She too wondered what was wrong with them But Alexis's take on the kids today changed back in twenty sixteen when she got an unexpected call from a Harvard administrator offering three thousand dollars for a somewhat unorthodox summer research project. As a doc student, somebody offers you three thousand dollars. to do any sort of intellectually engaging work. You say yes. What was this unusual project? Well, that Harvard administrator and her team had been cleaning out the attic of the University's Bureau of Study Council builduilding. when they stumbled onto something unexpected. They. found this A recessed bookshelf that they had forgotten was there It was behind an old dusty tapestry, and it was behind these locked glass doors n that hidden bookshelf were boxes and boxes of old research materials. And what she told me is that they had these old conversations with students, recordings of student interviews with young people who were navigating the college years And they didn't know what to do with them, but they felt like there was something interesting there. Alexis also thought there might be something of interest there. One of the most foundational studies in Alexis's field of college student development was published back in nineteen sixty eight by famed Harvard psychologist doror William Perry involved extensive interviews with university students from the nineteen fifties. That sounded suspiciously similar to what the Harvard administrator had stumbled across Conversations in those old boxes be Perry's original interviews from his foundational paper Could they offer a glimpse into what college student mental health was like back in the day? And by comparison, how bad things had gotten today? You know, being the daughter of an archaeologist means that you are primed to go on a grand adventure of discovery. and that seems like a typical thing to do Alexis's first visit to the A atttic archive did indeed feel like a grand adventure When she pulled back the tapestry, she found piles and piles and piles of old research materials. But it was a mess. It was like you ask a kid to clean their room and everything goes into the closet. like that had happened over maybe twenty years. The attic space also featured the very thing Alexis most detested when visiting her dad's field site dust filled I spent part of my three grand on, you know, claratin and an air purifier so that I could spend time up there Dust. Why'd it have to be dust But Clarein in hand, Alexis got to work trying to make sense of the mess should begin organizing all the random papers in those boxes She discovered card catalogs of old interviews, outdated training materials And then one day, Alexis stumbled upon a sheet of paper that didn't match the others Everything about it looked and felt different. Like the paper felt different ple Mimeograph ink. The font was like a little thicker from an old school typewriter purple inked page appeared to be a transcript of a student being interviewed about his mental health struggles Could this be a conversation from Perry's foundational nineteen fiftty study? The only way to find out was to locate the rest of those pages As weeks and weeks of searching past, slowly but surely, more of those strange purple pages turned up And then I found page eighteen right in the middle of the page said President Nixon and the Vietnam War. This was supposed to be from the fifties and sixties. My history's bad, but that's later, right? That's later. I had this moment in the attic of like, I'm not a presidential historian, but I feel like that's off. Tricky Dick was president from nineteen sixty nine until nineteen seventy four That was more than a decade after Perry had concluded his foundational study, whichich means that I didn't have something from the original study. That' something from a replicated study from the nineteen seventies Now this is my field. I know the literature, I know that this study was never published. Had Perry conducted a second study with a new group of students from the nineteen seventies One that he had never published or even told other scholars about. That seemed unlikely. But Alexis needed to know for sure. So she tracked down several people who had worked at the Bureau of Study Council back in the day And those former staff members said, Oh yeah, I remember. Dr. Perry did try to redo that original study. Oh, and it took forever, they explained It turns out that Perry had spent ten painstaking years, collecting hundreds and hundreds of hours of student interviews from the nineteen seventies on real to real tapes. Texas was floored She hadn't found the interviews behind Perry's original publication But in some ways, she'd stumbled across something even more remarkable completely forgotten follow up study, filled with unpublished student voices from the nineteen seventies. Somewhere out there were hundreds of tape recordings, of data that could provide a never before glimpsed peek into the mental health of her father's generation Those lost tapes could be the key to finally understanding what was so different about the kids today And now we just need it to find them happiness Lab, we'll be back in a moment I've been thinking about my spaces lately And I've realized just how much thoughtful design can change the feel of my everyday routines. But I honestly never expected a toilet to be part of that conversation. until I experienced the Kohler Smart tooilet collection Kohler has been elevating bathroom design since eighteen seventy three And you can really feel that legacy in the way their products are designed. the Koler Vail smmart toilet design immediately stands out It's modern, sleek, almost like a functional work of art It just makes your entire bathroom experience feel more elevated It's a reminder that the right design can make everyday moments feel cleaner, more comfortable, and more intentional Cohler has been redefining bathroom design for more than one hundred and fifty years And their smart toilets really show how design and innovation can transform even the most routine parts of life Design changes everything And Kar smart toilets are a really great example of that Exience the difference of Koler smart toilets Find more at Kohler. com As the weather changes, I've been thinking more and more about my wardrobe. And these days, I've been trying to get more intentional about what's in my closet getting dressed to feels simpler. So I've been leaning into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable, but still look put together been obsessed with Quince's one hundred percent organic cotton poplin tiered Maxie dress It's got a fit that feels sleek but it's still super comfortable And I couldn't believe how great the price was Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday wardrobe this spring, with pieces that feel as good as they look Quince uses premium materials like one hundred percent European linen, organic cotton, and ultra soft denim Plus, Quince works directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen So you're paying for quality and craftsmanship. notot brand markup Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use Head to quQince. com slash happiness for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. That's QuincE d. com slash happppiness for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince d. com slash happiness This message is in partnership with Smbol Mills On our show, we talk a lot about how small choices can have a big impact on your well beinging And one choice that often gets overlooked The snacks you reach for during the day It might sound simple, but the right snack can help you feel energized and focused Two things that make sticking to healthy habits so much easier body feels good, your mind follows. That's why I feel good talking about Simple Mill's almond flour crackers They are made with real nutrient rich ingredients like almond flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds And the bonus These crackers have a unique, crunchy texture They're absolutely delicious, and I promise they'll make you look forward to snack time We all know that unhealthy snacking can derail even the best intentions Simple mills crackers do the opposite Now I hope you know, I'm not a big ad speak person But when they say simple Mills crackers taste like sunshine in every bite, It's actually a pretty good description They're light, satisfying, and instead of weighing you down, you feel a little more energized. Choosing snacks that fuel your body well is one of those small but powerful steps that make other healthy habits stick And if you're looking for something filled with its own little reward system Check out simple mill pop ms. Yes, spelled with three Ms. These light airy, poppable cheese crackers are loaded with real vegetables, so you get that quick crunch without compromising your energy It's a mindful choice that feels good and tastes great The bottom line, habits don't happen in isolation They're supported by the environment you create and the choices you make along the way pick snacks that help you feel good, physically and mentally, you're setting yourself up for success. And success should taste good. Find simple mills at your local grocery store There's always something you want to get better at For me this summer, it's all about learning more about music If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you know that I love my sing alongs But these days I've been thinking about learning how to DJ so that I can supplement that That's why I turned to masterclass With masterclass, no matter what you're interested in, you can find a class taught by someone who's actually the best in the world at that thing When I first learned how to DJ, I found classes by amazing teachers like Quest Love And masterclass fits into my busy professor life I love their short lessons, which I can watch on my phone or on my TV And with audio mode, Masterclass can turn your commute or workout into a classroom Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least fifteen percent off any annual membership. at masterclass d. com slash Lorry fifteen percent off at masterclass d. com slash Lori head to masterclass. com slash Laori to see the latest offer Anytim people see something bad in the world, they're like, well, that didn't used to be there. We'll get back to Alexis Redding's adventure in just a moment But before we do, I want to introduce you to a different psychologist onene who also spends a lot of time thinking about how people have changed over time His name is Adam Mastroani There's some horrible murder on the news. It's like, you know, they didn't used to do that. Some politician does something unethical, you know, they didn't used to do that It seems like we have all the stuff in the present that I just don't think we used to have in the past. and I think part of that is because like No one really knows what the past was like, even the people who were there for it. Adam's an expert on what our minds get wrong when we think about how people used to behave back in the day especially when it comes to their moral goodness ike I had spent my whole life hearing people say like, you know, you used to be able to leave your door unlocked at night and everything would be fine. You used to be able to trust a man's word. and now you can't, know this fallen, sinful, evil world we live in is not the world we used to live in. I can remember a world or at least I've been told about one. that wasn't so mean and nasty. People love making sweeping claims like these Lack in my day, people were better. Society these days is going right downhill. pererhaps more relevant for Alexis's work in today's Happiness Hot takeake discussion The kids today, they're so much more sensitive and fragile and depressed than my generation was Climes like these kind of piss Adam off He often finds himself wondering, do we have any real evidence that people are actually getting worse over time? It's like things can get better and things can get worse. I think it's merely that the standard of evidence for things getting worse is so much lower than the standard of evidence for things getting better. It's like you don't really need to provide any proof to feel convinced or to be convincing that like something new and bad has happened And Adam is quick to point out that whether people think other people's behavior has changed matters a lot Take, for example, what we think about how nice the average person has become over time If you think you used to live in a nice world and now you live in a nasty world, Like what difference that must make for the way that you conduct yourself? Because for one thing, you might be a little more licensed to be nasty if you think like, well, that's kind of what we're doing now. The rules are out the window, so I can't trust other people. Therefore I don't have to be a trustworthy person either. Everybody else is cheating, so I should cheat too. Our beliefs about people's moral decline can also have big political consequences. If someone's like, Hey, man, things used to be great. Now they're bad Wouldn't it be awesome if they were good again? Just like put me in charge and I'll do it. And like by the way, if you could turn off all the rules and like give me unlimited power, that'd be really helpful. But you should do that because we live in these unprecedented times where things for the first time have gotten really bad, That means we should take unprecedented measures to turn them back around So like this is a favite refrain of aspiring dictators and autocrats everywhere. But do we really believe that people today are worse than they were decades ago am wanted more than just anecdotes. So he surveyed a nationally representative group of subjects And ask them to rate how kind, honest, nice, and good people are today versus in the past. In every survey we did, people were like, todayay is the worst time. And when you ask me about the past, it gets better. You can even tell the difference between today and four years ago. It just gets a step worse each time we get closer to the present. But have we always thought that the kids were worse back in the day ere we had a major head start in that other people had asked other people these questions for a very long time. So we have all this archival survey data gathered for decades and around the world where people are asked questions like Do you think things are getting worse? Do you think people are less respectful than they used to be? less ethical, less kind, less friendly? Adam was able to gather lots of data from these archival surveys. He amassked more than two hundred thousand data points, testing people all over the world Going back as far as the nineteen forties And in more than eighty percent of these archival surveys, most people said, yep, people today are worse than they were in the past. So we can see that not only do people, a majority of people believe this in the US, majorities of people believe that morality is declining in every country that's ever been surveyed Adam wondered, Who are the folks driving this effect? the suspicion, they're like it's a certain kind of person who says that people are less good than they used to be. It's probably a conservative and it's probably an older person. And we found that neither of those things are fully true. They're somewhat true. So it is true that people who report themselves as being more conservative or more on the right side of the political spectrum do say this more. so they see a bigger change. But even if you go as far left as you can go in our survey population, they too perceive decline over the same periods of time It's not like being on one side of the aisle turns the effect on and off. When it comes to age, it's actually a little more complicated. So it is the case that older people say there's been more decline in their lifetimes But they have a longer lifetime in which to witness that decline. So what we really want to know is Do they perceive a greater rate of decline? So if you just divide how much moral decline they've seen, over the number of years that they've had to see it, you get the same number if you're younger or older, and you do get the same number. So it's not just conservatives and it's not just older people who are saying this Everybody regardless of age and political persuasion can agree like people are worse now than they once were. Is everybody right? Is Adam smart to be skeptical Or has there really been a continuous and steep decline in people's kindness, honesty, and niceness over time? If that's true, like that's the biggest effect in all of social science, like that's the most important thing we should figure out because if people used to be nice and now they're nasty, they're like, well, how did that happen? When did it happen? Is there a way we can reverse it? Unfortunately, figuring out if people have in fact gotten less nice over time is kind of hard There's no like great objective measure of this, right? We can't go into the Arctic and like drill for ice cores that tell us the historical amounts of niceness in seventeen fifty. But what we can do is look again at all this archival research we have where people are asked about the state of their moral worlds at that time. so questions like Have you looked after someone's male, plants or pets while they were away in the last month? Have you given up your seat on the bus? Did people treat you with respect all day yesterday? If it is the case that people are getting worse and worse over time, we should be able to pick it up on these questions. peopleeople like the survey back in nineteen eighty five should say, I was treated with respect all day yesterday, and then people in twenty twenty five should say, I wasn't treated with respect all day yesterday instead We find that on all of these questions, they're flat over and over again, flat, flat, flat. peopleeople give the same answers every year. Across more than a hundred surveys testing more than ten million people worldwide from the nineteen sixties until today found that people report seeing exactly the same levels of niceness, honesty, and kindness over time. Those are just surveys. Is there any way to measure whether people's actual moral behavior has changed across time? So another way of looking at how people treat each other interpersonally is to look at what economists have been doing in their labs for the past fifty years. They do these economic games and games is like a strong word for what these are. I'd hate to hang out and play games with economists, but basically eople come into the lab, they play like the prisoners's dilemma or commommon goodoods game. These are games where essentially you have the option of being generous or selfish with a stranger. A team of economists put the data from all these different. Do you want to be nice or mean to a stranger games together? into what's known as a meta analysis You can think of a meta analysis as one big statistical test that mathematically combines the results of lots of studies on one topic And the meta analysis Adam found included more than five hundred different generosity experiments all the way from the nineteen fifties until today. And what they wanted to know was are people more likely to be generous or selfish with a stranger? And the researchers themselves tell us that they went in thinking that people were going to be more selfish over time. They expected to find that finding. Instead they found the opposite. peopleeople were ten percentage points more likely to choose the generous option in these games than the selfish one. Not only have people not gotten meaner over the last seventy years They've actually gotten ten percent nicer Adam guessed that most lay peopleople would find these results shocking We just took those findings and asked another sample of people to predict them. We describe the games, We tell them the period of time we're looking at. and we said, we'll pay you extra money if you get this right. Like just where did it go over time people say much like the researchers, they expect that people got more selfish over time when in fact they got more self less. So even when you make the question really specific, even when you pay people to get the answer right, they will tell you that people are meaner when in fact they're nicer Adam calls this strange effect the illusion of world decline. We think people are getting worse over time that everybody is less honest and kind and nice than they used to be But Adams work shows were just wrong Where does the illusion of moral decline come from thinks it arises because of the combination of two common cognitive biases The first bias is one that we talk about a lot on the happappiness Lab We don't notice the good stuff in life nearly as much as we notice the bad stuff. It's just a negativity bas. we pay more attention to bad things than good things This is why, you know, if it beds, it leads, you're more likely to be served a negative news story, you're more likely to click it But that's enough to make it seem like the world's always bad. I don't think that's enough to make it seem like the world was once good For that, you need an additional effect. This one comes more strictly from the memory literature. It's called the fading affect bias. which is just the observation that the pleasure of good memories does not fade as fast as the pain of negative memories. So like if you got turned down for your high school prom, like that feels pretty bad at the time. twentywenty years later, it's may be a funny story or maybe we' relieving story, right? I found my person and like so glad I didn't end up with that one Whereas like if you had a great high school prom, like Probably was fun at the time. and you remember, it's like it's not as fun as was to experience, but it's still pretty good And those two tendencies are what happens in memory on average. The good things lose some of their goodness but generally remain good. The bad things lose more of their badness and they sometimes flip to becoming good And so if you combine these two phenomena, the fading affic bias and the negativity bias, you can create this perception that the world is now bad, but it was once good Let's do a quick recap Why do people mistakenly think that people today are worse than they were in the past? Reason number one is the negativity bias. When we look out at the world as it is today, we naturally notice people doing lots of bad stuff, but we don't tend to notice all the people doing good stuff. This starts us off on the path of thinking, hey, people today are kind of crappy. Then our minds get hit by bias number two, the fading affect bias All the bad stuff we noticed about people in the past starts to slowly seem less bad as time goes on. past becomes rosier and rosier Ergo, we come to believe that people today suck more than they did back in the day. Adam says that these two biases can cause illusions of decline more often than we realize Take for example, another situation in which people often say things were better in the past, with music the newest song you've heard recently Is that song better or worse than the music that was on the radio when you were in high school If you're like most people, you probably think that today's music is just worse than when you were a teenager. That today's music ain't like that old time rock and roll, as it were But notice how the same two cognitive biases are at work when we evaluate how music has changed over time. You hear both good music and bad music. The bad music feels worse than the good music feels good And then you get this feeling of like, you know, back on the radio in whenever you were growing up, we only had good stuff. It was like mainly hits, but it's because you've forgotten and now don't care about all of the bad music. You forgot about the number one hit of Disco Duck by Rick Deees and his cast of idiot, That's their literal band nameame. Like no one remembers that that was in a brief moment of hysteria, a number one hit in America They remember the Beatles and the Rlling stones, music that's lasted. I've had this phenomena. When I go on road trips sometimes I'm you know, listening to whatever's on the radio because my phone sucks and it doesn't talk to my car. And so say like, o, it's Casey Kesom's like, you know, top countdown. And they do these retro countdowns. And my husband and I were driving one time and it was like the nineteen eighty seven Kasey Kissom countdown. I was like Oh my god, nineteen eighty seven was the best. There was like the cure. L this is gonna be amazing We love you Oh my gosh, it was terrible I must go cin know. So much terrible stuff. Oh And I was like, oh my God, none of these exist in my memory anymore. It's just that one amazing cure song. but actually like, one hundred was just as bad in nineteen eighty seven as it was today, even though my memory does not believe that at all It's funny I had the exact same experience driving with my dad listening to like those serious XM stations where they play verbatim top forty countdowns because it's a rare peek into what the past was actually like at the time. No one today is picking these songs for you. This is like what America picked on that day in that year. And I think there's actually so few ways of really peeking into what it was like to be a person back then, but like, no, that was the radio people listen to. I wantan to highlight the point that Adam just made because I think it's super important To know if people are really getting worse over time, we have to have an accurate way to peek into the past But reliable windows into earlier eras are super rare Adam had archival dataets, so he had the receipts to show that people were nicer in the past than we remember I had the actual KCesom countdown from nineteen eighty seven So I could hear that my beloved old time rock and roll was just as bad as the songs of today. And that gets us back to today's happppiness Hot take For years, I and so many other scholars have assumed that kids' mental health today is more messed up than it was in previous generations But could I and so many other scholars be falling prey to yet another illusion of decline? The only way to find out would be to find an accurate archaeological peeak into what college students were really like back when Casey Kaysom did that nineteen eighty seven countdown, or when our parents' parents' generation went to college. For decades, researchers like me assumed that no such accurate peak existed That was about to change. The idea that there might be these materials that could change the story of what it means to grow up in this pivotal moment in time I was going to find them happiness Lab will return in a moment. I've been thinking about my spaces lately And I've realized just how much thoughtful design can change the feel of my everyday routines. But I honestly never expected a toilet to be part of that conversation. until I experienced the Kohler Smart toilet collection Kohler has been elevating bathroom design since eighteen seventy three And you can really feel that legacy in the way their products are designed. L the Koler Vail smmart toilet design immediately stands out It's modern, sleek, almost like a functional work of art It just makes your entire bathroom experience feel more elevated It's a reminder that the right design can make everyday moments feel cleaner, more comfortable, and more intentional Pohler has been redefining bathroom design for more than one hundred and fifty years. And their smart toilets really show how design and innovation can transform even the most routine parts of life Design changes everything And Kolar smart toilets are a really great example of that. experxience the difference of Koler smart toilets Find more at Kohler. com As the weather changes, I've been thinking more and more about my wardrobe And these days, I've been trying to get more intentional about what's in my closet getting dressed to feels simpler. So I've been leaning into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable still look put together been obsessed with Quintince's one hundred percent organic cotton poplin tiered Maxie dress It's got a fit that feels sleek. but it's still super comfortable. And I couldn't believe how great the price was Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday wardrobe this spring, with pieces that feel as good as they look Quince uses premium materials like one hundred percent European linen, organic cotton, and ultra soft denim Plus, Quintince works directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen paying for quality and craftsmanship brand markup Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use Head to quince. com slash happppiness for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. That's QuincE. com slash happiness for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Qince d. com slash happiness This message is in partnership with Simple Mills On our show, we talk a lot about how small choices can have a big impact on your wellbeing And one choice that often gets overlooked The snacks you reach for during the day It might sound simple, but the right snack can help you feel energized and focused Two things that make sticking to healthy habits so much easier When your body feels good, your mind follows That's why I feel good talking about Simple Mills almond flour crackers They are made with real nutrient rich ingredients like almond flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds And the bonus These crackers have a unique crunchy texture They're absolutely delicious, and I promise they'll make you look forward to snack time We all know that unhealthy snacking can derail even the best intentions Simple mills crackers do the opposite Now I hope you know, I'm not a big ad speak person But when they say simple Mills crackers taste like sunshine in every bite It's actually a pretty good description They're light, satisfying, and instead of weighing you down, you feel a little more energized. Choosing snacks that fuel your body well is one of those small but powerful steps that make other healthy habits stick And if you're looking for something filled with its own little reward system Check out Simple Mill Popms Yes, spelled with three Ms These light airy poppable cheese crackers are loaded with real vegetables, so you get that quick crunch without compromising your energy It's a mindful choice that feels good and tastes great The bottom line, habits don't happen in isolation They're supported by the environment you create and the choices you make along the way. pick snacks that help you feel good, physically and mentally, you're setting yourself up for success. And success should taste good. Find simple mills at your local grocery store There's always something you want to get better at For me this summer, it's all about learning more about music If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you know that I love my sing alongs These days I've been thinking about learning how to DJ so that I can supplement that. And that's why I turned to masterclass. With masterclass, no matter what you're interested in, you can find a class taught by someone who's actually the best in the world at that thing When I first learned how to DJ, I found classes by amazing teachers like Quest Love And masterclass fits into my busy professor life I love their short lessons, which I can watch on my phone or on my TV. audio mode, masterclass can turn your commute or workout into a classroom Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least fifteen percent off any annual membership. at masterclass d. com slash Lori fifteen percent off at masterclass d. com slash Lorry to masterclass. com slash Laori to see the latest offer College student mental health expert, Alexis Redding spent her formative years watching her Egyptologists father piece together stories of past generations with small bits of bone and pottery. Now, she was poised to put together her own story of the past, one that could tell us something really important about the present That is, if she could find the lost datapes of a mysterious unpublished nineteen seventies study. I dug through the basements. I climbed through the other things in the attic. I at some point fed open the drawer of a rusty file cabinet in the basement that had been sitting in water. I was able to find meeting minutes and the old letters to funders and confirm that the study had taken place. It had been rigorous, but I couldn't find it After smashing through all the rusty foul cabinets she could Alexis turned to her last hope the University Archive That spot where institutions stick all the historical stuff that they're not sure what to do with. Month after month, I was sitting in the archives opening box after box will lift up the top of box And there was the first set of them It took me almost a year But I found them Alexis finally had her long lost archaeological peek into what student life was like when her father was in college She was finally ready to analyze the data So I enlisted the help of my colleague, Dr. Nancy Hill. And as we were framing what it was that we were hoping to hear on these recordings We start it from a kids these days place Our idea was, o, this perfect time capsule of interviews from the nineteen seventies Obviously, it's going to help us figure out what is so different about being a college student today And we both sat down to listen independently. Both had the same just Saring realization that what we were actually hearing sounded no different than what our students were talking about in our You know, office hours in our classrooms that there was this level of continuity that we had absolutely not expected. Give me some examples. The loneliness that they were struggling with, the challenge of finding friends, finding their people, I remember walking through the dining hall many times than not seeing anyone that I felt comfortable with to sit down with And I would just go off and sit by myself pressure to have life figured out by graduation in the sense of the ticking clock You know, it just seemed really huge and sort of overwhelming and I was afraid of the courses and I was afraid I wouldn't do well and all that Th things that students come into my office to talk about today were exactly the things that those students were talking about. Alexis wasn't able to share the students' actual recordings because the nineteen seventies researchers didn't think to ask for podcast usage in their original consent forms, which makes sense because podcasts didn't exist in nineteen seventy five But Alexis was able to share the actual quotes from student recordings And that's what you're hearing now. I think I compare myself to other people too much when I first came, you know Like a lot of kids came for money and I started to compare that to what I had And I worried about dead. I went through a period of depression between January and February. I don't know m not even sure how to deal with people Listening to these reenactments was so shocking for me. We are all sort of pessimistic and cynical about everything when we think about our chances of getting a job. These are the same kinds of worries that my Yale students share in my happiness class today. I really collapsed one day I just was, I felt like I was gonna cry all the time and that had never happened to me before Be I've never been a crier and I've never been that unhappy I always kind of believed in myself Now I would sit on my bed and listen to music and feel like What am I going to do It was so remarkable to hear those parallels And then every so often there would be these peppered in details of like a student on the recordings asking for the ashtray or a lighter or something that was so anachronistic Core developmental Who am I? What do I want? How am I going find my place That was so beautifully connected. It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. Alexis analyzed the results every way she could think of Each new analysis revealed the same finding The mental health of the nineteen sevententy students on those tapes was simply no different from the mental health of the kids in the twenty thousand twenties. As a last ditch attempt to confirm her original hypothesis, She enlisted the help of a new group of research collaborators today. So I set up some focus groups with current students and I was fully transparent. know These are interviews that took place in the nineteen seventies. I need you to help me figure out what is similar and what is different And I gave them two highlighters Green was what you identify as similar. And pink was anything that was different Focus group after focus group, I just watched the transcripts turn green with highlighter ink The kids today could not see any difference between their own mental health problems and those faced by their grandparents' generation Typical students' happiness struggles just hadn't seemed to change in over fifty years I first heard about Alexis's findings at a workshop at Harvard over a year ago For weeks, I couldn't get her results out of my head They simply didn't fit with all the studies I'd read and all the results I talked about in my own interviews, All those findings showing increasing rates of depression and anxiety in kids today I asked Alexis where she thought the discrepancy came from I think the first thing is really to begin to decouple these two trends of what is happening simultaneously One to understand What is a clinical challenge and what is a typical developmental challenge? There are students who are having very real mental health crisis, where they need intervention from clinical counselors And then