Ask Lemmy

Here you go, OP (rehost of a preprint here). There's no need to get anecdotal about this; it's a very well-studied question in psychology, sociology, and economics. The U-shape has extensive evidence supporting it. If "have you gotten progressively less happy as you age?" were the prompt here, I wouldn't be doing this, but you asked a general question that can be and has been answered empirically over and over.

There are peaks and valleys. I've been happier, but I've been more miserable.

I would say it depends on your ability to live your life in a way that makes you happy. It's a kind of nothing answer, but human experience largely boils down to ability to self determine internally and externally.

My heart says no but the micro plastic in my brain says yes.

I don't know about others, but as I grow older and realise I have progressively less time left, I grow less patient of other people's bullshit. Some people may consider it a symptom of diminished happiness, but it's more a degradation of my social filters.

Under late-stage capitalism, yes.

Nope, it's personal and specific to how you lived your life.

the older you get, the more health problems you have, and let me tell you, health problems can make you involuntarily unhappy.

Happiness is an U curve according to some research.

People born in the late 90s onward sure do, we get to see every expected milestone dissapear under a pile of enshitification and vanishing wages/opportunities as people who increasingly seem like disney villains do their best to make everything even worse.

I am not. My life is progressively happier since my early 20s and really starting getting better at 35+ when I started focusing on myself and excluding more friends/partners who were dragging me down.

But everyone around me is getting more miserable, old or young. And I hate it and I hate them for it.

Increasingly I just detest socialization, because all it is is me listening to other people complain, and them telling I'm a jerk for being happy when the aren't. All weekend I had to listen to people whine about their bodies, whine about their kids/spouses, and then brag about how rich they are and then lecture me how ignorant and stupid I am for not being as rich as they are.

Very much no, it's easier to be happy when you're older if you do the work to be happy in general. Being happy and naive to your surroundings isn't the same as being aware of your situation and confident in yourself.

Why they less happy? Closer to death yay!

Im my case was the opposite; the farthest I get from my abusive and narcissists parents the happier I get...

The older i got, the happier i became. Despite physical aches and decline. Mentally, i'm much stronger now. And i don't care should people not really like me, or have whatever opinions about me. Also, being kind to others makes you happier.

I'm in my 70's. I feel I've been getting happier over time. Kids grow up and leave, Work becomes stable. Finances become more stable. When you retire, it's like a whole new life (as long as you plan it correctly).

I'm getting progressively more happy I think

This study https://www.spring.org.uk/2024/12/age-most-depressed.php shows people getting more miserable towards middle age, then getting happier. The happiness graph makes a smile shape of course.

I'm 55 and can honestly say I am more happy today then I have ever been in the past, not because of money or lots of friends but because I have learned a lot about myself in the last 10 years.

Developmental psychology (Erik Erickson's theory) teaches us that adults tend to go one of two ways as they approach and hit mid-life - generativity and stagnation. People who have a purpose, who are considering leaving some sort of mark or legacy, to contributing to society tend to fare better. They are happier and more satisfied as time goes on. Folks who become self-absorbed and preoccupied with their own comfort and convenience will then stagnate, which you can imagine is the cranky old person stereotype.

I do subscribe to this theory which is why at 43 I am running a non-profit I started, working to empower other leaders in my community, working on changing legislation for my community, working on building the community itself. I want to be the kind of person who is generous and kind and open-hearted, and be fulfilled. I don't want to be the person who is counting the ways life did them wrong, using that as a justification to lick wounds and retreat from life, jaded and alone.

if you're from a loving, supportive family: Yes for a time you can get unhappy as you age. You get more and more responsibilities. And by Responsibilities I mean you are expected to do things without praise. Like taking care of yourself and then a family. No one claps for you getting groceries or taking out the garbage. (Though if your in an abusing family this is very different : you can get happier as you get closer to the age to escape)

Then, once you adapt to this and you become self reliant for approval, it gets easier. You get happier in more self sustaining ways in which you get hobbies. Embrace the freedom of choices.

Then one day responsibilities get lighter. Like maybe someone who's been very reliant on you develops their own independence and leaves.

And then you're even more happier than ever. Happy for them. You helped get them there and grow. Also happy for yourself as you get more free time to do stuff for you.

Like imagine being that person you wanted to grow up to be as child with no parents or other responsibilities to stop you from doing things you wanted to do. And the best thing: you have the confidence and life story to know you're entirely capable now.

That's if you're doing this self development thing right.

I've known ppl who don't ever develop personal acceptance and end up in earlier life cycles of constant dependencies on others around them and bouncing back into depression. constantly reliving a specific age: like remarriage / recapture a prom night experience / doing something just to get dad approval like that's the happiest they ever could be. And it always includes seeking approval. Someone else has to be a centric piece to their happiness. Someone else always has to act a part.

Tldr: Look after your mental health. Roll the hard six. Sometimes discomfort is growth. If this is something you can't live with: talk to a professional to help you get there cuz this is part of being human and your brain will trick you into doing some meaningless, wasteful shit if you don't trick it first.

Idk, am 43 and more happy with each year that goes by

Until the current generation, happiness was generally a u-shaped curve, with happiness going down around their early 20's and coming back up around the 60's.

Gen Alpha doesn't seem to have a happy childhood.

My unhappiness peaked in highschool. Although current events have me closer to that level than I've been in a long time. Having friends that don't suck now helps a lot.

Depends on how you look at it. As you age and go through experiences, things won't quite affect you to the same extremes as they did when you were younger. I suppose because you lose those high points, it could be seen as sadder. But you also don't deal with the lows as terribly, and that's a blessing. It's also much more peaceful. To me, it's just different.

This is a difficult question to answer in a generic sense because right now there are a lot of external factors that are progressively making people unhappier and it’s not really to do with age.

In general, yes.

From my anecdotal perspective, it seems to me like lots of people around me stopped prioritizing their own interests and needs in their late 20s.

I did not.

I enjoy the life I've built.

They, apparently, do not.

YMMV

I don't even know what happiness is at this point. I am, however, at peace.

For most people life sucks and then you die.

Anyone can find happiness with their lot in life, no one truly understands why some of the worst experiences lewd to positive outcomes, but the typical result is misery.

As you age you have more experiences to compare reality to. Many of those experiences wouldn't be a recognizable experience to the other people that shared that time and space. We create our own reality in our minds that usually is shared in a comprehensive enough way to recognize and agree with, but each person's experience and interpretation of that shared experience is their own.

Whether crows are wonderful exciting and creature to behold, or dive bombing poop monsters waiting to target you is your own mind interpreting what you see.

These experiences shape how you look at the world and you repeat many of them in some ways reinforcing the held interpretation of it

Its a very easy to find pattern in historical records that older people(generationally) see the new world that has been shaped by younger people is harder to understand. And while some people do find this exciting and energizing, most people will find it a burden or a corruption of what they understand.

Things change. Viva mutator, non tolitur.(I don't know if this is a real quote but I always remember it from some fiction book I read that explained this translated "latin" phrase as life is changed, not ended)

How you can enjoy your life while living through some of the worst experiences or on going conditions is beyond my understanding, but you won't stop finding people that are amazingly happy in spite of this. Maybe a very small amount but you won't ever stop finding more if you put enough time in.

It's less about age and more about our ability to take care of our responsibilities. As children, we have few, and taking care of them takes little time and is easy. As we grow we get more and more, and if our abilities don't grow in tandem we become stressed and unhappy. It's easy to find yourself in a situation as a young adult where you have lots of responsibilities and not enough time, money, and training to discharge all of them. Similarly in middle age if you haven't kept upskilling and you find yourself outclassed professionally by younger professionals.

Some ways to fight this are by keeping your lifestyle simple and inexpensive; by constantly seeking to improve; by being parsimonious with your social commitments; and by building a network of mutually supportive friends and colleagues who can help you during sudden spikes of need or sudden dropoffs in ability, such as unexpected illness.

Not necessarily, but for the last couple decades the world has been getting progressively shittier, so it might feel that way, especially when you have chronic depression due to the world getting progressively shittier.

(Also the people you care about get older and sicker, and will eventually die, and you can't really do much about that, which isn't particularly fun either. It all builds up into the chronic depression.)

Aged 32, finding each year more enjoyable as I grow into a career and have more disposable income

There isn't a universal answer, I expect it depends a lot on your worldview and whether you got past your hangups earlier in life, and what your health, regrets and living situation are. I have anecdotal evidence both ways.

I don't think so. I've read the opposite and IME you learn not to sweat the small stuff. That helps a lot.

Cult upbringing aside, I had a good and loving family. They were genuinely doing the best with what they knew. I'll never fault them for that.

All my real damage came from being an adult, in a world that was radically more dangerous and difficult than my sheltered upbringing prepared me for. And that damage is cumulative. We just gather more of it as we survive more shit through the decades.

No, for most people there is a low point in their midlife somewhere, then progressively happier once past that.

I've never been as unhappy as an adult, as I was when a child. My least happy adult time was my 30s, and from there it's been all upward. I'm sure once I am old old there will be health shit to worry about, but for now it's easier to be happy than it was before, and I have seen research showing that is typical.