Generational Shifts in Subjective Well-Being: Do Younger Cohorts Experience Lower Levels of Life Satisfaction?

Research suggests that the advent of social media has had a significant negative impact on the subjective well-being of younger generations, particularly those born between 1995 and 2010. Key drivers of this decline include social comparison, fear of missing out (FOMO), sleep disturbances linked to constant exposure to social media platforms and smartphone usage. These factors contribute to feelings of inadequacy, reduced self-esteem, heightened anxiety and depression, potentially leading to a notable decline in life satisfaction among younger cohorts compared to older generations.

However, understanding time in human societies is complex, as three interrelated dimensions operate simultaneously: birth cohort (generation), historical period (trend) and age (life cycle). Age effects represent developmental changes throughout the life cycle. Period and cohort effects refer to exogenous contextual changes in broader social conditions. Period effects arise from cultural or economic shifts unique to specific time periods (e.g., economic recessions, health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic) and affect all individuals, regardless of age. Cohort effects are the essence of social change, not just determined by the time of birth as such, but also by cumulatively going through the same historical and social factors.

This paper formally tests the cohort-effect hypothesis related to life satisfaction by comparing younger generations (1995–2005) with older cohorts (1895–1995). We control for both period (trend) and age (life course) effects using repeated cross-sectional Eurobarometer data (1972–2022) from eight European countries. The analysis employs Hierarchical Age-Period-Cohort (HAPC) regression to disentangle the unique effects of cohort, period and age effects.