Arthur Brooks has spent a lifetime studying how to be happier—and since the beginning of this year, he’s been sharing all the lessons he’s learned along the way with readers of The Free Press. Each week, he writes about all the questions that actually matter: how to live well, work well, age well, and find purpose in a world where all these things are getting harder with each passing day.
It’s the kind of writing that makes you put down your phone and think—which, given how long we all stare at our screens every day, is no small thing. And now Arthur’s taken it a step further: His new book, The Meaning of Your Life, hits shelves on March 31. It doesn’t just explore the modern crisis of unhappiness—it tells us what to do about it.
That begins with identifying who is truly suffering—and why. In the exclusive excerpt below, Brooks turns to an unexpected group: our young strivers, whose lives appear to be going right in every visible way. And yet, they are more depressed, distracted, aimless, and bored than ever before. Why are the future leaders of our society the most unhappy? And what, exactly, will it take to change course? —The Editors
It’s no secret that we are living at a time of profound unhappiness. According to the General Social Survey, the percentage of American adults of all ages who are “not too happy” about their lives more than doubled from 2000 to 2024. Young adults were hit especially hard: The percentage of American adolescents with symptoms of major depression nearly tripled from 2005 to 2019, while anxiety almost doubled.
But here’s the really weird part: The ones suffering most are not just the down-and-out types—the addicts, the impoverished, the failsons. Those for whom there are obvious things gone wrong in their lives. On the contrary, it is also those who seem to have everything going right for them—in other words, our young and most successful strivers.
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I’ve spent my life surrounded by that very group. As a longtime college professor, I have been privileged to teach hundreds of wonderful students—ambitious strivers just starting out on what promised to be terrific careers and lives. I have met countless young people who were so inspired by ideas, so purpose-driven, and so enthusiastic.
But in 2009, I left academia to run a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. And when I returned to campus a decade later, the atmosphere was dark. Larger and larger percentages of students were suffering from depression and anxiety. At some schools, more than half of students were receiving mental health treatment. My office hours were more like counseling sessions than tutoring. Hope and optimism had been replaced by anger and sadness.
