The happiest young adults in the world are in places you’d never expect—places where friction is real. Places like Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria.
Places where the average income runs from $1,200–$2,300 a year. Places where family bonds tend to be stronger, spirituality more embedded, and multigenerational households more common. Places where you’re more likely to get eaten by a lion than go to college. And yet — their young adults are thriving.
In comparison, in the wealthiest countries on earth — the places with the best universities, the safest streets, the cleanest water, and unlimited oat-milk lattes — young adults are falling apart.
Almost half of young adults on earth are struggling at a level that meaningfully interferes with daily life. That’s from a recent report that surveyed over 2.5 million people across 85 countries. It’s the largest ongoing study of its kind.
For most of history, young adulthood happened in conditions that were more consistent. Family lived near family. Children sat through long, boring meals and were allowed to be bored. Families visited grandparents homes on holidays and attended weekly religious services together. We depended on others and they depended on us.
Life was harder, certainly. Sometimes brutally so. The point isn’t that we should bring back the Sears catalog and reintroduce shared beds and outdoor toilets.
Today every teen has access to a supercomputer in their pocket. It contains every book, every song, every map, every philosophy, every sermon, every answer to every question ever asked… and teens primarily use that device for Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram.
When you grow up staring at screens all day — your nervous system adapts to that setting. Silence starts to feel strange. Boredom starts to feel threatening. Stillness becomes something to avoid rather than inhabit. Like the plants in my greenhouse. Without natural light and fresh air, they grow up leggy and weak. Unable to survive outdoors.
We are safer than ever. More connected than ever. And yet younger generations are struggling to navigate ordinary life. But, it’s not their fault.
We optimized their lives for convenience and insulated ourselves from discomfort. But children don't develop coping skills by avoiding every challenge. They develop them by facing manageable ones. Resilience doesn't grow in perfectly regulated environments. It's built through small, ordinary exposures to friction and consequences.
We intervened before they had to solve problems themselves. We let screens replace boredom. We protected them from failure, rejection, and disappointment whenever possible.
Parents often step in to settle disputes, finish forgotten homework, talk to teachers, or smooth over consequences before children experience them.
Comparison of consequences 1962 v 2026.
We did these things for understandable reasons. We wanted life to be easier for our children than it was for us. But what if easier isn’t always better?
What happens when boredom disappears? What happens when every awkward moment can be escaped with a screen? When every disagreement gets refereed by an adult? When every forgotten assignment has a parent standing behind it?
At some point, convenience stops being something we enjoy and becomes something we expect.
Resilience is built in ordinary moments. In waiting your turn. In sitting at a dinner table longer than planned. In boredom that forces you to entertain yourself without a screen. In responsibilities that can’t be postponed. In physical effort that leaves you tired in a satisfying way. In belonging to something — a family, a faith, a team, a neighborhood — that requires you to show up whether it’s convenient or not.
(You and I survived plenty of boring family dinners and Sunday afternoons.)
But friction is only part of the story. Something else began disappearing along the way: the institutions and traditions that gave people a sense of belonging.
Families live farther apart. Meals are eaten in bedrooms. Community increasingly happens through screens. The obligations that once required us to show up for other people have become easier to decline. Again, optionality.
And individually, none of those decisions seems particularly consequential. But make enough things optional for long enough and eventually you may discover that the things holding people together have quietly disappeared.
If nearly half of young adults are struggling at a clinically significant level, that isn’t a flaw in their character. It’s feedback. It suggests that something about the modern arrangement of life — the way we form families, pursue meaning, feed our bodies, raise our children, build community — may not be as sturdy as we thought.And here’s the uncomfortable part: we did this. You and me. We all participated. We all benefited. The goal isn’t to rewind history. It’s to reintroduce the things that quietly held previous generations together — community, connection, faith and nutrition.
Because if a society can build rockets that land themselves and phones that hold all the world’s knowledge…Surely it can build young adults who are more than just surviving.
That’s the real measure of progress.
Does any of this surprise you? I want to hear your thoughts. I promise you’ll hear back from me.
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