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Researchers find that spending time with others is key to feeling positive emotions
Does spending less time with others make adolescents and adults more unhappy?
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- In 2000, 80 per cent of 9–15-year-olds in Norway were social and spent time with other young people during a typical day, according to Statistics Norway.
- Just over two decades later – in 2022 – this has dropped to just 40 per cent.
- Among 16–25-year-olds, time spent with friends fell from 2 hours and 17 minutes in 1990 to just 1 hour in 2022, according to Statistics Norway.
A worrying development
Paal Fredrik Skjørten Kvarberg researches happiness and quality of life at the University of Oslo.
This trend worries him.
“Norway scores highly in the well-known World Happiness Report survey. But other trends we are seeing are worrying,” he says.
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“Much of the time people previously spent playing cards, having dinner together, or just hanging out, we now spend watching TV or playing video games,” he adds.
Relationships are absolutely essential
Marc Schulz was one of the participants at a seminar in Oslo on March 19 where researchers discussed methods for measuring quality of life.
He is a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, USA. He’s also one of the leaders of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is affiliated with Harvard University.
This is a research project that began in 1938, looking at the lives of 724 men in the city of Boston. Later, the study included spouses, children, and health surveys of the participants. The latest studies in the project include brain scans and stress measurements.
“An absolutely essential discovery that Schulz and his colleagues have made is how important strong relationships with others are for having positive feelings over time,” says Kvarberg.
You should have some friends
“You should have some people around you whom you feel you can trust. Not just your family, but also some friends,” he says.
Kvarberg believes this may explain why many people in Latin America report a stronger subjective sense of happiness than people in a Western country like Norway.
“Especially among young people in Norway, the decline in social interaction is truly dramatic,” he says.
Positive emotions have become more important
Kvarberg says that research on people's happiness has advanced a lot in recent years.
At the same time, politicians and authorities have also become more concerned with this issue. They understand that using economic growth as the only measure of how well people are doing doesn't work very well.
“A lot is now about emphasising people's positive emotions,” Kvarberg says.
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And positive emotions are largely about the social relationships you and I have with other people, according to researchers like Marc Schulz.
Does happiness come from money or positive emotions?
This year's edition of the World Happiness Report was published in late March.
It reported that people in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands are the happiest in the world, based on how people evaluate their own lives overall.
Norway ranked 6th in the world.
But there are also other ways to measure quality of life.
The event in Oslo on March 19 was also attended by August Nilsson and Irene Teulings, both of whom are PhD candidates in psychology at the University of Oslo.
Nilsson presented results from a study showing that most people associate the question of happiness in the World Happiness Report with money and power, not positive emotions.
Teulings demonstrated that most people value positive emotions and social relationships highly. They consider these to be important parts of a good life. But the most common measurement tools used by happiness researchers do not capture this well enough.
Did you experience joy yesterday?
Happiness and quality of life can therefore be something different and more than what is measured in the World Happiness Report, where Norway and the Nordic countries score so highly.
Did you laugh or smile a lot yesterday? Did you feel well-rested? Were you treated with respect? Did you learn something interesting yesterday? Did you experience joy?
The Gallup Positive Experience Index is a survey that places greater emphasis on people's positive emotions. It asks whether you do something fun or interesting, and how you feel.
Neither Norway nor the other Nordic countries come out on top on this type of survey.
Instead, Latin American countries such as Panama, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica rank the highest.
Other countries that score highly include the Philippines, Indonesia, and Senegal.
On average, seven out of ten people on Earth report that the day before they were interviewed was a day when they experienced positive emotions.
In Norway, the proportion was eight out of ten, which is higher than the global average.
But it's still lower than in several countries where people have much poorer economic conditions than Norway.
Young people have become lonelier
Anders Barstad is a sociologist and researcher at Statistics Norway who has looked extensively at social contact and loneliness.
Even though social interaction between people in Norway has decreased, Barstad does not find clear signs that loneliness has generally increased in the Norwegian population.
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But certain groups – especially young people – may have become lonelier.
Barstad points to the European Social Survey, which is conducted every two years in a number of European countries. Here, Norway performs relatively well compared to many other countries.
Only around 3 per cent of the adult population in Norway say that they have felt lonely most or all of the time. That is about the same proportion as in Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany.
In several Eastern European countries, the proportion is three to four times higher. Southern European countries such as Portugal and Spain also have relatively widespread loneliness.
Loneliness and dissatisfaction are linked
At the same time, Statistics Norway's surveys have shown that loneliness seems to negatively affect life in several ways.
Among lonely people, three times as many are dissatisfied with life. Among those who report being very lonely, six times as many are dissatisfied.
Researchers also see a clear connection between loneliness, poor finances, and poor health.
But Paal Fredrik Skjørten Kvarberg, the researcher at the University of Oslo who studies happiness and quality of life, believes a relevant question is whether the decline in time spent with others is a problem – or whether only loneliness is problematic.
Kvarberg and colleagues are currently conducting research in an interdisciplinary project at the University of Oslo called Modeling Human Happiness. Researchers in the project will look at happiness and quality of life in light of the ideas of ancient philosophers, among other things.
References:
Barstad, A. Blir vi stadig mer ensomme? (Are we becoming more lonely?), Statistics Norway Analysis, 2021.
Putnam, R.D. 'Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,' Simon & Schuster, 2000. ISBN: 978-0-7432-0304-3
Statistics Norway: Barns hverdagsliv i endring (Children's everyday life is changing), 2024.
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Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk
Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no
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