<story><title>What Do Happy Teens Do?</title><url>https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-changing-culture/201808/what-do-happy-teens-do</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>raz32dust</author><text>I find two problems with these kinds of studies:&lt;p&gt;(1) How are you defining &amp;quot;happiness&amp;quot;? If you define happiness as social interaction, obviously the introverts will be &amp;quot;unhappy&amp;quot;. Here, this study seems to define it as &amp;quot;psychological well-being (measured by self-esteem, life satisfaction, and happiness)&amp;quot;. Is being unsatisfied bad? I would argue that it is not necessarily true. Unsatisfied people tend to bring change to society. So what are we trying to optimize for? You improve what you measure. Are we measuring the right metric? If having high levels of dopamine is happiness, is it ok to inject everyone with dopamine to make them &amp;quot;happy&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;(2) Are these activities symptoms of unhappiness or causes? I think they are just symptoms. The more I study about this, the more I feel that &amp;quot;unhappiness&amp;quot; is more of a trait. Mostly genes and internal hormones and chemistry and biology. This constant push to be &amp;quot;happy&amp;quot; makes life worse for the &amp;quot;sad&amp;quot; people.</text></comment>
<story><title>What Do Happy Teens Do?</title><url>https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-changing-culture/201808/what-do-happy-teens-do</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gumby</author><text>For some reason it jumped out at me that they considered time in religious services as a measurable component of how an ordinary person might spend their time.  I can see how it might be relevant to the topic at hand but it&amp;#x27;s quite uncommon for me to encounter a normative discussion of religious activity as an unremarkable thing.&lt;p&gt;Is it common (i.e. do I live in a bubble) or is it a marker of something about this article that I am missing?  I pretty much only encounter mention of religion in the news headlines and am not sure I even know anyone who attends any kind of religious service more than two or three times a year.&lt;p&gt;It may be quite common and I might live in a bubble, but then is it mentioned routinely?</text></comment>