Other People — Happiness 8 (C1)

HAPPINESS · LESSON 8

Other People

C1 (B2–C2) · 90 minutes

Back to claims 5 and 6

Task Alone, write a letter for each claim. Then make the guess below.

S Strong

M Mixed

W Weak

F Failed

Claim 5 Close relationships matter more for happiness than anything else.

Claim 6 Social media has made teenagers unhappier.

Guess A long-running study measured a group of men at 50. Which predicted their health at 80 better: their cholesterol, or how satisfied they were with their relationships?

READING

Eighty-five years of lives

In 1938, doctors at Harvard began following 268 second-year students, selected as healthy, well-adjusted young men. Funded by W. T. Grant, it became the Grant Study. A second group, the Glueck cohort, named after the criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, was made up of 456 boys from some of Boston's poorest neighbourhoods, first studied in the 1940s for research on juvenile delinquency. They joined the project in the 1970s. Together the two groups form the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest longitudinal studies ever run: the same people, measured again and again across a lifetime.

READING · CONTINUED

Eighty-five years of lives

Every few years the men answered questionnaires and gave interviews, and the researchers collected their medical records.

George Vaillant, director from 1972 to 2004, came to see warm relationships as one of the strongest predictors of a good old age. His successor, the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, wrote The Good Life (2023) with the associate director Marc Schulz. Their best-known finding concerns the men at 50: how satisfied they were with their relationships predicted their health at 80 better

than their cholesterol did. In Waldinger's words, "The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80."

The study has clear limits. The original cohorts were all men and all white, and the Harvard group was an elite. Women entered later, mostly as wives, and more than 1,300 of the men's children now take part in a second-generation study. Above all, the findings are correlations: a longitudinal study shows what came first, not what caused what.

Which way does the arrow point?

Task The finding: the men most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80. Write one explanation for each arrow below. Then agree which explanation a study that measured the men again and again could rule out, and which it could not.

Something else?

A

Relationships shape health.

C

C

B

Health shapes relationships.

Relationships at 50

A

Health at 80

C

Something else shapes both.

B

Then discuss: would you expect the finding to hold for women? For people where you live?

Health at 50

READING

Loneliness as a health risk

Researchers separate two things. Social isolation is objective: few contacts, living alone, rarely seeing anyone. Loneliness is subjective: the gap between the connection a person wants and the connection they have. It is possible to be isolated without feeling lonely, and lonely in a crowd.

In 2010, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith and Bradley Layton pooled 148 studies of 308,849 people, followed for an average of 7.5 years (PLoS Medicine). People with stronger social relationships had 50% higher odds of surviving the follow-up period. The authors judged the effect comparable to smoking and drinking, and larger than that of physical inactivity or obesity. A 2015 analysis of 70 studies found that loneliness, social isolation

and living alone were each linked to a higher risk of early death. All of these studies are observational.

In January 2018 the UK appointed Tracey Crouch as its first Minister for Loneliness, after a commission named after the MP Jo Cox, who was killed in 2016, estimated that more than nine million people in the UK were always or often lonely. In May 2023 the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, reported that about half of American adults experienced loneliness, and compared the risk of early death from disconnection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. In 2025 a World Health Organization commission estimated that about one person in six worldwide is lonely.

Which happiness?

Task For each finding, write which of the three answers it speaks to: Pleasure, Desire or Flourishing. Write none if it is not about happiness at all.

Pleasure

Desire

Flourishing

How does your life feel?

Are you getting what you want?

Is your life going well?

hedonism

desire theories

objective-list theories

Four findings about other people

Which happiness?

Pleasure

Desire

Flourishing

none

1. In the Harvard study, men most satisfied with their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80.

2. In a 2004 study, 909 working women in Texas reconstructed the previous day, episode by episode; time spent socialising was among the most enjoyable parts, and commuting the least enjoyable.

3. In the World Happiness Report, "having someone to count on in times of trouble" is one of six factors used to explain why countries' average 0–10 life ratings differ.

4. Carol Ryff's scales of psychological well-being (1989) list "positive relations with others" as one of six dimensions of a life going well.

Is loneliness anyone's business?

Task Groups of 3. Discuss the questions. Agree which one split your group most, and be ready to say why.

1. Should loneliness be a matter for governments, like smoking, or be left to private life?

2. Where you live, who is expected to notice when someone is alone: family, neighbours or the state?

3. Does calling loneliness "as deadly as smoking" help people, or just frighten them?

4. Is the Harvard study's lesson new, or something every grandmother already knew?

5. Could a city or a workplace be designed to make loneliness less likely? How?

What the evidence says: claim 5

Claim 5 Close relationships matter more for happiness than anything else.

S Strong

M Mixed

W Weak

F Failed

That close relationships matter a great deal is one of the most consistent findings in the field: in the Harvard study, in Ed Diener and Martin Seligman's 2002 study of very happy students, and in large analyses of health and survival such as Holt-Lunstad's (2010). But "more than anything else" has not been shown. In large surveys, mental and physical health, and income for people who have little, are also among the strongest predictors; Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard (2017) found that in four rich countries mental illness explained more of the misery than poverty or unemployment did. And almost all of the evidence is correlational. Strong for "matter a lot", mixed for "matter most": M.

A

JIGSAW READING

Text A: The great rewiring

PARTNER A ONLY

Task (Partner A) Read Text A only. Prepare to explain its case to your partner in two minutes, without reading it out.

Between about 2010 and 2015, adolescence moved onto the smartphone. In the United States, the share of teenagers with a smartphone rose from 73% in 2014–15 to 95% in 2018 (Pew Research Center). In the same years, measures of teenage distress climbed. In the CDC's survey of US high-school students, 57% of girls reported persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, up about 60%

on a decade earlier; among boys the figure rose from 21% to 29%. The 2021 survey fell during the pandemic, but the rise had begun years before.

The psychologist Jean Twenge raised the alarm in 2017. In The Anxious Generation (2024), the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that a play-based childhood has been replaced by a phone-based childhood: the "great rewiring".

A

JIGSAW READING · CONTINUED

Text A: The great rewiring

PARTNER A ONLY

He names four harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, fragmented attention and addiction. Rises in distress and self-harm, especially among girls, appeared at similar times across the English-speaking and Nordic countries.

Beyond the trend lines, heavy users report much worse mental health than light users. When adults were paid to deactivate Facebook for four weeks before the 2018 US elections, their well-being rose

slightly. In a natural experiment, the economists Luca Braghieri, Ro'ee Levy and Alexey Makarin (2022) used Facebook's staggered arrival at US colleges in 2004–2006 and found that students' mental health, depression above all, got worse once it arrived.

Waiting for perfect proof, Haidt says, is itself a choice. He proposes four norms: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and far more independence and free play.

B

JIGSAW READING

Text B: The case for doubt

PARTNER B ONLY

Task (Partner B) Read Text B only. Prepare to explain its case to your partner in two minutes, without reading it out.

Sceptics accept that many teenagers in rich countries are struggling. They doubt that the evidence shows social media caused it.

In 2019, Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski of Oxford analysed three large surveys covering more than 300,000 young people and parents in the US and UK (Nature Human Behaviour). They ran thousands of analyses, a method called specification curve analysis.

Digital technology use explained at most 0.4% of the variation in adolescent well-being, about as much as regularly eating potatoes. Being bullied mattered far more, as did sleep and eating breakfast. In 2023, Przybylski and Matti Vuorre compared Facebook's spread across 72 countries with survey data from 946,798 people between 2008 and 2019, and found no sign of widespread harm.

B

JIGSAW READING · CONTINUED

Text B: The case for doubt

PARTNER B ONLY

A correlation can also run backwards. Reviewing Haidt's book in Nature (2024), the psychologist Candice Odgers argued that when studies follow young people over time, they tend to show that those already struggling go on to use social media more, not that the platforms cause the struggle. Hundreds of researchers, she wrote, have looked for large effects and found a mix of none, small and mixed associations. She warned that alarm about phones

could distract from other causes. She supports stricter rules for the platforms, but doubts that age limits and device bans would work.

In 2023 a committee of the US National Academies reached a similar verdict: the research did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health across the population. It did not call social media harmless; it found the effects uneven, varying from one young person to another.

Rebuild the debate

Task Partner A explains Text A in two minutes; Partner B explains Text B. Then answer the questions together. Finish by writing your letter for claim 6 again.

1. Which facts do both texts accept?

2. Name one piece of evidence each side would find hardest to answer.

3. "At most 0.4%" and "up about 60%": can both be true at once? How?

4. If money and ethics were no object, what study would settle the question? Why can't it be done?

5. Your letter for claim 6 now: has it changed since "Back to claims 5 and 6"?

Decide: the Lakeview phone policy

Task Groups of 3 or 4. Lakeview, a fictional international school, has 900 students aged 11 to 18 from more than 40 countries. Choose one option or design your own (E). Agree who gains and who loses, and how you would know in a year whether it worked. Be ready to defend it in one minute.

The parents' survey

The student council

The school nurse

58% of parents want phones locked away all day. 30% want children to keep them for safety and contact. 12% are unsure.

Many boarding students call families in other time zones at lunch. The council proposes phone-free lessons with free use at break.

Two students rely on phone apps linked to glucose monitors for diabetes. Any policy needs medical exceptions.

The budget

The head

Lockable pouches cost $25 per student. Buying them means cutting this year's subsidy for school trips.

Ms Okafor has read both Text A and Text B. She wants a policy "we can defend whichever side turns out to be right".

Decide: the Lakeview phone policy

Task Groups of 3 or 4. Lakeview, a fictional international school, has 900 students aged 11 to 18 from more than 40 countries. Choose one option or design your own (E). Agree who gains and who loses, and how you would know in a year whether it worked. Be ready to defend it in one minute.

A

Phones locked in pouches from arrival to departure, with medical exceptions.

B

Phones banned in lessons, allowed at break and lunch.

C

A full ban for ages 11 to 13 only, reviewed after one year.

D

No ban: phone-free zones, and lessons on how apps are designed.

What the evidence says: claim 6

Claim 6 Social media has made teenagers unhappier.

S Strong

M Mixed

W Weak

F Failed

Two things are well documented: young people's well-being has fallen in several rich countries since the early 2010s (the World Happiness Report 2024 found that in North America the under-30s are now less happy than older age groups), and smartphones spread in the same years. Whether one caused the other is where serious researchers disagree. Large correlational studies find small associations (Orben and Przybylski, 2019), and the US National Academies (2023) found no population-level causal case; yet natural experiments such as Facebook's arrival at US colleges point to real harm (Braghieri and colleagues, 2022). M here does not mean "halfway true": the evidence points in different directions, and the question is still open.

Private reflection

Task Choose one prompt and write privately. Nobody will read what you write. Sharing afterwards is optional.

Prompt 1

Think of a long friendship or partnership you have watched from the outside: between relatives, neighbours, or characters in a book or film. What do you think has kept it going?

Prompt 2 (lighter)

Think of a technology that has changed how people you know keep in touch. What did it add, and what did it take away?

Before Lesson 9

This week, notice one small moment of connection between people around you. What made it work?

Pleasure

It can be tiny: a conversation in a shop, a shared meal, a message, two strangers helping each other. Note whether it lifted anyone's mood, helped someone get what they wanted, or was part of a life going well.

Desire

Flourishing

Next lesson: Can You Make Yourself Happier? Gratitude, kindness and meditation on trial, and claim 3: is about 40% of happiness really under your control?

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (1)

WHICH WAY DOES THE ARROW POINT? suggested

• A. Support buffers stress; a partner or friend notices symptoms, encourages a visit to the doctor, discourages heavy drinking.

• B. Men who were already ill, depressed or drinking heavily at 50 found it harder to keep relationships going, and were also more likely to be ill at 80.

• C. A third factor drives both: heavy drinking (which Vaillant found to be a major cause of both divorce and early death), personality, money or early childhood.

• Because the study measured the men again and again, researchers can take account of health at 50, which weakens B. It cannot rule out C, since nobody was randomly assigned to good relationships.

WHICH HAPPINESS? suggested

1 None, strictly: it is about health. A Flourishing list would count health as part of a life going well.

2 Pleasure: how moments of the day felt.

3 Desire, roughly: a 0–10 life rating is a judgement of how life is going against what people want from it.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (2)

4 Flourishing: an objective-list view of a life going well.

REBUILD THE DEBATE suggested

1 Both accept that distress among young people, especially girls, has risen in several rich countries since the early 2010s, and that smartphones spread in the same years.

2 For Text B: the natural experiments, such as Facebook's arrival at US colleges. For Text A: the very small associations in large datasets, and the evidence that struggling teenagers go on to use social media more.

3 Yes. A tiny average effect for each individual can coexist with a large trend if the trend has other causes, if harm is concentrated in some groups (heavy users, girls) and diluted in the average, or if effects work at the level of a whole peer group rather than one user. Haidt argues the last; his critics reply that it is hard to test.

4 A long randomised trial that kept a large group of children off smartphones and social media for years while their peers used them. It is impractical, arguably unethical, and impossible once everyone else in a child's world is online.