Appearances vs. Experiences: What Makes Us Happy
I can at least anecdotally say that I am in a privileged position of being enormously happier after COVID-19 shut my workplace down and every employee was told to work from home. I associate this entirely with my commute being reduced to nothing. I hope working from home in IT becomes the future standard. Big expensive cities are not worth it.<p>To expand on the article. One thing I&#x27;ve noticed is that a lot of people in my age group (18-24 years old) are desperately trying to find happiness in &quot;experiences&quot; but finding emptiness due to social media. Often for them, it is not achieving something amazing like a long bicycle trip, or summiting a mountain that brings them joy, but they are thinking about the resulting Instagram photos instead.<p>Communication tools like Snapchat are a little bit healthier. Most people use Snapchat not to show off, but rather to regularly share their lives with a small group of friends.<p>Certain social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok seem entirely designed to try to get their users to pursue building a following and attach their happiness to that. Some unfortunate people end up having all the joy of traveling and meeting new people robbed from them as a result. They know that &quot;experiences&quot; are better for happiness than possessions, but somehow the result is a bastardized version the actual experience.<p>Knowing all of this, I am not taking a holier-than-thou position. I myself have accounts on several social media platforms, but make a conscious effort to not get drawn into their dopamine manipulating designs.