A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 59% of Americans say the country’s best years are behind us. This attitude is an example of declinism, the belief that things were better before and will keep getting worse. And declinism is bad for our own wellbeing and for society.

People who adopt a positive attitude about the future experience better mental and physical health, greater meaning in their lives, and more success in their relationships and careers. Declinism works against all of this. It also stops people from asking what they can do to make things better, and it orients them away from others. If you believe things are falling apart, it is easy to see other people as part of the problem rather than as partners in the solution.

So how do we resist the pull of declinism? Here are three strategies.

The first strategy is to transcend the political partisanship that fuels declinism. Pew’s data shows that Democrats are currently more likely than Republicans to say the country’s best years are behind us. But this is not a fixed belief of either party. Pew asked a similar question back in 2014, when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, and found that Republicans were more likely to have a declinist outlook. Other research has found a similar pattern, with outlook shifting based on which party holds the White House rather than any real change in circumstances. A lot of what feels like settled pessimism about the future is really more dissatisfaction with politics in the present.

Recognizing this can help you step outside the moment and see the bigger picture. Politics is only one part of life, and a great deal of what actually improves our communities and our world often has little to do with what happens in Washington D.C. Discoveries, innovations, and positive cultural shifts can happen regardless of which party is in power. Not to mention a lot of important policy work occurs at the state and local level, which rarely makes national headlines but can have a more direct impact on our lives. And no side of the political aisle has a monopoly on good or bad ideas. Letting politics become all consuming can blind us to everything else that is possible.

The second strategy is to improve your media diet. Research shows that news headlines have grown more negative over time, and that we are reinforcing this trend, since negative headlines get more clicks than positive ones. Social media makes this worse. The posts most likely to spread are the ones that provoke outrage or anger. A steady diet of this kind of content skews our picture of humanity. When negativity dominates our feeds, it becomes easy to conclude that people are worse than they actually are, and that the world is in a state of decline. As I discussed in previous newsletters, people are more honest, kind, and trustworthy than we assume they will be. And most people online are not spreading toxic content. That behavior comes from a small and vocal minority, but because we see so much of it, we assume it reflects how most people actually behave.

Becoming more aware of how negative content pulls at our attention is the first step. The next is to actively seek out stories of what is going right. There are plenty of fascinating and inspiring ones out there, even if they take a little more effort to find.

The third strategy is to foster a better appreciation for the progress we enjoy today. In research from our team at the Human Flourishing Lab, we found that Americans who believe life has gotten better over the last 50 years are far more likely to expect continued progress over the next 50 years. This pattern held true across demographic groups, including age, gender, income, and political party.

Declinism treats the current moment as if it exists in isolation, disconnected from the long record of improvements previous generations made. Taking the time to recognize what previous generations have built, discovered, and overcome can foster the kind of gratitude and inspiration needed to keep that progress going.

None of these strategies require ignoring the challenges of our time. They simply ask us to be more intentional, using our own agency to cultivate a hopeful mindset. Believing our best days are behind us is not just an attitude about the past and present. It is a mindset for the future. We are far better off choosing to believe that the best is still ahead, and that we each have a role to play in making that vision a reality.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

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I frequently come across the claim that America is experiencing a loneliness epidemic. When the evidence is presented, it usually focuses on how much time people are spending alone, treated as inherently bad for them. But encouraging people to believe time alone is harmful may actually be contributing to rising rates of loneliness.

To be clear, loneliness is a real problem. It is a major risk factor for depression, anxiety, self harm and suicide, and it also raises the risk of heart disease, dementia, and other illness. Humans are a social species. From infancy we depend on parents, caregivers, and later mentors and peers, to survive and grow into capable adults. As adults, we partner up, cooperate, and collaborate to build and sustain families, businesses, institutions, and communities. And we just like being together. For instance, research finds that most everyday activities are more enjoyable when we do them with other people than when we do them alone.

However, being alone and feeling lonely are not the same thing. Loneliness is the psychological distress that comes from feeling a lack of meaningful connection or belonging. That is different from simply being by yourself. We do not always feel lonely just because we are not interacting with or in the presence of others. And we often choose to spend time alone doing things we find restful or absorbing, or working on personal projects and goals. Even when we would rather be with others, spending time by ourselves does not automatically make us feel lonely. In addition, people can be surrounded by others and still feel lonely if they do not feel like they truly belong or matter to the people around them. All of this helps explain why the correlation between being alone and loneliness is fairly weak.

So spending time alone does not automatically make us lonely, but it turns out how we think about that time can. Across a series of studies, researchers examined how our beliefs about the time we spend by ourselves influence loneliness. First, they examined coverage in the most widely read newspapers in the country and found that stories about being alone were ten times more likely to frame it as bad for us than good for us, despite the fact that time alone is not inherently harmful and can be beneficial.

The researchers then tested whether that kind of negative framing actually changes attitudes about alone time. In an experiment, people who read a short article about the risks of being alone came away believing time alone was more harmful than people who read about its benefits.

They then conducted a study in which they recruited young adults, measured their existing beliefs about being alone, and subsequently tracked them over two weeks, checking in several times a day to ask how much time they had spent alone and how lonely they felt. Individuals who held negative beliefs about being alone felt considerably lonelier after time by themselves. Those who held more positive beliefs felt less lonely after the same stretches of time by themselves. In further studies, the researchers found that this pattern held up across many different countries and cultures.

I think this points to something bigger than just loneliness. As a culture, we have become increasingly fixated on and worried about psychological suffering. In some ways this is a good thing. It has reduced stigma around mental illness and made more people willing to seek help when they need it. But the more preoccupied we become with our psychological states, constantly monitoring our stress, our sadness, our sense of connection, the more we appear to be making ourselves worse off.

Our team created a project called Head Out to make the case for a different approach, one built on outward-directed action rather than inward-directed fixation. Loneliness was not part of the original thinking behind Head Out, but I think it fits. Our mental and social health does not improve by turning inward and constantly monitoring how we feel. It improves when we turn outward and engage in activities that better our own lives and the lives of others.

This is where meaning comes in. True loneliness is, I believe, ultimately an existential issue. It is about a lack of meaning-providing social engagement. Meaning is tied to social connection, but not simply to being around other people. It comes from playing a significant role in their lives. This further highlights how fixating on how much time we spend alone or in the presence of others is not especially useful for addressing the problem of loneliness.

There is real value in paying attention to loneliness as a society. But treating being alone as inherently harmful, and acting like every trend toward more solitary living is evidence of a loneliness crisis, might be making the problem worse. Instead of worrying so much about how much time people spend alone, maybe we should spend more time promoting the aspirations and activities that give our lives meaning, which will inevitably increase the amount of time we spend with others and make that time more fulfilling.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I am stoked to share a new piece I wrote for ! I have done some videos with them before, but this is my first time writing for them. I have long been a fan though, so I am excited to be in their pages.

The piece is called Why Gen Z Is Nostalgic For a World It Never Knew, and it is part of their new special issue, The Opt-Out Nation. The issue looks at a very American instinct, the urge to opt out and do things differently, whether that means leaving an institution, changing careers, or just deciding to do things your own way. There are a bunch of fascinating stories in the issue, so definitely check it out.

In my piece, I focus on what I think is driving Gen Z’s growing nostalgia, even for eras they never lived through, and why I think it is helping fuel a real world renaissance against always online life. I argue that Gen Z is not opting out of modernity. It is opting out of the assumption that the digital world must consume the analog one.

One of the retro things Gen Z is into is print media. Which is why I think it is so cool that Big Think puts out a print magazine, and my new piece is featured in the latest issue. I love the internet and digital content, but there is something about a physical magazine, something you can hold, flip through, and leave out on a table, that a website just cannot replicate. I am glad Gen Z is helping bring physical media back.

If you want to start getting physical copies of the magazine in the mail or want access to all the great content Big Think offers, become a member here.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and this year it carries extra meaning. We are marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A milestone like this is a time to celebrate, and it is also a time to reflect on what binds such a diverse, dynamic, and divided country together. So this week I want to explore the positive power of patriotism and share some new findings on what Americans think about patriotism.

Last week I attended a World Cup match between Austria and Algeria in Kansas City. I do not know much about soccer (fútbol). But I do know a lot about nostalgia and group psychology, and that is why I was there, taking part in a documentary being filmed at the event. I am not much of a sports fan in general, but I have always enjoyed international competitions like the Olympics because I like watching different nations come together in one place to showcase and test their athletic talent.

This was the first World Cup game I had ever attended, so I did not really know what to expect. I was instantly struck by how many devoted fans of Austria and Algeria had turned out in a Midwestern American city, wearing their national colors and cheering on their teams. It was a vivid reminder of how powerfully a shared identity can move people, and of the deep human pull toward group belonging.

Patriotism is one of the clearest expressions of that pull. Some people are skeptical of it because they associate it with a divisive nationalism. But as someone who has been studying group psychology for some time, I believe healthy patriotism is good for us, both as individuals and as a society.

Humans are a group-oriented species. Much of the discourse about our tribal nature focuses on its dark side, and for understandable reasons. Our instinct to sort ourselves into groups can lead to prejudice, discrimination, violence, and war. But this is only part of the story. That same social nature is what makes cooperation, trust, shared sacrifice, and large-scale progress possible.

Patriotism is often an important component of the constructive side of our group nature. It helps build what social and behavioral scientists call a superordinate group identity, a larger sense of belonging that unites smaller groups, even ones in strong disagreement. For example, Republicans and Democrats disagree on many things, but they are part of a larger national group. They are all Americans. Patriotism is one of the most powerful ways to cultivate that broader identity and a sense of national belonging that does not require us to set our disagreements aside but does help us find common ground and live together peacefully.

A positive national identity does more than reduce division. Our research at the Human Flourishing Lab finds that people who are proud of their country tend to be more hopeful about its future. For instance, in a previous survey, we found that 64% of people who are proud to be American are hopeful for the future of the nation, compared to 27% of those who are not proud to be American. This positive association between national pride and national hope holds across political ideology and age groups.

This matters because hope is a critical ingredient of progress. Hopeful people are more goal-focused, more persistent, more cooperative, and more motivated to serve their communities. When people believe a better tomorrow is possible, they are far more likely to help build it.

Fortunately, we are not stuck choosing between the costs and the benefits of our group nature. We can dampen the destructive side of our tribal instincts while drawing out the constructive side. A big part of that is promoting a healthy patriotism over an unhealthy nationalism, a distinction I have written about before in outlets such as Fortune. As Arthur Brooks puts it, patriotism reflects civic pride in our shared culture and institutions, while nationalism is a sense of superiority rooted in identity markers like race, religion, or language. Patriotism makes room for a diverse and dynamic America. Nationalism demands a narrow and uniform one.

So where do Americans actually stand today? This week, the Archbridge Institute released The American Dream at 250: A Special Edition of the American Dream Snapshot, authored by our CEO, Gonzalo Schwarz. The report covers a wide range of attitudes related to the American Dream, including opportunity, equality, technology, immigration, and the future of the country, and it is well worth reading in full. The findings on patriotism tell an encouraging story.

Most Americans embrace a healthy, inclusive patriotism. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they are proud to be American, and a similar share say their patriotism motivates them to work for a better future. Large majorities also say people with different religious or political beliefs can be patriotic, that you can criticize America and still be a patriot, and that patriotism helps Americans find common cause despite their differences. High agreement on all of these points is exactly what we would expect if patriotism supports trust, cooperation, and progress.

Americans are not describing loyalty tests or demands for conformity. They are describing a shared identity that makes room for disagreement and pushes them to improve the country.

A healthy patriotism also has to be balanced against one of America’s defining traditions, our commitment to the individual. It is important to judge people on their own merits, and the benefits of group belonging should never come at the expense of that. We have to protect the liberties that allow each person to exercise their agency, develop their unique talents, and pursue their own goals and their own vision of a good life. This balance is part of what makes our nation thrive. We have a shared identity strong enough to unite us, alongside a deep respect for the freedom that lets each of us define our own path and pursue it.

Across the lines that so often divide us, most Americans are still proud of this country, believe it can bring us together, and feel called to make it better. That is something worth celebrating tomorrow, and something worth protecting and building on for the next 250 years.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend!

Clay

Greetings from the Road! I have spent the week at the Aspen Ideas Health Festival. This was a great opportunity to see what conversations are happening around health and wellness. I had the good fortune of sharing the stage with Dr. Kate Bowler, a bestselling New York Times author, and Steve Burns, who is best known for his role on Blue’s Clues. We discussed nostalgia and the role it plays in showing us how the past can pave the way for a brighter future. You can see our conversation here:

Back to the Future: The Power of Nostalgia

I want to thank Kate for her enthusiastic moderating and Steve for his honest commentary on being the subject of nostalgia. You can follow Kate’s Substack, Everything Happens here. Follow Steve’s podcast, Alive with Steve Burns here.

It was great being in Aspen, CO and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to explore ideas on the power of nostalgia. I will also have a podcast to share soon which was recorded at Aspen with Dr. Jason Arora from The Health Curve where we discussed a range of topics, including meaning in life and nostalgia.

I’m off to Kansas City tomorrow for a World Cup game. I will be appearing in a documentary about nostalgia and its impact on soccer (I mean fútbol). Flourishing Friday will be back next week.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I am excited to share our first toolkit from Head Out, the Human Flourishing Lab’s public education mental health initiative. As I discussed in a previous newsletter, Head Out is built on the ideas that getting out of our heads and into the world is one of the most powerful but overlooked paths to better mental health, and that people have more power to help themselves than our culture gives them credit for.

The toolkit is called How to Know If It Is Time for Therapy, and it was written by Dr. Camilo Ortiz, a board-certified clinical psychologist who has been treating adults, teens, and kids for 30 years, a professor of psychology, and a fellow at the Human Flourishing Lab.

As a professional therapist, Dr. Ortiz understands the value of therapy. But he is also clear about its limits. In the current climate, it is common to hear people claim that everyone can use therapy and that there is nothing to lose by trying it. Dr. Ortiz pushes back on these ideas, because they are not actually supported by the research. He notes that therapy does not help everyone, and in some situations it can even do harm.

This toolkit is a very useful resource for anyone who is wondering whether they should seek professional help. It does not push people toward therapy or away from it. It helps them figure out what makes sense for their situation. Specifically, it offers a simple way to weigh the risks and rewards of any approach, a short self-assessment to gauge how serious a situation is, practical self-management steps, and a step-by-step plan for finding the right provider if professional help makes sense. It also points to free and low-cost resources and crisis support.

I want to emphasize how much of the guide is devoted to self-management, because it gets at the heart of what Head Out is about. Dr. Ortiz shows that for many common concerns, there is a lot people can do on their own. This includes giving mild symptoms a chance to improve on their own, strengthening the basics like sleep, movement, and connection, and borrowing simple techniques that therapists use. People often have more capacity to improve their own mental health than they realize.

You can find the toolkit here. Even if you do not think you need it for yourself, it is worth reading and sharing, because so much of what people hear and read about mental health is not grounded in good evidence. The more we can get clear, research-based guidance into people’s hands, the better.

On a separate note, there will be no Flourishing Friday next week. I will be at the Aspen Ideas Health Festival for a conversation about the power of nostalgia with Steve Burns, the original host of Blue’s Clues and host of the podcast Alive with Steve Burns, moderated by NYT bestselling author and host of the Everything Happens podcast, Kate Bowler. Our session is called Back to the Future: The Power of Nostalgia, and we will be talking about how thoughtful nostalgia works as a psychological resource that fosters optimism, builds belonging, and helps us move forward. If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, you know this is a major focus of my work, and I could not be more excited about this opportunity. You can learn more about the session here.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

A few months ago, I wrote about what we get wrong about online toxicity. The hostile and misleading content we see on social media comes from a much smaller group of people than we assume, and this misperception makes us more cynical about people in general. Unfortunately, this cynicism is not confined to the digital world.

As one example, a just published series of studies looked at how honest people are when they have a chance to lie without getting caught, and at how honest they assume others to be. The researchers used several paradigms to measure dishonesty. In one of them, people privately guessed the outcome of a die roll and then reported whether they had guessed right, earning a small bonus if they did. Because no one could check their guess, anyone could claim a win. And since only about one in six guesses should be correct by chance, the researchers could estimate how many people had lied. Across the studies, most people told the truth. But when asked to guess how many people would lie, participants overestimated dishonesty by about fourteen percentage points.

This new research is part of a much larger body of work showing that we misjudge other people in all sorts of ways, typically in the pessimistic direction. We overestimate how untrustworthy and selfish people are. We also underestimate the kindness of others, assuming that far fewer people will say yes to a request for help than actually do. This dark view of humanity also appears to be deepening over time. For instance, the share of Americans who say most people can be trusted has decreased in recent decades.

Why are we so prone to thinking the worst of one another? There are probably many reasons, but I think our information ecosystem is a big part of the problem. The news has grown steadily more negative, trading more and more in anger, fear, disgust, and sadness, and we reward that coverage with our clicks and attention.

Fortunately, we can correct these misperceptions. When people learn the facts, they often update their beliefs. For example, in the honesty research previously discussed, participants who were told how honest people actually are became more trusting and more likely to see others as fair and helpful. And in the online toxicity research, when people learned that harmful content comes from a small and unrepresentative minority, they felt more positive about their fellow citizens and recognized that most people share their desire for something better.

This has important implications for our wellbeing. How we see other people informs how we see the world, and our beliefs about the world shape how we feel and function. As I discussed in a previous newsletter, people who see the world as dangerous and other people as untrustworthy tend to fare worse across a wide range of outcomes, from life satisfaction to physical health.

But the implications extend beyond our individual wellbeing. Our beliefs about our fellow humans affect the health of our society and our ability to advance human progress because our attitudes about other people influence our motivational orientation. That orientation can be thought of as a balance between defense and growth. Defensive motivation is about protecting ourselves from threats and avoiding loss. Growth motivation is about expanding the self, exploring, creating, and striving for improvement. Both are essential. We need defense to protect ourselves and to preserve what we have built. But we need growth to build something new, adapt to changing circumstances, innovate, and advance progress.

When we feel threatened, we shift toward defense, becoming more vigilant, cautious, and risk averse, which often serves us well when the threat is real. But when we feel threatened based on a distorted view of the world, we privilege defense for no good reason, and that defensive posture can act as a barrier to growth-oriented attitudes, goals, and behaviors.

I am hopeful because I believe Americans are growing weary of the negativity and pessimism. Most of us do not want to go through life assuming the worst about people. And the good news is that the worst is not the truth. Now we just need to do a better job spreading a more accurate and hopeful picture of humanity.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

Flourishing Friday is back!

I took the month of May off to work on some big projects, and I am super stoked to share one of them with you today. Our team at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab has launched a new mental health public education initiative called Head Out.

Head Out is based on the idea that getting out of our heads and into the world is one of the most powerful but overlooked paths to better mental health. It is also grounded in the belief that people have more power to help themselves than our culture is giving them credit for. Individuals who need professional help should get it, and we should continue working to remove barriers to accessing mental health services. But we also need a culture that empowers people to take an active role in their own psychological wellbeing, and to do so by spending less time fixated on their mental states and more time engaged with the world around them.

I have been making this case for a long time and in a lot of places, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and Profectus.

Here is the basic argument. Human beings have a remarkable ability no other species shares. We can turn our attention inward, reflect on our own thoughts and feelings, run mental simulations, learn from the past, and plan for the future. This capacity for self-consciousness is one of our greatest cognitive assets. It is what makes human progress possible. And it is what makes us an existential species driven to find meaning in life. But it also makes us uniquely vulnerable to psychological distress.

We can replay our failures on a loop, catastrophize about a future that hasn’t happened, and get stuck in cycles of self-doubt and despair.

This vulnerability is not new, but modern life has introduced new challenges. Technological progress has delivered enormous benefits, but the way our digital devices have come to dominate daily life has meant more time alone, more time passively consuming content, and more time in our own heads. And into this environment came a well-intentioned cultural movement to raise mental health awareness.

In important ways it worked. Stigma around mental illness has declined and more people feel comfortable seeking help. But the movement also encouraged people to spend more time monitoring their emotional states and to interpret normal stress, anxiety, or sadness as signs of mental illness. That pushes people further inward, fueling the rumination and passive self-preoccupation that makes psychological distress worse.

If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, the alternative I propose will probably be familiar. I call it the outward action approach, and Head Out builds a public education initiative around it. The initiative is organized around five domains of outward engagement that research connects to psychological health: physical movement, purposeful work, creative expression, social connection, and self-transcendence.

Many of the ideas are timeless, the kinds of things humans have always needed to thrive. Modern behavioral science now gives us strong empirical evidence that they work.

You can explore the initiative at headoutworld.org. We are currently working on our first Head Out mental health toolkit, which we plan to release in the coming weeks. If you are new to these ideas or want to go deeper, there is a lot to explore both here in the Flourishing Friday archives and over at headoutworld.org.

I want to close by connecting Head Out to another theme I have been researching and writing about a lot lately. Young people are driving a real-world renaissance, rediscovering physical media, analog technology, hands-on hobbies, and in-person gathering spaces.

In our research at the Human Flourishing Lab, we find that large majorities of Gen Z report feeling nostalgic for eras before their lifetime and say they are drawn to media, styles, hobbies, or traditions from earlier periods.

This is a topic I have covered extensively in this newsletter, in outlets like the New York Times, in several appearances on NBC Today and NBC News, and in podcasts like Apple News In Conversation. And I will also be speaking on it later this month at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

I started researching Gen Z nostalgia and developing the outward action framework behind Head Out as separate projects, but I increasingly see them as deeply interconnected. Gen Z is the generation most affected by our current mental health crisis and the primary target of our culture’s well-intentioned but counterproductive approach to psychological wellbeing. And yet many of them seem to sense something is off, and they are doing something about it. By seeking out more tangible, in-person, and meaningful ways of engaging with the world, they are instinctively pushing back against an inward-focused culture.

What Gen Z is nostalgically reaching for is ultimately what Head Out is built on. This is a hopeful sign. It tells me that this generation is ready for a more outward-oriented approach, and I believe Head Out can help them get there.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

A new NBC News poll finding that nearly half of young Americans would choose to live in the past is getting a lot of attention. Gen Z nostalgia for an era that predates them is a topic I have been discussing a lot with NBC lately, including in several appearances on NBC Today and a recent interview with Gadi Schwartz for NBC News, so I want to share some thoughts on how I think we should interpret findings like this one.

First, let’s consider some other results from the same poll. Over 60% of Gen Z respondents said they expect life will be worse for them compared to previous generations, and 80% said the country is on the wrong track, the highest share of any age group surveyed. These are young people carrying a lot of anxiety and frustration about the present and where things are headed, and those feelings are inspiring their sentimentality toward the past. But I do not see this as unhealthy escapism.

Nostalgia functions as a psychological resource, especially during times of uncertainty and disruption. It helps people step out of the current moment and find comfort, inspiration, and guidance from their own cherished memories or the broader shared stories of earlier eras. Research shows that nostalgia increases positive mood, a sense of belongingness, meaning in life, self-confidence, goal motivation, optimism about the future, creative problem-solving, prosocial behavior, and other mental states and actions that advance human progress and flourishing. This is not escapism. This is using the past to approach the future with agency, purpose, and determination.

It is worth pausing here on the distinction between nostalgia and declinism, because they are often confused. Declinism is the belief that society is deteriorating and the best days are behind us. Nostalgia is something quite different, a warm sentimentality toward the past. Whereas nostalgia helps people approach the future with an open and positive mindset, declinism does the opposite.

Looking at the poll numbers, it is fair to say that Gen Z is showing some signs of declinist thinking. Large majorities believe life will be worse for them than for previous generations and that the country is going in the wrong direction. That is worth taking seriously. But it is important to remember that nostalgia is often triggered by negative feelings about the present and future, and that it helps people work through those feelings and approach what lies ahead with renewed purpose and hope.

We should be careful about making broad generalizations across an entire generation, but the research our team at the Human Flourishing Lab has done on Gen Z nostalgia, as well as other work I have been involved in on this topic, leads me to believe that most young adults are using their nostalgia for earlier eras constructively, as a way to resist the pull of declinism and restore a sense of hope and possibility. There will always be those whose yearning for the past tips into something less healthy, but that does not appear to be the dominant pattern.

The NBC poll and interviews they conducted give us useful clues about what Gen Z is specifically nostalgic for and what that says about the future they want to build. Among the nearly half of young Americans who said they would prefer to live in the past, the majority chose a period less than 50 years ago, essentially the world of the 1990s and early 2000s, right before the smartphone and social media became central organizing features of daily life. In interviews, young adults explained that this longing is shaped by their uneasy relationship with always-on technology, and that looking back to an earlier era offers them a sense of community and comfort amid anxieties about where technology and the broader world are headed.

Gen Z is not anti-technology. Our research at the Human Flourishing Lab finds that Gen Z recognizes both the benefits and the downsides of modern digital life. In our surveys, 86% say they are interested in learning about new technologies, 88% are motivated to use them, and 84% find it important to keep an open mind about technological advances. At the same time, 80% worry their generation is too dependent on technology, 74% are concerned about social media’s impact on mental health, and 58% believe new technologies are more likely to drive people apart than bring them together. They value what these platforms offer, but they also believe they are contributing to real mental health struggles and making it harder for people to trust and connect with each other.

Digital and real-world life do not have to be at war with each other, and I believe Gen Z is working hard to figure out that balance. They are not throwing their smartphones away. They are buying vinyl records and film cameras and physical books while still using social media to discover and organize offline experiences. What they are pushing back against is the feeling of being controlled by technology rather than in control of it. That desire for a more intentional and human-centered relationship with the digital world is also showing up in how they think about mental health. Many of them are drawing a direct line between their anxiety and the way modern technology has come to dominate their attention and social lives. Rather than accepting this as their fate, they are actively looking for ways to rebalance.

Every era has its challenges, and advances that help solve one problem can contribute to others. Digital technologies have connected us in remarkable ways and created new opportunities for creativity and commerce, but they have also created real pressures on our attention, psychological health, and social lives.

I think we sometimes lose sight of the human component of human progress. Nostalgia, I would argue, helps keep us anchored to it. It reminds us of the importance of deep relationships, real-world experiences, and a sense of meaning and purpose. And it helps us carry those things forward as we navigate whatever comes next. That is what I believe Gen Z is doing right now, and I think they are going to lead the rest of us toward a healthier relationship with these technologies and, ultimately, with each other.

If you are interested in hearing more of my thoughts on these themes, I recently sat down with Apple News In Conversation to discuss them at length. You can listen here.

Before I sign off, I wanted to let you know that I will be taking the rest of May off from Flourishing Friday. I have some big things in the works that I look forward to sharing here when I am back in June.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

The live music industry is booming. Even as ticket prices have climbed sharply and consumers face real cost of living pressures, attendance at concerts, music festivals, and live events continues to grow with roughly seven in ten eventgoers saying they prioritize experiences over material goods. As I have written about in previous newsletters, people across generations, and especially teens and young adults, are increasingly hungry for real-world experiences that connect them to others and to the physical world around them. Live music is one of the most powerful expressions of that impulse, and new research helps explain why.

Live music does something to us that recorded music, for all its accessibility and convenience, simply cannot replicate. It is not just about the music. It is about what happens when human beings gather together to share a musical experience. A recent paper published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Nicole Koefler and colleagues helps explain what that something is and why it matters for our psychological health.

Specifically, the researchers focused on a concept called collective effervescence, a term sociologist Emile Durkheim used to describe the psychological experience of group religious rituals. Collective effervescence refers to the simultaneous experience of feeling deeply connected to the people around you and sensing that something special, even sacred, is occurring.

In an initial study, participants were given a brief description of collective effervescence and asked to recall a group event where they experienced it, alongside a separate event where they felt nothing particularly special or sacred. The researchers asked participants to rate the degree to which music was present and central to each event. They found that music featured far more prominently in the collective effervescence events than in those where people felt nothing special or sacred.

In subsequent studies, the researchers recruited people who had recently attended live music events and assessed how their experiences related to their wellbeing. The pattern was consistent. Greater collective effervescence during the event was associated with a stronger sense of meaning in life in the moment and greater happiness a week after the show ended. It was also the strongest predictor of these outcomes, outperforming other intense concert experiences like awe. And when the researchers looked at what drove collective effervescence in the first place, feeling a bond with the artist, immersing yourself in the lyrics, and attending with friends all played a role.

As you might expect from an existential psychologist, I think it is crucial to emphasize the importance of the finding on meaning in life. Meaning is a fundamental psychological need, and people who have a strong sense of meaning in life report better mental and physical health, greater resilience, and higher life satisfaction. They are also more motivated to pursue their goals. Thus, attending a live music event where you feel that sense of shared connection with those around you can support your psychological wellbeing in ways that go far beyond a fun night out.

The real-world renaissance I mentioned at the outset is not just a random consumer trend. It is people seeking more authentic, tangible, in-person experiences to counterbalance the digital saturation of modern life. Live music is one powerful expression of that shift, alongside the growth of independent bookstores, boutique fitness studios, board game cafes, and crafting communities. To be clear, people are not abandoning digital technology. They are recognizing that technology alone cannot meet all of their psychological and social needs.

I think these findings also have important implications for mental health. Rather than turning inward and dwelling on our struggles, which our current culture too often encourages, we tend to do better psychologically when we direct our energy outward, into activities that connect us with others and with something larger than ourselves. This is what I call the outward action approach to mental health. Live music is a great example of outward action. It gets you out of your own head. It puts you in a physical space with other people who share your passion. It reminds you that you are part of something bigger.

This also matters at the societal level. One of the things I find most encouraging about the live music trend is that it creates spaces where people from different backgrounds, neighborhoods, and political persuasions can share something meaningful together. In a cultural moment defined by political polarization, digital fragmentation, and cultural pessimism, that kind of in-person shared experience is a vital resource. For example, research suggests that collective effervescence can help us build social cohesion and remind us of our common humanity.

We are fortunate to live in an era when so much music is available to us at the touch of a button. But no matter how technologically sophisticated our lives become, we remain physical, social, and spiritual creatures who need to gather together in person and share experiences that connect us to one another and to something that transcends the ordinary. So the next time your favorite artist comes to town, or a local band is playing at a nearby venue, go. Bring a friend. Lose yourself in the music. The science says it will do you good, and it just might do the world a little good too.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

Much of the current conversation about social media treats the digital world and the real world as if they are locked in a zero sum battle. Online life is cast as a retreat from real connection and community. And the growing interest in analog experiences and pre-digital culture is often read as a sign that people want to go backward, as if the only way to reclaim our wellbeing is to step away from digital life and return to how things used to be.

I understand the instinct. There are real concerns about how these platforms are designed, how they shape our attention, and how they can crowd out the people and experiences right in front of us. But digital and real-world engagement are not inherently in conflict. The two can work together, and each is often stronger when it does.

Consider how many real-world gatherings now begin with a digital connection. People discover local running clubs through Strava and Instagram. They find hobby groups through Reddit threads and Facebook communities. They organize neighborhood events through group chats. They learn about farmers markets, live music, and volunteer opportunities through posts someone shared. In each case, the digital world is doing exactly what a healthy social tool should do. It is helping people find each other and then meet up in person. The reverse is also true. When we meet people in person or show up at events in our community, social media can help us stay connected afterward. Used this way, digital and physical life reinforce rather than compete with each other.

Gen Z offers a great illustration of this. In a previous newsletter, I wrote about how the real world is making a comeback, with young people driving the resurgence of analog experiences like vinyl records, film cameras, board games, independent bookstores, live music, and in-person community events. Critics sometimes read this as a retreat from modern life, as if young people have given up on the present and want to go backward. But that is not what is happening. Gen Z is not rejecting the digital world. They are selectively and creatively borrowing from earlier eras to build something more balanced. You can buy physical media and still utilize streaming services, and that is what many are doing.

Social media is ironically helping drive these retro trends. It is how young people are learning about retro products, styles, and activities, sharing them with friends, and building communities around them. A vintage film photography account on Instagram inspires someone to pick up a used camera. An Instagram reel about sourdough inspires someone to start baking and then trade starters with a neighbor. A group chat turns a shared interest in board games into a standing Friday night. The digital and the analog are working together, not against each other.

And despite social media’s reputation for being toxic, research shows that only a small number of users are responsible for most of the harmful content we see. As I discussed in a previous newsletter, Americans dramatically overestimate how common harmful online behavior actually is. Participants in one study guessed that more than 40% of active Reddit users had posted toxic content. The real figure is 3%. And in our research at the Human Flourishing Lab, we find that most Americans report positive online experiences, feeling connected to communities, capable of civil discourse, and comfortable being themselves. These kinds of experiences can help inspire the openness and goodwill that motivate people to go out and connect with others offline.

None of this means that the concerns about social media are imagined. There are real problems to address. But the answer is not to treat digital and physical life as enemies, or to assume that a richer real-world life requires going backward. The answer is to recognize that our digital and physical lives can work together when we approach them that way.

This positive sum approach starts with us. It means using social media as a launchpad rather than a destination. It means letting what we find online motivate us to show up in the real world, and letting what we experience in the real world give us something meaningful to share online. It means being thoughtful about which platforms and accounts deserve our time, and which do not.

Social media companies would be wise to adopt this approach as well. In our research, we found that 58% of Gen Z believe new technologies are more likely to drive people apart than bring them together, and 75% are concerned about social media’s impact on mental health. If platforms come to feel like an assault on real-world life rather than a complement to it, people will eventually leave those platforms. Humans are physical beings. We need face-to-face connection, shared physical spaces, and hands-on experiences to thrive. In the long run, platforms that help us get more of those things are more likely to succeed. Platforms that try to replace them are more likely to fail.

The positive sum approach is not automatic. It depends on how we engage. So each of us should ask whether our social media engagement pushes us toward or away from other people. Does it support openness, trust, and hope, or defensiveness, suspicion, and cynicism? Does it inspire us to engage with the real world and the people in it, or does it leave us more isolated from both?

Digital and real life don’t need to be at war. They can work together to improve our wellbeing, relationships, and society. But only if we use them that way.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I recently saw Project Hail Mary and loved it. I was a big fan of the book so I was excited to see it on the big screen, and it did not disappoint. It is science fiction but at its core it is an inspiring story driven by hope, resilience, and an unlikely friendship. And you do not need to be a sci-fi fan to be moved by it. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, I highly recommend both.

More than ever, I find myself drawn to stories of people overcoming barriers, beating the odds, and achieving something many thought was impossible. I am generally a pretty hopeful person to begin with, but given all the cynicism and pessimism that seems to dominate so much of our culture right now, I really appreciate it when I come across a story that recognizes human potential and what is possible when we put agency into action.

But stories like these are more than entertainment. As I have discussed in previous newsletters, inspiring media can motivate us to act. Research shows that the vast majority of Americans report being moved or inspired by films, and the more inspiring media people consume, the more inclined they are to engage in prosocial behavior. But this kind of media may not only help us do good for others. New research suggests it is also good for our own psychological health.

A new study published in Psychology of Popular Media tested what happens when people are assigned to watch short inspiring videos every day for a week. In a four-week experiment with over 1,000 U.S. adults, participants were randomly assigned to watch inspiring videos depicting people overcoming adversity, watch comedic videos, engage in guided meditation using a popular app, use their phones as they normally would during a break, or serve as a no-media control group. Each daily dose was only about five minutes. The researchers then measured stress levels up to ten days after the intervention ended.

Compared to a no-media control group, the inspiring videos reduced stress. So did meditation. Comedy did not have the same lasting effect. Neither did casual phone scrolling. Perhaps most notably, the inspiring media produced stress-relieving benefits comparable to meditation, a popular and well-supported strategy for managing stress.

Why did inspiring media work? The researchers were specifically interested in the role of hope. Previous research identifies hope as a psychological resource that helps people set goals, take action, and navigate difficult circumstances. The researchers selected inspiring videos featuring people overcoming adversity because these kinds of stories are most likely to evoke hope. And that is exactly what happened. Participants who watched the inspiring videos reported feeling more hopeful after each viewing, and that hope appears to have been the key mechanism driving the stress reduction. Meditation also reduced stress through hope, which is consistent with research finding that meditation can boost hope.

So inspiring media motivates us to engage with others and do good in the world. And it also reduces our own stress. Both of these findings are especially relevant right now given that a major source of stress in our country is the feeling that we are divided and disconnected from one another. The most recent Stress in America survey from the American Psychological Association found that 62% of U.S. adults say societal division is a significant source of stress and three quarters say they are more stressed about the future of the nation than they used to be. Research on hope finds that hopeful people are more trusting, more tolerant, more forgiving, and more motivated to serve their communities. Hope does not just reduce stress. It moves us to connect with others in ways that can help bridge the very divisions causing so much stress.

We need more inspiring stories in our culture. Not because they offer a feel-good escape from reality but because the evidence increasingly shows that they build the psychological resources that help us manage stress, take meaningful action, and contribute to the wellbeing of those around us.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I read a lot of research papers as part of my job at the Archbridge Institute and in preparation for this newsletter. Every now and then I come across one that really brings a smile to my face because it manages to be both informative and fun. The research that inspired this week’s newsletter is one of those. It involves Batman, one of my favorite superheroes.

A team of researchers at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan conducted a clever field study on the city’s metro system. They wanted to know whether an unexpected event could increase prosocial behavior. To find out, they had a female experimenter wearing a prosthetic belly to appear pregnant board the train while an observer recorded whether any seated passengers offered her their seat. In the control condition, that was it. In the experimental condition, another experimenter dressed as Batman entered the train from a different door. There was no interaction between Batman and the pregnant woman. He was just there, riding the metro as if the Batmobile was in the shop.

Does having Batman present increase prosocial behavior? It appears so. The researchers found that when Batman was not present, passengers offered their seats about 38% of the time. When Batman was present, that number jumped to 67%.

So what is going on here? The researchers proposed several possible explanations, including the idea that any unexpected presence, not Batman specifically, could disrupt passengers’ automatic routines and make them more attentive to their surroundings. But I think the more compelling explanation, one the researchers also highlighted, is that Batman served as a prosocial cue. Batman is not just an unusual sight. He is a universally recognized symbol of heroism, courage, and protection.

Of course, this is a single study conducted in one city on one transit system, and the researchers themselves acknowledge several limitations. For example, because the study did not include a non-heroic comparison figure, we cannot fully separate the effect of disruption from the effect of superhero symbolism. Interestingly, among those who offered their seat in the Batman condition, 44% reported that they had not even seen him.

But even with those caveats, this study suggests that the prosocial cues around us may inspire us to act on our better instincts. Previous research has found, for example, that exposure to superhero imagery can inspire people to think and act more prosocially.

This connects to ideas I have explored in previous newsletters. When I wrote about the motivational power of movies, I discussed research showing that the vast majority of Americans report being touched, moved, or inspired by films, and that consuming more of this kind of inspiring media is associated with greater prosocial behavior. Laboratory studies back this up. After watching an inspiring video clip, people were more willing to volunteer and spent more time helping. Stories of courage, sacrifice, and kindness do not just entertain us. They appear to activate something in us that makes us more inclined to help.

I have also written about why hero stories resonate so deeply. We are drawn to narratives that showcase inner strength, compassion, and the determination to do what is right, even at great personal cost. These are the qualities that elevate characters like Batman beyond their gadgets and costumes. And these are the qualities that, when modeled in stories and symbolized in our shared spaces, may encourage us to act a little more heroically in our own lives.

A central theme of my work on mental health and meaning in life is that we need to spend less time fixated on our own psychological states and more time engaging in activities that benefit others. As I have discussed in previous newsletters, meaning is deeply social and agentic in nature. We feel most meaningful when we are making a positive difference in the lives of others. And meaning is itself one of our most powerful mental health resources.

Prosocial cues in our environment may be one way to encourage this kind of outward focus. Imagine public art that celebrates everyday kindness, community events organized around shared goals, and media that highlights human goodness and cooperation rather than cynicism and division. These are not just nice ideas. The evidence suggests they may help bring out the best in people.

We do not need a real-life Batman patrolling our cities to build a more prosocial culture. But we might benefit from finding more creative ways to surround people with reminders of their capacity for kindness, generosity, and courage.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

Nostalgia is often portrayed as an enemy of progress. The assumption is that those who are drawn to the past are resistant to change, suspicious of new ideas, and pessimistic about the future. But people who think this appear not to be familiar with what over 25 years of research actually shows about nostalgia. And they may be confusing nostalgia with declinism.

Nostalgia is a warm sentimentality toward the past that draws on what we find meaningful, whether that is our own cherished memories or an appreciation for the ideas, traditions, and ways of life from earlier eras. Declinism is the belief that things are getting worse, that society is deteriorating, and that the best days are behind us. Both involve looking backward. But they have very different effects on how people think, feel, and behave.

Declinism makes people dissatisfied, socially disconnected, demotivated, and pessimistic about the future. A large body of research shows that nostalgia does the opposite. As I have written about in previous newsletters and in my book Past Forward, nostalgia increases psychological wellbeing, self-esteem, self-confidence, gratitude, inspiration, goal motivation, openness, and creativity. It makes people feel more connected to others and more optimistic about the future. It boosts empathy and prosocial behavior. Nostalgia also increases a sense of meaning in life, which I believe is a crucial component of a progress mindset because it drives people to want to have a positive impact on the world.

It is true that people who are dissatisfied with aspects of present-day life often become more nostalgic. But nostalgia is not the source of their dissatisfaction. It is a response to it. And rather than deepening their frustration, nostalgia helps resolve it by reconnecting people with the meaningful experiences that give them the confidence and motivation to move forward. Every era has its problems. Nostalgia is a psychological resource we use to solve them.

New research published in the European Journal of Personality provides more direct evidence of the distinction between nostalgia and declinism. Across several studies the researchers asked participants questions about nostalgia, such as how often they experience it and how valuable it is to them, and questions about declinism, such as whether they believe quality of life is declining and whether things used to be better in the good old days. They found that the two are largely unrelated. That is, nostalgia and declinism showed little to no correlation across their studies.

More importantly, nostalgia and declinism predicted opposite outcomes. Nostalgia predicted greater social connectedness and more favorable attitudes toward innovative technology. Declinism predicted less of both.

The researchers also tested this experimentally. Participants were asked to reflect on and write about either a nostalgic event from their lives, a time they felt things were in decline, or an ordinary event (the control condition). The researchers then assessed support for technological innovation, specifically attitudes toward the continued research and development of AI products. The nostalgic group showed increased support for technological innovation. The declinist group showed decreased support.

The researchers also found that social connectedness played a key role. Nostalgia made people feel more connected to others, and that greater sense of connection was associated with more support for technological innovation. Declinism made people feel less connected, and that weaker sense of connection was associated with less support for technological innovation. Put simply, nostalgia is a resource for progress. Declinism is a barrier to it.

This distinction between nostalgia and declinism can also be observed in historical nostalgia, the sentimentality people feel toward eras they never personally lived through. And Gen Z offers a good example of how this works in practice.

In a national survey conducted by our team at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab, we found that 68% of Gen Z report nostalgic feelings for eras before their lifetime. Seventy-three percent say they are drawn to media, styles, hobbies, or traditions from earlier eras, and 78% believe new technologies and products should incorporate ideas and design elements from past periods. Roughly two-thirds say that exploring eras that predate their lives helps them when they are stressed about modern life or anxious about the future.

Gen Z consumer trends further reflect this pattern. Young people are driving the resurgence of vinyl records, film photography, board games, physical books, and traditional crafts like knitting, pottery, and woodworking. They are gravitating toward in-person experiences and tangible products that offer something different from their digital-saturated lives.

A critic looking at all this might see declinism. They might conclude that young people have given up on progress and are romanticizing a past they never knew. But that conclusion does not hold up. In our research, 86% of Gen Z say they are interested in learning about new technologies, 88% are motivated to use them, and 84% find it important to keep an open mind about technological advances. These are not the attitudes of people who believe the best days are behind us.

However, Gen Z has real concerns about the negative effects of modern digital technology, from its potential impact on mental health to its role in driving people apart and fueling political polarization. And rather than retreating into pessimism, they are nostalgically looking to the past for inspiration and guidance. As I wrote in an essay for the New York Times, young adults often turn to pre-digital cultural artifacts and traditions as a way to develop more intentional relationships with contemporary technology and cultivate more in-person experiences and connections that support their wellbeing and counter the division that digital life can fuel. They are not rejecting innovation. They are selectively and creatively borrowing from earlier eras to build a more balanced life.

When we misunderstand nostalgia and mistake it for declinism, we misdiagnose a healthy and productive impulse as a sign of cultural retreat. We miss the fact that people are actively using the past to move forward. Nostalgia is not a barrier to progress. It is one of the most underappreciated drivers of it.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I consider myself an AI optimist. There is a lot of pessimism out there about how artificial intelligence will affect our society, but I see enormous potential for AI to improve our lives. That said, I think it is important to study and recognize AI’s limitations, especially when it comes to the parts of life that matter most. As a psychologist, I am particularly interested in understanding where AI can support human wellbeing and where it falls short. A really cool new study takes on one of the biggest questions in this space. Can an AI companion make people less lonely?

People are increasingly turning to AI for emotional support and connection. According to a report published in Harvard Business Review, therapy and companionship is now the number one use case for generative AI, up from number two the year before. And a survey from Common Sense Media found that 72% of U.S. teenagers have used AI for companionship at least once, with over half saying they are regular users. This is not a rare phenomenon. It is a rapidly growing trend.

But do AI chatbots actually fulfill human social needs? The research so far is mixed. Some studies have found that people feel happier and more socially connected right after chatting with a chatbot. But those studies mostly captured immediate reactions, not lasting effects. And at least one longer-term study found that relying on AI for companionship actually predicted increases in loneliness over time. A new study helps clarify the picture.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, focused on first-year university students, a group naturally susceptible to loneliness as they navigate the transition away from established support systems. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions for two weeks. They either texted daily with a custom-built AI chatbot named Sam, texted daily with a randomly assigned fellow first-year student, or simply wrote a brief journal entry about their day. The researchers measured loneliness before and after the two-week period, so they could track whether each condition actually reduced loneliness over time.

I think it is worth highlighting the strength of this design. By comparing human connection, chatbot interaction, and journaling side by side, the researchers could isolate what actually matters. Journaling is a good comparison because it mirrors the basic act of processing your day without any social component.

In addition, the chatbot was not some generic tool. It was specifically designed to embody the qualities of an ideal friend based on principles from relationship science, including active listening, emotional validation, and empathetic responsiveness. In other words, the researchers gave AI every advantage they could. And participants engaged with it. They exchanged roughly eight to ten messages per day in both the chatbot and human conditions, with chatbot conversations actually generating more words per day.

Despite all of that, only participants who texted with a real human peer showed a significant reduction in loneliness over the two-week period. They also reported significantly lower loneliness at the end of the study than those in both the chatbot and journaling conditions. Meanwhile, participants who interacted with the chatbot reported loneliness levels that were statistically indistinguishable from those who simply journaled. The chatbot, for all its engineered warmth, did not reduce loneliness.

This does not mean the chatbot did nothing. Participants who interacted with it reported less negative mood compared to the journaling control group, consistent with prior research showing AI can provide short-term emotional relief. But when it came to the deeper issue of loneliness, the chatbot fell short.

Why? The researchers offer several compelling explanations that align with what we know about the psychology of human connection. First, meaningful relationships are built on reciprocity. In human conversations, both people disclose, both people listen, and both people provide support. Interestingly, the study found that the chatbot actually expressed more empathy than human participants did. But participants themselves expressed less empathy when talking to the chatbot than when talking to another person. Alleviating loneliness may depend not only on receiving support but on having the opportunity to give it.

As I have previously discussed, meaning is deeply social and agentic in nature. We feel most meaningful when we are making a positive difference in the lives of others. Being a source of support for someone else is not just nice. It fulfills a basic human need to matter. A chatbot that does all the heavy lifting may actually deprive people of the very thing that makes connection feel meaningful in the first place.

Second, there is the issue of social capital. Human relationships exist within broader social worlds. The people we connect with introduce us to other people, invite us into new groups, and open doors we did not know existed. This is how social, community, and professional networks are built and maintained. A chatbot, no matter how supportive, cannot substitute for any of that.

Third, there is something about knowing that another person chose to engage. When someone takes the time to reach out despite being busy with their own responsibilities and goals, it signals that the relationship matters to them. That signal is a powerful ingredient in human social life. A chatbot that is always available and always responsive cannot send it. The act of choosing to be there may matter more than anything a chatbot can say.

A news story I once saw captures this well. Several local churches had teamed up to put on a back-to-school event for families in need. In one location, parents could get backpacks, school supplies, clothes, and even haircuts for their kids. All of this was free and provided by volunteers. A reporter interviewed one mother who said the resources made a real difference for her struggling family. But knowing that people chose to help mattered just as much. Her family had been going through a really tough time, and beyond the financial stress, she had been feeling isolated and depressed. The fact that strangers freely gave their time reminded her that people cared, and that made her feel less alone and less hopeless.

None of this means AI has no role to play in addressing psychological and social problems. But I think the key distinction is between AI that works to bring people together and AI that attempts to substitute for human connection. If the goal is to reduce loneliness, the most effective AI tools will probably be the ones that help people find, build, and maintain real relationships, not the ones designed to simulate them.

There are dimensions of human experience that technology cannot replicate. Loneliness is not just the absence of someone to talk to. It is the absence of meaningful mutual connection, of knowing that another person is there for you and that you are there for them. No matter how advanced AI becomes and how many ways it can benefit our lives, human flourishing ultimately requires real human connection.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

In this newsletter, I frequently write about how central meaning is to a fulfilling life. People who perceive their lives as meaningful experience better psychological and physical health, stronger relationships, and greater success in pursuing their ambitions. When meaning is absent, people are at greater risk for depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviors ranging from substance abuse to suicide. I’ve also written about how meaning is found more in action than in contemplation. New research provides important insights into the role that hope plays in this process.

There is already a lot of research showing that hope supports meaning in life. A new series of studies published in Motivation and Emotion goes further by testing a specific mechanism. The researchers examined whether goal-directed action is one of the ways that hope builds meaning. They tested this idea in the context of health, looking at whether hope for one’s health promotes meaning in life by increasing health-related behaviors.

In the first study, the researchers explored this idea during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that people who felt more hopeful about their health during the pandemic engaged in more health-protective behaviors such as hand washing and social distancing. And those behaviors, in turn, were associated with greater meaning in life. In a subsequent study, the researchers turned to the everyday health domains of exercise and nutrition. They found the same pattern. People who felt more hopeful about their health were more likely to engage in healthy behaviors, and those behaviors predicted greater meaning.

These findings provide evidence of a link between hope, goal-directed behavior, and meaning. But because these studies are correlational, they don’t tell us the direction of causality. It could be that hope increases goal-directed action, which then builds meaning. But it could also go the other way. In fact, previous research, including studies my colleagues and I have conducted, provides experimental evidence that meaning in life increases goal-directed action, which could increase hope. So does hope also increase goal-directed action and meaning?

To test this, the final study used an experimental design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the hope condition, they were asked to write three reasons they were hopeful about achieving their health goals over the next two months. In the hopelessness condition, they wrote three reasons they felt hopeless about achieving their health goals. We all experience moments of greater and lesser hope about our goals, and this writing exercise was designed to temporarily shift participants toward a more or less hopeful outlook on their health. In the neutral condition, they wrote about their daily routine.

The researchers found that those in the hope condition reported greater intentions to engage in healthy behaviors and higher meaning in life compared to those in the other conditions. Because participants were randomly assigned, this provides stronger evidence that hope is actually driving these effects.

In a previous newsletter, I discussed the momentum of meaning. You can spend a lot of time thinking about what would make your life feel meaningful, but meaning is found more in action than in contemplation. The hard part is getting started. But once you begin taking purposeful action, meaning starts to build, and that meaning motivates further action, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.

This new research adds an important piece to that picture by identifying hope as one of the things that can help get the cycle going. Though the studies focused specifically on health behaviors, the underlying principle extends to other domains. When you feel hopeful about a goal, whether it involves your career, your relationships, or your community, that hope motivates you to take concrete steps. And those steps contribute to a sense that your life has purpose and direction.

These findings also reinforce a theme that runs through much of my work on human flourishing, the importance of an outward and action-oriented approach to life. Meaning is not primarily found through inward contemplation. It is found through engaged, purposeful activity directed toward goals that matter to us and to the people we care about. While hope is something we experience internally, it doesn’t turn us inward. It pushes us outward, toward the aspirations and actions that generate meaning.

Hope is often dismissed as wishful thinking, a passive emotion that makes people feel good but doesn’t actually do anything. But research on hope, including these studies, tells a very different story. Hope is an energizing force. It moves people to act, and that action is what builds meaning. Our outlook on life matters not because of how it makes us feel in the moment but because of what it motivates us to do.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

When I was writing my most recent book, Past Forward, there was a point at which I was ready to give up. I had a lot going on in my professional life and was feeling overwhelmed. I’m an ambitious person who enjoys staying busy, but I started wondering if I had finally taken on more than I could handle. I stayed the course and finished the book in large part because of my wife. She helped me think through how to better manage the project alongside my other responsibilities. And she helped me reconnect with why I wanted to write the book in the first place. Of course, I still had to do the writing myself. But she played a crucial role in helping me reengage with and follow through on a goal I might have abandoned on my own.

I share this story because it captures something important about agency that we tend to overlook. We usually think of it in individualistic terms. Agency is our capacity to regulate our own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, to set goals and pursue them, to take responsibility for the direction of our lives. This is a big part of the story. But there is another part that deserves more attention.

Humans are a deeply social species and other people play a central role in fueling the motivation that drives our agency, supporting us as we develop and pursue our goals, and shaping the environments that encourage or undermine agentic living. Understanding the social nature of agency doesn’t diminish individual responsibility. It helps strengthen it.

It starts with meaning. Meaning functions not just as an outcome of a good life but as a psychological resource that makes a good life possible. Meaning has motivational power. When people feel their lives are meaningful, they become more persistent, resilient, and willing to take on ambitious challenges. Meaning energizes the self-regulation and goal-directed action that agency requires.

And where does that meaning come from? Overwhelmingly, from other people. Research consistently shows that the most powerful sources of meaning are social. Family and close relationships come first for most people, but meaning also comes from the broader social groups, organizations, and institutions we participate in.

This isn’t simply because other people are present in our lives. It is because we believe we make a difference in theirs. We are inspired to take responsibility for our lives, to push through difficulties, and to strive to become better versions of ourselves in large part because of our desire to play a meaningful role in the lives of others. Think of the parent who persists through exhaustion, the entrepreneur who keeps building after setbacks, the volunteer who shows up week after week. In each case, the motivation to act agentically is fueled by a sense that what they are doing matters to others.

Other people don’t just fuel the motivation behind our agency. They also shape our belief that we are capable of directing our own lives. In his paper on the psychological building blocks of agency, Human Flourishing Lab fellow Andrew Abeyta highlights self-efficacy as a central component. It is the belief that we are capable of taking the actions necessary to achieve our goals. Our relationships and social environments are critical for developing self-efficacy. We build confidence in our abilities by watching others succeed, by receiving encouragement and mentoring from people we trust, and by being surrounded by individuals who support our efforts and acknowledge our growth. In other words, our belief in our own agency is not something we generate entirely on our own. It is cultivated through our interactions with others.

And when it comes to actually pursuing our goals, other people support our agency in practical and direct ways as well. As I discussed in a previous newsletter, research on goal sharing shows that when people tell others about their personally important goals, they receive significantly more support and invest considerably more effort into pursuing those goals.

When we share a goal with someone we trust, we invite them into our self-regulation process. They can remind us of what we are working toward, offer encouragement when we face setbacks, or provide practical accountability. Our agentic capacities are most effective when we strategically involve others.

Given the vital role that others play in our agency, it is worth being mindful of whether the social environments we inhabit are actually supporting it. Not all of them do. Social environments characterized by negativity, passivity, or a lack of accountability can quietly erode our motivation and self-efficacy. Being aware of this matters.

But equally important is recognizing that we are not just shaped by our social environments. We shape them. Every relationship and community we belong to is a context in which our actions influence what the people around us believe is possible. When we encourage someone’s goals, remind them of their potential, or simply show through our own efforts what it looks like to take responsibility, we strengthen the agency of those around us. And agency is not a finite resource that diminishes when shared. It grows when people invest in each other’s capacity to direct their own lives.

The next time you set a goal or push through a difficult stretch, notice who is behind that effort. Think about the people whose lives give your actions meaning and the people whose support keeps you going. Then consider how you might do the same for them and others. When we live agentically and support the agency of those around us, we help build a culture in which we feel responsible not only for ourselves but to each other.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

In previous newsletters, I’ve discussed what science tells us about living a meaningful life. Our overall sense of meaning is deeply connected to outward-oriented social action. We feel most meaningful when we are actively engaged in making a positive difference in the lives of others, whether it’s raising children, mentoring a colleague, building a business, volunteering in our communities, or simply showing up consistently for the people who count on us.

This week I want to discuss research that deepens our understanding of the existential benefits of social action by showing that the character we bring to our interactions with others also plays a role in how meaningful our lives feel. Specifically, a series of recent studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examined whether everyday moral character contributes to a person’s sense of meaning. The findings suggest it does.

The researchers examined the relationship between moral character and meaning in life across three studies spanning two cultures. Instead of relying on self-report measures of moral character, which can be distorted by the desire to see ourselves in a favorable light, they used reputation-based measures. This involved asking close friends, family members, coworkers, and acquaintances to evaluate each participant’s moral character, and then having those participants separately report on their own sense of meaning as well as broader measures of wellbeing. Rather than focusing on any single moral behavior like donating or volunteering, which may not reflect a person’s overall character, the researchers assessed a broad range of everyday moral traits, such as compassion, honesty, fairness, loyalty, respectfulness, and dependability.

Across all three studies, the pattern was consistent. People who were rated as more moral by others reported a stronger sense of meaning in life as well as greater subjective wellbeing, including more positive emotion and greater life satisfaction. These findings held among U.S. college students whose close others rated their character, among Chinese employees whose coworkers rated them, and among a U.S. sample in which participants nominated people they personally knew as being among the most moral, least moral, or morally average in their lives. Those nominated as most moral reported higher meaning and wellbeing than those in the other groups.

The association between morality and meaning held across different dimensions of moral character. It was not driven solely by kindness-related traits like compassion. Integrity-related traits like honesty and fairness were also positively associated with meaning, even though integrity often involves standing up for principles in ways that can create social friction. Religiosity is a well-documented source of meaning, but the connection between moral character and meaning in these studies held even after accounting for religiosity.

The researchers explored why moral people tend to fare better, and the most consistent finding was that moral individuals reported having better relationships. When you treat people with compassion, honesty, and respect, you build the kind of strong relationships that support meaning. Our lives feel most significant when we are deeply embedded in the lives of others, and moral character appears to be one of the ways we build and sustain those bonds.

Studies my colleagues and I have conducted suggests that this relationship may go both ways. We found that the more people desire to live a meaningful life, the more they prioritize social goals and engage in prosocial behavior such as volunteering and charitable giving. In other words, the need for meaning itself appears to orient people toward others, and treating others well in turn supports meaning. Morality and meaning seem to reinforce each other.

This research on moral character and meaning enriches our understanding of the social nature of meaning by highlighting that it is not just about what we do. It is also about how we do it. Being honest in our dealings, treating people fairly, showing compassion when it is needed, and being someone others can count on are all ways we demonstrate that the people in our lives matter to us. And in doing so, we build the kind of life that makes us feel like we matter too.

These findings also reinforce a point I’ve made in a previous newsletter. Meaning is accessible to all of us through the everyday choices we make. The researchers were not studying acts of moral heroism or extraordinary courage. They were studying regular people and their everyday moral behavior, and among those regular people, those with stronger moral character experienced more meaning in their lives.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

I am not a great athlete and never have been. But physical exercise is a critical part of my life. I try to work out at least a little every day. On busy days, that might be a quick 15 or 20 minute session of weightlifting or cardio. I’m not training for any kind of competition. I just try to stay active and in shape, mixing in everything from lifting weights to swimming, biking, and hiking. To keep things fun, I also try to work in social physical activities like regular long walks with my wife and a weekly run club at a local brewery. When I occasionally do get out of my regular workout routine, I notice it in my mood, energy, and general outlook.

For me, exercise is about maintaining and strengthening my overall health and wellbeing. But a growing body of research finds that physical activity is far more than a wellness habit. It may be one of the most powerful tools we have for actually treating mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.

There is already a lot of research supporting this idea, but a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine provides one of the most comprehensive analyses to date. The study is what researchers call a “meta-meta-analysis.” Meta-analyses combine results from multiple individual studies to identify broader patterns. A meta-meta-analysis takes that a step further by systematically reviewing and synthesizing all the existing meta-analyses on a topic. In this case, the researchers examined 81 separate meta-analyses, which together drew from more than 1,000 original trials and nearly 80,000 participants.

The researchers set out to determine how effective exercise is at reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, and whether the type, intensity, frequency, or social context of exercise matters. They found strong evidence that exercise reduces both depression and anxiety symptoms compared to being inactive. These effects were comparable to, and in some cases exceeded, those of more commonly prescribed treatments including psychotherapy and antidepressant medication.

This is so important because traditional mental health treatments can be expensive, difficult to access, and burdensome in other ways. Exercise, by contrast, is widely accessible and relatively low cost, and it comes with a host of additional physical health benefits. It is also something that fits naturally into daily life. We can exercise with friends and family. We can take our kids to the park and run around with them. We can take a walk on our lunch break. We can join a recreational sports league, take a yoga class, or, like me, show up to a weekly run club. It doesn’t require a referral or a prescription.

Aerobic activities like walking, running, cycling, and swimming were the most effective at reducing both depression and anxiety. But all forms of exercise showed positive effects, including resistance training and yoga. For depression specifically, the greatest improvements occurred when people exercised in group settings with professional guidance, such as fitness classes, running clubs, or supervised walking programs. (Data on group and supervised exercise for anxiety was not available in this analysis, so more research is needed there.) This social and structured component appears to be especially important for depression, which makes sense given what we know about the fundamental human need to belong and the psychological benefits of social connection.

There were also interesting findings about who benefits most. Young adults aged 18 to 30 and women who had recently given birth showed the most substantial improvements. Given that depression and anxiety rates are particularly high among younger populations, this is an especially relevant finding.

The good news is you don’t have to be a gym rat or train like you’re preparing for the Olympics. For depression, exercising just once or twice a week was about as effective as more frequent sessions, and intensity didn’t seem to matter much. For anxiety, the best outcomes came from consistent lower-intensity exercise maintained for up to eight weeks. Regular movement at a comfortable pace can make a real difference.

Beyond depression and anxiety, research shows that the psychological benefits of physical activity are wide-ranging. In a previous newsletter, I argued that we shouldn’t treat physical and psychological health as distinct. Our minds and bodies work in concert. Physical activity decreases the production of stress-related hormones like cortisol while increasing the brain’s output of mood-enhancing endorphins. Exercise enhances our ability to focus, boosts creativity, and improves memory, reducing the risk of cognitive decline as we age.

These findings also connect to a broader case I’ve been making about the need for a different societal approach to mental health. In previous articles and newsletters, I’ve argued that our culture’s growing fixation on psychological distress, while well-intentioned, may actually be contributing to the problem it seeks to solve. Reducing stigma around mental illness is a good thing, and so are efforts to make professional treatment more accessible for those who need it. But when we encourage people to spend more and more time focused inward on their negative thoughts and feelings, we risk promoting the kind of rumination that worsens depression and anxiety. Instead of pushing people further into their heads, we should be helping them engage in meaning-providing and outward-focused social, creative, educational, professional, spiritual, and physical activities.

Exercise may be one of the clearest illustrations of this principle. When you’re on a run, in a fitness class, or playing a sport, you’re engaged with the physical world around you. You’re setting and working toward goals. You’re often doing it alongside other people. You simply don’t have the mental bandwidth for rumination. And far from being a mere distraction, these activities foster self-confidence and a sense of agency that energize us to pursue a wide range of life goals. The research increasingly shows that this kind of outward orientation is a direct pathway to better mental health. Our team at the Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab will be launching a major project on the outward action approach in the coming months, and I’ll have much more to share on this soon.

As a mental health intervention, exercise is evidence-based, accessible, and something you can start today. Sometimes the best thing we can do for our minds is to get out of our heads and move.

Have a great weekend!

Clay

Spend enough time on social media and it is easy to walk away with a discouraging view of your fellow humans. The hostile comments, viral outrage, and seemingly endless misinformation can make it feel like the online world reflects something deeply broken about people. Well, I have some encouraging news. New research shows that online toxicity is driven by a much smaller group of people than most of us realize.

In a series of three studies involving over 1,000 Americans, a team of researchers from Stanford University compared what people believe about harmful behavior on social media to what platform-level data actually reveals. The gap is pretty remarkable.

When participants estimated what percentage of active Reddit users had posted severely toxic content, they guessed more than 40 percent on average across the studies. The actual figure is 3 percent. For Facebook, participants estimated that nearly half of all users had shared false news online. The real number is 8.5 percent. When it came to so-called super-sharers who had spread 10 or more false news articles, participants guessed roughly 36 percent of users fell into this category. The actual figure is less than half of one percent.

The misperception is not rooted in confusion about what counts as harmful content. In one of the studies, participants were shown actual Reddit comments and asked to identify which ones would be classified as toxic. They were highly accurate. They understood what toxic content looks like. They simply believed it was coming from a much larger portion of the population than it actually is.

Participants also failed to realize how few accounts were responsible for so much content. That 3 percent of Reddit accounts responsible for toxic posts generated about a third of all content on the platform, toxic or otherwise. In other words, people encounter a lot of harmful content not because many people are creating it, but because a small group is posting relentlessly. We see the volume and assume it reflects broad participation. It does not.

I think it is crucial to emphasize what this misperception actually does to us. The researchers found that believing more people post harmful content online generates more negative emotion and a greater sense that the country is in moral decline. This sense of moral decline informs how people engage with public life, with institutions, and with each other. When we think the worst of our fellow citizens based on what we see online, we become more defensive and more prone to viewing those who disagree with us as bad actors rather than as people who simply see things differently.

The researchers also found that participants consistently underestimated how much their fellow Americans shared their desire for less harmful online content. So not only do we think more people are producing toxic content than actually are, we also fail to recognize how many people share our preference for a healthier online environment. We feel like a quiet, reasonable minority surrounded by a hostile majority. The data suggest a very different picture.

The good news is that this misperception can be corrected. When participants learned the actual prevalence of harmful content and understood that it comes from a small but vocal minority, they felt more positive emotion, showed less pessimism about their fellow citizens, and were better able to see that others share their desire for something better online.

Knowledge empowers agency. When we understand that the toxic content we see online is not representative of how most people actually behave, we can put what we see in its proper context, resist the pull toward cynicism, extend more good faith to the people we encounter, and remind ourselves that most people share our basic desire for a healthier online environment. And when we share this knowledge with others, we help replace a distorted picture with a more accurate and ultimately more hopeful one.

Most Americans who use social media are not spreading misinformation or engaging in toxic behavior. If we want to make progress on societal challenges such as polarization, social distrust, and pessimism about our shared future, seeing each other more accurately is a good place to start.

Have a great weekend!

Clay