The actual PDF is at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34071/w340...

From the conclusion:

(I paraphrase) Mental Health has worsened rapidly in the last decade in the US, especially for young women.

It goes on:

""" It does not appear that the declining mental health of young workers is driven by a decline in the

youth wage compared to the wage of older workers; this ratio has increased. Real wages have also

been on the rise. As Feiveson (2024) has noted the relative prices of housing and childcare have

risen. Student debt is high and expensive. The health of young adults has also deteriorated, as

seen in increases in social isolation and obesity. Suicide rates of the young are rising. Moreover,

Jean Twenge provides evidence that the work ethic itself among the young has plummeted. Some

have even suggested the young are unhappy having BS jobs.

There is a good deal of supporting evidence from a variety of surveys including from Pew, the

Conference Board and Johns Hopkins on the parlous state of young worker well-being in the USA

that we documented here. The concern is that we are observing the consequences of past well-

being shocks. We should note that 10.1% of workers aged 20 in 2023 said they were in despair.

They were aged 17 when COVID lockdowns were implemented in 2020. They were 10 years old

in 2013 as the smartphone and the internet exploded. In addition, of course, they were in high

school ages 14-18 in 2017-2021. We know from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey that the well-

being of high school students deteriorated sharply around that time.15

Jean Twenge suggested to us that an explanation for this, maybe that childhood and teenage years

with low levels of in-person interaction and more time online, such as have occurred since 2014

or so, results in depression and pessimism and dissatisfaction across many domains (including

work). Social media glamorizes others' lives plus online news and social media encourage

pessimism about jobs and the economy in general. This likely results in dissatisfaction across

many domains, perhaps especially work. With an additional side element perhaps of "the whole

system is rigged anyway, so why try?"

This rise in despair/psychological distress of young workers may well be the consequence of the

mental health declines observed when they were high school children going back a decade or more.

Increasing access to the internet and smartphones seem to be the culprits. """