the assessment by Jean Twenge, a leading social psychologist: I think the research tells us that modern life is not good for mental health…. Obviously there’s a lot of good things about societal and technological progress, and in a lot of ways our lives are much easier than, say, our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ lives. But there’s a paradox

in the last ten years, Americans have reported a steady decline in overall life satisfaction, despite the fact that average income per capita increased by 5.5 percent (see Figure I.2). We got richer, but became less happy.12 Something has gone terribly wrong.