Wake Up Call To All...

International Happiness Day is celebrated each year by all 193 United Nations on 20 March. The inception and purpose of this event was created in 2012 for people to know the value of happiness in their lives and to build a greater awareness around it. However, at the 2024 summit held last month in the UK, it was reported that this was not the case as the welfare and happiness of young people aged between 15-24 years is in decline stating that while not all teenagers and young adults were suffering... a growing number were not coping being left adrift with limited life skills, training, and few qualifications. Social media was also believed to play a significant part in the decline, driving down self-esteem levels and increasing anxiety and depression robbing (young) people of their well-being. Daily access to the internet with continual exposure to high levels of violence, sexual content, and self-harm being encouraged by "FRENEMIES" left many parents struggling with the fall-out as they did not grow up with technology to be fully equipped to cope with out of control behaviour problems that now pervades them. Fundamentally, it is still the lack of education, plus the lack of affordable housing that underpins the decline in maintaining a long-term positive outlook. The report also found that young people are becoming more like their parents who are continually being weighed down by the cost of living crisis combined with stagnating wages, and where young and old people once held high hopes for their future this was no longer apparent. This has prompted The World Happiness Summit to sound the alarm about the future well-being of young people to Governments and for all people to make their well-being a daily priority, and that wealth and the internet are not the keys to Happiness. Happiness is a personal choice we can all make.