Happiness is U shaped

And if you are at the bottom of the U, you should be on MySpace.

A recent study (led by Andrew Oswald from Warwick University in Britain, and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College) found that happiness follows a U-shaped curve in which people are happy in their 20s and get miserable in their 40s, and start looking up again beginning in their 50s, and if they live to be 70+, and happen to be physically well, they tend to be as happy as they were in their 20s. Remarkably, this is universal: the study surveyed 2 million people in 80 countries - and the U shape was observed in 72 of those countries.

The explanation of this is, at the moment, purely speculative. It goes like this: in the 40s people hit the traditional "mid-life crisis" - mortality sinks in, health fades, reality hits home in careers, finally they realize their lofty dreams aren't going to be realized, etc. And then, they get used to it. And if they live to be older and are healthy, they see how they fare better than their peers who are either sick or dead. Survivor bias may also be at play - the miserable die early, leaving the happy-go-lucky to hog all the senior discounts.

Another recent study found that size does matter, when it comes to one's social network. Recovery after a surgery - in terms of the severity of the pain experienced, the duration of recovery and the amount of pain meds needed - was found to be considerably better in cases where the patient had more people to call close friends.

You may not think of MySpace as the place where your "true" friends are. But (I heard Dr. Deal Edell say this), if one's body and brain think that's real, it'll work for them.