2026年3月20日 / 美国东部时间上午11:04 / CBS新闻
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在其最新著作《你的生命意义》（将于3月31日由Portfolio出版社出版）中，《纽约时报》畅销书作家Arthur C. Brooks剖析了一场文化危机：在他所说的”空虚时代”，焦虑和抑郁情绪的增加与社交媒体使用量的上升同时发生，正侵蚀着我们寻找生命意义的能力。
以下是节选内容，不要错过3月22日《CBS周日早晨》节目中Brooks的访谈！
《你的生命意义》 by Arthur C. Brooks
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2009年1月，我暂时离开校园，开始了为期十年的休整，前往华盛顿特区担任一家大型非营利组织的总裁，直到2019年秋季才重返学术界。我一直打算回归学术领域，十年后我辞去了高管职务，接受了哈佛大学的教职。我的初衷是重拾学生时代曾给予我的乐观与活力——回到属于我的”家”。
然而，当我回来时，一切都变得异常诡异。校园氛围日益压抑，越来越多的学生遭受抑郁和焦虑的困扰。在一些高校，超过半数的学生正在接受心理健康治疗。我的办公时间与其说是辅导，不如说是心理咨询。希望与乐观似乎已被愤怒和悲伤取代。恐惧无处不在：学生们害怕接触那些令他们感到情绪不安的观点，而教职员工则因担心冒犯学生而不敢讲授任何可能引发争议的内容。
我在校园里目睹了这场危机，但这只是我最直观感受到的表象。抑郁、焦虑、孤独、恐惧和愤怒四处蔓延，尤其在年轻人中更为严重。很快，所有人都在谈论心理健康危机。从2005年到2019年，美国青少年出现重度抑郁症状的比例几乎增加了两倍，而焦虑症状的比例几乎翻了一番。根据综合社会调查，2000年至2023年间，所有年龄段的美国成年人中”对生活不太满意”的比例增加了一倍多。女性受影响尤为严重：截至2024年，12至26岁的美国女性中有45%被正式诊断出患有焦虑或抑郁。2004年至2024年间，30岁以下女性中认为自己心理健康状况”极佳”的比例骤降，从48%降至15%。
数据所揭示的——以及我们亲眼所见的——正是社会科学家所说的心理源性流行病：一种导致巨大痛苦但无器质性病因的现象，其发病原因是社会性或心理性的，而非生物学因素。作为幸福科学专家，我自然开始公开探讨这场流行病，试图找出其根源。在研究过程中，我发现了一个更令人困惑的现象：那些本应最幸运的群体——像我所在大学这样勤奋进取的学生——实际上承受的痛苦最为深重。
在调查流行病成因的过程中，我首先审视了人们普遍持有的解释。最常见的一种说法是，年轻人被老一辈”欺骗”了：老一辈承诺只要努力工作、循规蹈矩就能拥有美好的生活，而年轻人却发现，在提供最有价值工作的城市里，房价高得令人绝望，抚养孩子的难度逐年增加。同时，他们缴纳社保和医保的系统可能在他们年老时就已破产。此外，还有迫在眉睫的环境威胁、日益加剧的不平等，以及一系列其他问题。”感谢你们空洞的承诺和搞砸的世界，婴儿潮一代。”
另一方面，年长一代则指责年轻人自身，认为他们沉溺于享乐、自恋和特权文化。当许多同龄人听到”如今生活比以前糟糕得多”的抱怨时，他们往往只是翻白眼。当成年子女谈论环境问题时，他们会回忆起冷战时期烟雾弥漫的高速公路、燃烧的河流和核爆演习。当他们听到住房负担不起的抱怨时，可能会指出自己年轻时租住的简陋公寓——角落里放着卷起来的被褥，只有一个双环炉灶做饭。
但这两种替罪羊式的解释都站不住脚。它们将深刻的哲学和心理问题归咎于另一代人的自私。这并不新鲜：每一代人都会怨恨前辈，然后轻视”现在的孩子”。但这种心理源性流行病是真实存在且前所未有的。
更学术化的解释聚焦于人们如何通过娱乐和消遣来分散注意力——通常是低头看手机。我的研究明确显示，社交媒体使用与情绪问题之间存在直接关联。一般来说，你花在手机上的时间越多，就会变得越抑郁、孤独和焦虑。
然而，这仍然无法解释一个更大的谜团：人们究竟在寻找什么？他们真正渴望却无法在长时间刷手机时找到的东西是什么？过度使用科技是一种舒缓行为，因为他们的生活中缺少了某种重要事物——而这种行为可能会让这种”重要事物”更难被找到。这就像酒精或娱乐性药物，当人们生活中渴望的希望、机会或爱缺失时，他们常常会滥用这些东西，但这只会让问题变得更糟。
年轻的奋斗者们究竟极度渴望什么却无法找到？为什么他们找不到？我需要超越数据和统计来回答这个问题，于是我开始让人们讲述他们的故事。
一次又一次的访谈，他们的故事让数据变得鲜活。我们今天面临的挑战远比住房负担不起或代际特权问题要深刻得多。我们正身处一场意义危机的文化困境中。
（本文节选自《你的生命意义：在空虚时代寻找目标》，Arthur C. Brooks著，经Portfolio出版社（Penguin Publishing Group旗下品牌，隶属Penguin Random House LLC）授权出版。2026年版权所有。）
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《你的生命意义》 by Arthur C. Brooks
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Book excerpt: “The Meaning of Your Life” by Arthur C. Brooks
March 20, 2026 / 11:04 AM EDT / CBS News
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In his latest book, “The Meaning of Your Life” (to be published March 31 by Portfolio), New York Times bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks writes of a cultural crisis: an increase in anxiety and depression, concurrent with a rise in social media use, that is impinging upon our ability to find purpose in life, during what he terms an “Age of Emptiness.”
Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Brooks on “CBS Sunday Morning” March 22!
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“The Meaning of Your Life” by Arthur C. Brooks
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In January of 2009, I temporarily left my campus home, taking a ten-year hiatus to be the president of a big nonprofit organization in Washington, DC, and didn’t return until the fall of 2019. I always intended to return to academia, and after a decade, I quit my executive job and accepted a position at Harvard University. My intention was to get back the optimism and vigor students had always given me in times past—to get back home.
But when I returned, it was very unheimlich. The atmosphere had darkened, as larger and larger percentages of students were suffering from depression and anxiety. At some colleges and universities, more than half of students were receiving mental health treatment. My office hours were more like counseling sessions than tutoring. Hope and optimism seemed like they had been replaced by anger and sadness. And fear: students feared exposure to ideas they found objectionable and made them feel emotionally unsafe, and faculty were terrified to lecture on anything that might offend the students.
I saw the crisis on campus, but that was just where it was most obvious and visible to me. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and anger were cropping up everywhere, especially among young adults. Pretty soon, everyone was talking about a mental health crisis. The percentage of American adolescents with symptoms of major depression [nearly][tripled] from 2005 to 2019, while anxiety almost [doubled]. According to the General Social Survey, the percentage of American adults of all ages who are “not too happy” about their lives had more than doubled from 2000 to 2023. Women were hit especially hard: 45 percent of female Americans between ages twelve and twenty-six had [received] a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression by 2024. From 2004 until 2024, the percentage of women thirty and under who said their mental health was “excellent” [plummeted], from 48 percent to 15 percent.
What the data show—and what everyone has seen with our own eyes—is what we social scientists call a psychogenic epidemic, a phenomenon that causes tremendous suffering but has no organic cause, meaning the onset is social or psychological, not biological. As a specialist in the science of happiness, I naturally began writing and speaking publicly about this epidemic, searching for its cause. And as I did this work, I found something even more mysterious: those who should be the best off—the hardworking strivers at places like my university—were actually suffering the most.
Over the course of my investigation into the cause of the epidemic, I started by looking at the popular explanations we all hear. A very common one is that young adults have gotten a bait-and-switch from older generations, who promised them that if they worked hard and played by the rules, they would have a great life. Instead, they found that houses are impossibly expensive in the cities that offer the most rewarding jobs, and raising kids gets harder every year. Meanwhile, the social security and medical systems they are paying into will be bankrupt by the time they are old. On top of that, there are looming environmental threats, rising inequality, and a host of other problems. Thanks for all the empty promises and the screwed-up world, boomers.
On the other side, older people claim that the problem is young adults themselves, with their supposed culture of indulgence, narcissism, and entitlement. When many people my age hear the complaint that life is so much worse today, and that they had things so much easier in the old days, they just roll their eyes. When their adult kids talk about environmental problems, they recall growing up with smog-choked free-ways, burning rivers, and nuclear-bomb drills during the Cold War. When they hear how unaffordable housing is, they’re likely to point out the lousy apartment they rented—with a rolled-up futon in the corner and a two-ring burner to cook on—when they were starting out.
But neither of these scapegoating explanations holds water. They just blame a deep philosophical and psychological problem on another generation’s selfishness. There’s nothing new about that: every generation resents their elders and then looks down on “kids these days.” But this psychogenic epidemic is real and unprecedented.
A more scholarly explanation focuses on what people are doing to entertain and distract themselves—generally, staring down at their phones. In my own research, I find a clear relationship between social media use and emotional problems. As a general rule, the more time you spend looking at your phone, the more depressed, lonely, and anxious you will become.
It still leaves the big mystery, however, of what people are missing—what they truly want but can’t find while they scroll away for hours. The overuse of tech is a soothing behavior because something important is absent in their lives—and this behavior is probably also making that something harder to find. It’s like alcohol or recreational drugs, which people often abuse when what they really want in life—hope, opportunity, love—is absent, but which makes their problem worse.
What is it that the young strivers so deeply crave but can’t find? And why can’t they find it? I needed more than data and statistics to answer this, so I started asking people to tell me their stories.
And in interview after interview, their stories illuminated the data. The challenge we face today goes much deeper than, say, unaffordability or generational entitlement. We have found ourselves in a cultural crisis of meaning.
Excerpted from “The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness” by Arthur C. Brooks, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Arthur C. Brooks.
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Get the book here:
“The Meaning of Your Life” by Arthur C. Brooks
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For more info:
- [“The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness”] by Arthur C. Brooks (Portfolio), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available March 31
- [arthurbrooks.com]
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