The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost Reprint Edition

The continuing work of the NSYR. Very helpful for anyone working with young adults (parents, teachers, pastors, etc.) to understand how they think about themselves and how they perceive that the world works today.

The Happiness Effect is a wonderful educational and casual reading book! I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is interested in how social media can affect people's life, whether it’s the struggles or the benefits. This would be a helpful book to read in school to educate the younger generation so they get the full picture of social media. There are so many stories in this book that the younger generation can relate too. This book covers all different topics with the use of different social media apps, like Tinder, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Yik Yak, etc. For the educational side it covers sexting, self deprecation, communication with strangers, and just showing a little too much about our lives on social media. It not only gives awareness but also gives tips on how to use the internet in better ways. I was hesitant to read this book because the layout is like a textbook with chapters and sections within those chapters but once you start reading you get locked in. I couldn’t put the book down. It’s rare to find a book that covers everything and still is very interesting. Highly recommend it!!

I was interested based on the title, but I really learned from this book. The section that most hit me was that on how our generation is going to events or on vacations with the intent of creating a beautiful, perfectly curated social media post, rather than attending these events, having fun, and taking a picture as an afterthought for memories. It made me really stop and think about my photo reel and process how to live moving forward.

With the meteoric advances of social media, the internet, and smartphones, today's young adults' mental and physical well-being has captured the attention of various professionals and parents worldwide. Donna Freitas addresses these concerns by sitting down and personally interviewing 200 college students and collecting 800 online surveys. In her book, The Happiness Effect, published in 2017, the readers meet these students firsthand. Freitas gives her reader a detailed description of the student she is interviewing. “Margaret has soft, dark curls, glasses, and a nervous demeanor from the moment she walks into the room. One of the first things I learned about Margaret is that, though she is only a junior, she is already engaged. She proudly shows me her ring. Both Margaret and her fiancé are on the ballroom dance team at their Midwestern Christian college” (Freitas, 2012, p. 17). Freitas makes her readers feel like they are sitting next to her while questioning the students--a clever tactic because Freitas’s readers can now hear their responses and see their body language. Freitas’s interviews unfold several concerns regarding social media, including an obsession with smartphones, sexting, cyberbullying, and what is appropriate information to post on social media. The students share their thoughts regarding these and other areas of concern related to social media. Freitas then sums up what she feels most students are trying to express in the interviews. Freitas provides her readers with research that addresses the concerns we all have regarding social media; therefore, the data she shares is accurate and informative at that time (2017). It is now 2022, and as fast as social media is changing, so are the effects it has on young adults. This read was interesting to read but not current. It’s been five years since the book was written, and young adults have learned how to navigate social media so that it can work to their advantage. While reading the book, the many interviews became repetitive, and I began to lose interest in the middle and end of each chapter until moving on to the next chapter and area of concern before again drifting off in the middle and end of the chapter. I would recommend this book to readers who are curious about how far young adults have come in navigating social media platforms; however, if the reader is trying to get the current facts regarding social media’s effects on young college students, I feel the reader would gain a better understanding by conducting their interviews now or reading a more recent study When I look back to 2017, I can relate to several of these students; however, today, I feel like I know how to navigate social media and don’t feel the pressures many students expressed in the book. I would assign this read three stars out of five because Freitas has a clever way of bringing her readers into the interviews with her; however, because of the rapidly changing effects social media has on its users, the information is not necessarily current since it was published in 2017. Freitas interviewed several students, and although this is important in conducting the study and gathering information, many of the interviews could have been more varied; therefore, I lost interest until moving into a new chapter and area of concern.Alexa Rossman (NSU Elementary Education Major)

assigned it in my class

Demographic researchers all agree that the internet, smart devices and social media exercise a distinctive influence on Generation Z, the first generation to be truly digitally native. Donna Freitas’ The Happiness Effect examines what social media use is doing to this generation of users. “Simply put,” Freitas writes, “because young people feel so pressured to post happy things on social media, most of what everyone sees on social media from their peers are happy things; as a result, they often feel inferior because they aren’t actually happy all the time.” Though written from a secular, academic perspective--I'm writing from the perspective of a Christian minister, The Happiness Effect is a must-read if you want to understand “how social media is driving a generation to appear perfect at any cost,” in the words of the book’s subtitle.

Great book.