Are conservative teenagers happier than their liberal peers?
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
In the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis that is especially affecting children and youth, I found this headline interesting: “Conservative teenagers are generally happier than their liberal peers, study finds.” And conservative teens “are more likely to be religious.”
Reading such reports is obviously encouraging for those of us who are religious enough to get up early to write and read articles like this one. It’s also tempting to feel sorry for “non-religious individuals” who are missing the boat.
But far more is at stake than personal happiness.
Author: Jim Denison
Narrator: Chris Elkins
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A recent Pew Research Study reported that evangelical Christians are the most disliked religious |
| 0:09.3 | expression in America. In fact, many today believe that Christianity is intolerant, irrelevant, |
| 0:16.5 | oppressive, and dangerous. How did that happen? How did our faith founded on a gospel of unconditional |
| 0:24.6 | love come to be so publicly maligned? Even more pressing, how can we turn the tide so that |
| 0:31.6 | the world will know us by our love? Dr. Jim Denison answers these questions and more in The Coming |
| 0:39.9 | Sonami, an urgent book for our times. Request your copy today of the coming tsunami at |
| 0:47.7 | the daily article.org. |
| 0:53.8 | It's Tuesday, May the 16th, 2023. Welcome to the Daily Article podcast. I'm Chris Elkins from the |
| 1:00.7 | Denison Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Jim Denison. In the midst of an ongoing |
| 1:06.8 | mental health crisis that is especially affecting children and youth, I found this headline |
| 1:12.0 | interesting. Conservative teenagers are generally happier than their liberal peers study finds. |
| 1:18.8 | A group of Columbia University researchers studied the depressive attitudes of 12th graders from 2005 |
| 1:25.8 | to 2018, comparing those aligned with conservatism and those with |
| 1:30.6 | liberalism. They concluded that, quote, conservatives reported lower average depressive effect, |
| 1:37.1 | self-derogation, and loneliness scores, and higher self-esteem scores than all other groups. |
| 1:43.0 | In quote, in an extensive and deeply sourced article for American Affairs, |
| 1:48.1 | Columbia University sociologist Musa Al Garby adds that, quote, |
| 1:53.4 | Conservatives do not just report higher levels of happiness, |
| 1:56.8 | they also report higher levels of meaning in their lives. |
| 2:00.6 | He writes that this pattern is ubiquitous, |
| 2:03.2 | not just in the contemporary United States, but also historically, virtually as far back as |
| 2:09.1 | records go, and in most other geographical contexts as well. Algarby also notes that conservatives |
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