I hope this just means I’m late to the party, not that it’s all downhill from here…

  • tehlaughing1@lemmy.world
    1631·
    9 months ago

    Personally, I don’t know ANYONE who experienced the “peak of life satisfaction” at 23.

    Most people that age are still confused about what they want to do with their lives and sweating off some leftover hormones from the teen years. It’s more chaotic than satisfying, I think.

    Edit: also, having a child at 26 sounds like hell.

    • Mudkipology@lemmy.world
      13·
      9 months ago

      I think that’s a problem with using the average age for everything. A bunch of people think their lives peaked in High School and a bunch of other people think it was in their late 20s/early 30s, which averages out to 23. But I suspect almost no one thinks the peak of their life was age 23. Median would be a more appropriate measure here.

    • saigot@lemmy.ca
      141·
      9 months ago

      I feel like there’s a bunch of people who feel they peaked (or got preggo) in highschool that brings the average down to a range that is very uncommon. the age (and social economic status) of the population being surveyed also matters a LOT here. Same for all the stats in the picture, You really would need to see a histogram or something for all the categories to really make any conclusions, different life conditions will lead to multimodal distributions.

      Or it could be an incel meme that’s just completely BS.

      That said 23 was a really happy time for me, last year of university, lots of freedom, very few responsibilities, surrounded by like minded individuals, full of confidence and not old enough for any long term problems to really become a problem. IDK if I would call it my most satisfying time, but it was definitely a local maxima.

    • DreamButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      9 months ago

      Funny how we see headlines for shit like this and then other headlines that are like “200% of all men age 30 and younger are single and suicidal.” Honestly it’s probably all bullshit just live your life

    • Nepenthe@kbin.social
      6·
      9 months ago

      Depends on the life, I would think.

      I was actually gonna say my peak was 23 because 1.5 months later, I’d just gotten my first place with my then-fiance. But that was also after nearly a decade of being completely homeless, so yeah, that can tip the scales a bit. It was a first place, not a nice place, and we didn’t always have food and running water. It was more me just not caring much about those things.

      And then I remembered how freeing it was to leave after he metamorphosed into a drunk little cheating piece of shit. Very exciting. Had a solid support system for the first time ever. Aceing college despite never having been to high school. Happy cried a few times.

      So I’m gonna call it at 28 and it’s all downhill from here, but OP needs to remember Life sometimes happens and it isn’t a cookie cutter TV sitcom.

      I can be well into my 30s with no driver’s license because I missed the whole “Loving parents teach me to drive to high school” situation. I was eating out of a garbage can out back behind the Food Lion and sleeping in a park when that was supposed to happen. But I could also just go get one.

    • DontMakeItTim@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 months ago

      IMO There are some people who are generally happy and some people who are miserable and the average ‘happiest’ age isn’t really that predictive. Positive and negative life events play a role, but time going by doesn’t just make you sadder or happier without something else going on.

      • saigot@lemmy.ca
        81·
        9 months ago

        well ignoring how you moved the goalposts there from 26 to 40 there’s a lot of misleading information here

        by 40 half of women are completely sterile (even though they are a decade away from menopause).

        I’m not sure where you got this but it is untrue. The chance of a couple getting pregnant each month they try is 20-25%. by 35 this has dropped to about 15% and 5% from 40 until menopause. This means over a year of trying your chances go from 95% to 45%, that does not mean 55% are infertile, it just means they didn’t get pregnant in 1 year (also keep in mind this is accounting for the fertility of BOTH people in the couple, not just the women like you seem to be suggesting).

        Not to mention that people have less energy to raise a child as they get older, and complications like autism or down’s syndrome spike after 35.

        There’s quite a lot of research on this shows that the age of parents has little to no correlation with health or wellbeing outcomes in the child, but large positive effects on the health and wellbeing of the parents. for example . While their are some health complications that increase past 35 there are also many that decrease. Older mothers lead to a slight increase in birth defects, lower birth weights, older fathers are linked with higher incidence of autism. However, a study of 56K children shows parents under 25 have worse health outcomes in terms of height, obesity, self-rated health, and diagnosed health conditions. The finding of that study seem to match all the others I find, that the Idea age cohort for best overall health seems to be 25-34 for pretty much all outcomes.

        Here is an anecdote to justify that data: my mom was 45 when I was born, (funnily enough the misinformation around fertility directly lead to my existence) I had a much better childhood than my brothers. They had far more energy for me because they were further on in their careers, retired when I was a teen, had far more money, and had the maturity to quit many of the bad habits they had in their 20s.

        Keep in mind that all the effects are pretty tiny though (take a look at the y axis on the graphs of the source I linked earlier), I think you’d be pretty silly to even have this in your top 10 for decision making, most governments seem to agree. Your socioeconomic status, smoking/drinking status (even if you don’t while actively pregnant), how close you live to a highway all have far bigger impacts on the health of potential children. If not getting pregnant would be extremely distressing then yeah, probably best to get started early but otherwise there isn’t really a scientific grounding in the idea we should be having children young.

          • saigot@lemmy.ca
            1·
            9 months ago

            4 years is a long time mate, we didn’t even know what covid was 4 years ago. You keep quoting that egg thing, it doesn’t really have much to do with the family planning decisions people should or should not make.

            The wikipedia link says exactly what I said, the time range here is 1 yr. You are only looking at the 1 year timeline without intervention. over a 5year time span the majority are able to conceive (2/3rds) and that’s before you start considering the various interventions that can take place. Non-invasive over the counter medication and lifestyle choices can boost the per menstruation success rate up to about 10%, which means a 40yr old taking Viagra is about as fertile as a as a 30yr old doing nothing special.

  • Bonifratz@feddit.de
    481·
    9 months ago

    I’m closing in on 40 and life satisfaction has been rising consistently over the past couple of years. I think the peak is still ahead.

    • pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works
      81·
      9 months ago

      I’m getting into 40s here, and can report that it just keeps getting better.

      Wish I’d quit smoking, drinking, and started working out seriously earlier, but oh well. I’m on it now.

  • motherr@lemmy.world
    36·
    9 months ago

    Assuming this data isn’t just bullshit, any idea what country it represents? It’s definitely not where I live.

  • Nurgle@lemmy.world
    351·
    9 months ago

    Hear me out, what if we just didn’t repost the 3rd party click bait spam at the bottom of news and other websites as memes?

    • Ragdoll X@lemmy.worldOP
      72·
      9 months ago

      Don’t know where this came from. I didn’t make it so I must’ve seen it on Twitter, Tumblr or Discord.

      If it is actually just clickbait for some website/app that would make me feel better though

      • Nurgle@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 months ago

        Sorry wasn’t trying to drag you personally. Just see so many memes with some bait head line and then the bottom half is like “everyone loved that” or whatever.

  • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
    62·
    9 months ago

    Interesting that average age for marriage and birth of first child is both 26, despite one of those taking 9 months to happen…

    • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      It took me a lot longer than 9 months to get married.

      Then again we weren’t in a rush either :)

  • ClockNimble@lemmy.world
    4·
    9 months ago

    First kiss at 17, losing virginity at 28, first relationship at 17, peak of life satisfaction 30, marriage at 28, no kids yet.