'Materialism' keeps city youths happy
A new study seeking to measure the Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) of Bangkok and its vicinity of youth aged between 12 and 24, found that they were quite happy with their lives and that materialism was a major factor in their happiness.
Assumption University's Abac Poll and Srinakharinwirot University's psychology students jointly conducted the poll, surveying the happiness, leisure time and life values of 1,564 youths from January 20 to 23. The average GDH score was 3.52 out of 5, indicating they were quite content and the females, compared to the males, had a higher score of happiness and gave more importance to five aspects of well-being, said Abac poll chairman Srisak Jamornmarn. The aspects were materialism, physical appearance, education, family and religion. Youths living with parents also had a higher score of happiness and laid more emphasis on family values than those living with others, the latter group focusing on appearance above other things, he said. Many youth appear to think that happiness was dependent on wealth and materialism. One-third said having plenty of money would make them happy, one-third wanted to preserve their looks and belongings up-to-date so people couldn't call them "out of date", and over one-fourth didn't like wearing the same clothes often. As for physical appearance, slightly less than half lost confidence if they felt they didn't look good; one-third believed that just being a good-looking person meant you're already half-way to victory and some 29 per cent said their confidence dropped when someone told them they had gained weight. For education, about 40 per cent wanted to have good grades rather than understanding their lessons, and one-fourth chose subjects that yielded them good grades over the subjects they really wanted to learn. About 55 per cent saw the necessity to follow religious principles, while slightly less than half believed religions helped people to rid them of suffering or functioned as their spiritual refuge. Nearly all youth put family-loving people at the top of the most impressive people list, followed by religious people (59 per cent) and academically excellent people (52.5 per cent). Seventy-three per cent said that in cut-throat business competitions to win was a normal thing and 59 per cent said corruption was a normal part of doing business.
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