Americans are more unhappy than ever. Solo food can be a sign.

The Americans make too many solo evening dinner reservations.

This was a take away from the annual World Happiness Report, which was published on Thursday and showed that the United States had decreased the lowest slot in the landscape in the landscape after they were occupied up to 11th in 2012, the first year of report.

The Americans are becoming more and more miserable, the report says and examined a possible indicator: The number of food alone Americans who eat alone has increased exponentially in this century.

In 2023, about a quarter of the Americans stated, according to the American use of American use of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to eat all meals the day before, which has eaten an increase of 53 percent since 2003.

“To what extent they share meals” Jan-Emmanuel de Neve, professor of the University of Oxford and author of the report, said in an interview.

This trend is even more pronounced in young people. For American adults under the age of 25, there was an increase in food by 80 percent, which Dr. de Neve described as “disturbing”. The survey, which is compiled annually by a consortium of groups, including Gallup, offers another data point in the so -called loneliness epidemic, which researchers and civil servants have said in recent years, especially in young men, as they spend more and more time with their phones.

Eating alone, also increases political polarization, said Dr. de neve.

“The fact that we are always socially isolated also means that we don’t test our ideas about the world with other people,” he said. “And the more you sit at the table with other people who may have something different, the more they moderate their own views. And the increasing lack of social interaction and social isolation for many people – increased by echo chambers – people of radical. “”

The report also makes the case that the decreasing happiness and social trust in the United States and parts of Europe have led a number of political victories of the “anti-system” such as the election of President Trump and an increase in political polarization. According to the study, the proportion of American people who trust others has decreased by almost half since the 1970s and has dropped from 50 percent to 30 percent.

“Left left have a higher level of social trust, while right -wing populists have a very low level of social trust,” the report says.

For the eighth year in a row, Finland took first place in the ranking. Of course, not everyone in Finland is satisfied with the survey, which essentially calls on the residents of countries to evaluate their own happiness. The study takes into account the past three years.

During a panel discussion about the report in Washington, DC, Leena-Kaisa Mikkola, Finland’s ambassador in the United States, offered several theories for why the Finns were so happy for so long. This included trust among fellow citizens and in the education system, the proximity to nature and “weekly sauna meetings”.

“Our American friends, they smile and laugh much more than we do,” said Ms. Mikkola during the panel discussion, which was moderated by the Digital News Outlet Semafor. “But happiness for us is perhaps being satisfied.”

In an interview, Ms. Mikkola said that Finland had other structural advantages over the United States, including its size.

“In a small country there may be more of this awareness that we need each other,” she said. “In a larger country you can somehow in different corners of box. “”

Costa Rica (No. 6) and Mexico (No. 10) entered the top 10 for the first time, and other countries such as Lithuania (16th, from 19th) and Slovenia (19th, from 21), moved further into the ranking.

During the panel discussion, Catalina Crespo Sancho, Costa Rica’s ambassador in the United States, compared the population of her country with lazy – in a good way.

“You are very slow, yes. But nobody wants to eat it,” said Ms. Sancho. “You don’t want to eat anyone or one of the other animals in the forest. You get along with everyone. All animals understand each other. However, they get where they need to get, even though it takes forever to cross a street.”

But as far as the United States is concerned, Ms. Mikkola remained optimistic: “I didn’t meet an unpleasant person here in my six months.”