The Unexpected Reason Why Young Adults May Be Languishing

In late April, researchers at Harvard and Baylor University released the first wave of data from the Global Flourishing Study, a five-year survey of more than 200,000 people in 22 countries. The headline is alarming: young adults aren’t just struggling with mental health—they are languishing across nearly every dimension of a fulfilling life.

Globally, 18- to 29-year-olds scored lowest on composite measures of happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security.

Conventional thinking points to a few culprits: doom-scrolling and comparison traps on social media, shrinking attention spans, eroded social safety nets, and anxiety about climate and AI. All of these are serious issues.

But the data reveal something even deeper: today’s young adults doubt their own character, struggle with finding a sense of purpose, and hunger for meaningful, high-quality relationships.

These challenges point to another, less commonly recognized factor defining life among younger generations today—the rapid decline of organized religion.

Since 1990, according to Pew Research, the percentage of Americans who identify with no religious affiliation has risen from 8% to 21%—a number significantly higher among younger generations. Nearly half of Generation Z and younger Millennials now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a trend mirrored across much of the world.

It’s understandable why many people have walked away from religion, given recent scandals, sometimes exclusionary doctrines, and rampant politicization. But in rejecting institutional religion, we've also lost powerful frameworks designed over centuries to nurture belonging.

While the challenges and controversies are real, the fact is that religious traditions are, at their best, laboratories optimized over generations to facilitate what I’ve come to think of as the 4 P’s of belonging—people, place, power, and purpose.

First, there’s connection in terms of people. Religious organizations can offer multigenerational community, face-to-face ritual, and mutual support during life crises. Second, there’s connection in terms of place. These institutions can provide sacred or civic spaces that anchor people’s identity and nurture collective memory. There’s also connection in terms of power. They can encourage shared norms and collective decision-making and, in some cases, give ordinary members a voice and choice through congregational votes and opportunities for various kinds of lay leadership. Finally, there’s connection in terms of purpose. Religions can deliver narratives of meaning, moral guidance, and avenues for communal service.

Remove this scaffolding, and there’s a serious void. Harvard epidemiologists found weekly religious attendance correlates with up to a 33 percent reduction in premature mortality, partly because congregations provide consistent social support, volunteer opportunities, and moral frameworks that discourage risky behaviors. Actively religious people, Pew research finds, report significantly higher life satisfaction, gratitude, and connection with humanity than the unaffiliated.

These benefits aren’t just attributable to supernatural forces. They're products of intentional social design—regular ritualized gatherings, shared stories, communal singing, and a sense of interdependence in times of need.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, the evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist philosopher Richard Dawkins suggested that it should be easy to substitute for religion in people’s lives. To replace the sense of community that religions provide, he said, people should “play golf.” He wasn’t just being flippant. He was arguing that any communal activity should suffice.

Today's young adults—depending on socioeconomic factors—generally have more opportunities for brunch with friends, therapy, boutique fitness classes, and even immersion in nature. But these don’t reliably deliver a community that will mourn losses, help raise kids, or provide shared contexts about why our choices matter in the long arc of time.

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Many people may never join or return to organized religion. And that’s understandable. But we should seek to borrow elements of religious traditions that have been proven to foster belonging.

A century and a half ago, Ethical Culture Societies emerged in the US and Europe to support non-religious people in building deep community and honoring and living in accordance with a code of ethics. Together, these initiatives helped participants find meaning and purpose and helped build a better world. We should consider modern analogues to this approach.

One key could be finding ways to ritualize service. Religious communities tend to embed service into their calendars. Businesses, schools, and local governments could similarly institutionalize events that bring people together around shared purpose—from cooking meals for people in need to community gatherings to deliberate solutions to challenges like addiction. For society as a whole, this could entail funding community corps programs, like climate corps or elder-tech teams, to provide young adults with meaningful service, intergenerational ties, and practical character development. Crucially, such programs could provide a rite of passage for young people to mark entry into adulthood.

Another key could be the development of inclusive “third spaces.” Churches or other religious institutions often have underused real estate. Municipalities should consider replicating this infrastructure with libraries or food banks that function as community centers, hubs to connect to social services, drop-in maker spaces, or even cafés that invite people to spend time together without obligation to buy anything.

Finally, we should consider how to create regular, dedicated forums for the development of character. Traditions from Judaism to Islam to Christianity have practices of self-examination, and Buddhist ethical precepts offer pathways for structured reflection. The growth of secular mindfulness practices offers an important platform for this kind of work beyond churches and temples. But it’s valuable for people to go beyond solidarity practice to find ways to enter into introspective work together—like meeting regularly to meditate or to discuss virtues, setbacks, and aspirations in life.

While religions can sometimes exclude people or fail to live up to their highest ideals, we should nonetheless look to what these institutions have historically done right as we seek a resurgence of shared meaning and purpose. Building foundations of shared belonging isn’t just a public health imperative. It’s a necessary path for helping the next generations to flourish.