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Yeah, I don't want to be annoying about asking for evidence about these things, but I haven't seen a partic vivid trajectory personally except for unhappiness having to do with recent Covid issues of course. I just don't attach much weight to this personal impression given that I am in a relatively well-off context.
I do think one can easily support claims about general unhappiness in terms of objective statistics for 'obviously bad things that make people unhappy', like poverty, drugs, crime, etc (although it is tricky with regard to people taking say, happiness drugs, as they could have been unhappy before and just not taken drugs, when there is a recent pervasive marketing of them). Maybe there are indicators one can find elsewhere in culture, media that more unhappy people are liable to consume to see their feelings reflected back at them.
Never be afraid to ask for evidence here.
An entirely sensible position, I think. I'm in a relatively well-off context as well, but I was in a much worse one for quite a while, which probably shapes my views on such things.
And yeah, the question is itself really tricky. You can ask people "are you happy", but what you're really asking them is "do you want a specific kind of change". People can be very unhappy, and still be unwilling to embrace changes they don't like.
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