Arthur Brooks, a renowned author and speaker, has dedicated his life and work to studying human happiness. Benedictine College invited him to be the 2025 convocation speaker to address happiness among college students.

Emotional well-being is vital to discuss, as current statistics are overwhelming, with reports that depression, suicide and loneliness rates are up among this young generation, let alone the swathe of devastating recent headlines.

I asked Brooks about happiness and college students, and here is what I learned in our Sept. 1 conversation.

1. Friends are important.

Happiness and loneliness are directly correlated, Brooks said. Humans are made for community; thus, when we are deprived of that community, our happiness will decrease.

Why do people have fewer friends?

Brooks pointed to two causes: social media and the culture wars.

“You have to place a lot of blame on the use and abuse of technology,” Brooks said. “The new technologies are substituting for in-person relationships. Plus, even when it comes to mating, the solutions that have crowded out all the others — digital solutions, the apps — are woefully inadequate to capture the complexity of the courtship that actually leads to a stable relationship.”

Driving this wedge even further is the prominence of the culture war that has been perpetrated by social media, Brooks said.

“The culture war that we see in politics has actually created a climate of antagonism between men and women, which is a really dangerous thing,” Brooks said. “What it’s done is it’s effectively left out huge swathes of men from the possibility of knowing young women and really alienating them and making them unbelievably lonely, while at the same time leaving a lot of women depressed and anxious as well.”

2. Students would be a lot happier if they just got off of screens.

When loneliness is not to blame for unhappiness, it can often be attributed to FOMO, fear of missing out.

In college, students are surrounded by so many activities and people. Yet, when they do not receive an invite, whether to a party or to go tailgating with friends, bouts of unhappiness can quickly set in.

Brooks offered a solution.

“FOMO is such a persistent thing and is a driving cause of unhappiness, which you can beat by putting away your phone,” Brooks said. “FOMO goes away when you are not comparing yourself to others. Social comparison is just like a cancer for happiness because it is very fear-based. Social media is incredibly fear-provoking. It’s dissatisfaction-provoking.

“It brings out the worst in everybody. Social media brings out envy, which is awful.”

3. Happiness has three building blocks: enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.

Many college students, myself included, struggle to find their mission, which impacts their enjoyment and satisfaction. Brooks said the trio is linked.

“Mission is a question of meaning in what you do, and meaning is one of the macronutrients of happiness,” Brooks said. “Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.

“If you don’t have a sense of meaning, you don’t have a mission.”

4. There are four secrets to achieving happiness: faith, family, friendship and work.

Through his studies and conversations about happiness, Brooks has learned that happiness is dependent on love, specifically the love that is fostered in four areas of life.

“The secrets to happiness are faith, family, friendship and work,” Brooks said. “The thing to focus on is love, the love in relationships, love of God, love of your family, making serious friendships; and learning to love your work is what it comes down to. That’s sanctifying all those things.”

5. Catholics have a leg up in the pursuit of happiness — our faith.

Brooks, a convert to Catholicism and daily Massgoer, asserted that the most important key to happiness is practicing the faith.

“People with serious faith are far happier than people without faith are,” Brooks said. “You have to be thinking about something bigger, something transcendent to yourself. Part of the reason for that is that if you’re thinking about yourself all day long, it’s just so boring. It’s just so tedious.”

Happiness will not be constant. There are good days and bad days, hills and valleys. But, when the going gets tough, when happiness is a struggle, Brooks’ advice is simple:

“When you don’t know what to do, go deeper in your faith.”