Baby Boomers can rejoice. Aging makes us happy.
And, according to a recent list at Prevention.com, if you are reading a daily newspaper that also makes you happy.
Here are six things that Prevention says, oddly enough, make us happy:
- Tearjerker movies;
- Getting older;
- A fake smile;
- Thursdays;
- Doing less for your kids;
- Reading a newspaper.
Of getting older it said: “...as we age, our neurons react less intensely to the negative things we see and hear. The result: Positivity prevails. Maybe that's why, in a recent national survey, 42% of those over age 50 said they felt optimistic about life's next chapters, and 60% thought they looked at least five years younger than their driver's licenses said they were.”
As for reading a newspaper, Prevention said: Perusing a broadsheet instead of gawking at the TV emerged as a key difference between most-and least-happy folks in a University of Maryland study that analyzed how more than 30,000 people spend their free time.”
Of course, the trend for newspaper readership isn’t good. Readers are fleeing printed daily newspapers and opting for the news they can find online. The most loyal readers of the printed edition -- seniors and Baby Boomers -- are either dying off or transferirng their attention to online news sources, sometimes subscribing to the online offerings of their local newspaper company.
But one think tank believes newspapers will continue to decline their daily printed offerings.
The Nieman Journalism Lab predicts: “We’ll start to see frequency reductions to two or three days a week at an accelerated pace. By the end of 2015, fewer than half of the current dailies will still be on that schedule.
The idea of doing less for our kids was particularly interesting, since it seems counter-intuitive to our nurture nature, particularly among mothers.
But Prevention said women who try to do too much “tend to be more depressed than women who think that ‘good enough’ parenting is, well, good enough. If you can't lighten up for yourself, do it for the kids. Maternal depression can interfere with the emotional bond between mother and child and can lead to increased risk of depression, anxiety, and cognitive, self-esteem, and school problems in children.”
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