Next time someone repeats that old adage "money can't buy you happiness," tell them you're not so sure. As long as you know where to spend it, it just might do some good.

That's what Harvard marketing professor Michael I. Norton and his colleagues found in their happiness research, concluding that "how people choose to spend their money is at least as important as how much money they make."

The article ("Spending on Happiness") in HBS Working Knowledge reports that "money can buy happiness, when people spend that money prosocially on others (giving gifts to friends, donating to charities) rather than on themselves (buying flat-screen televisions)."

Interesting results, which dovetail with our findings in studying youth happiness for  MTV Research -- we concluded that money is increasingly seen by Millennials as a means rather than an end. See the full report in pdf and our webpage about the study.

iParenting.com reporter Kelly Burgess recently interviewed Social Technologies' Andy Hines about the study he conducted for MTV on the future of youth happiness. She wrote:

 When asked what they want for their children's futures, parents often say, "I just want my child to be happy." Noble words, but beyond wanting our children to be happy, what do we do to help them find their way to happiness? Happiness is a difficult concept to define.

A study called Future of Youth Happiness: What Makes 12- to 24-Year-Olds Happy? may help both teens and parents define and set goals. The study was commissioned by MTV and the Associated Press and conducted by the research firm Social Technologies. Surveying a total of 1,200 12- to 24-year-olds from a variety of socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, the goal was to determine if teens are happy, what makes them happy and what they are doing to ensure future happiness.

Andy Hines, director of custom projects for Social Technologies, says they discovered that teens pursue happiness with three goals in mind: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends and the long-term search for meaning and purpose – in other words, friends, family and faith.

Read the entire article.

Social Technologies' Director of Consulting, Andy Hines, appeared yesterday morning on The Early Show (CBS) to discuss our recent seven-month study for MTV Research, "The Future of Happiness."

The CBS News video is available here.

For more information on the study, check out our website or take a look at Andy's five-part blog post series on the subject.

By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

Part 5 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

Our study on the Future of Happiness found that 12-to-24 year olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The final path can be called “Virtual Community” — they are integrating the online and virtual worlds seamlessly into their pursuit of happiness.

It is useful to think of youths' relationship with technology as a native language: unlike most Americans, they have grown up with it. For older folks like me, technology is typically a second language. It can be learned, but the relationship is never as quite as comfortable. In fact, when we suggest to some of our clients that youth are total comfortable being immersed with technology, they almost feel bad for them. “Poor kids, all alone one with their technology,” they muse. Au contraire! Participating in social networking and virtual worlds is quite natural for these youth, and a great source of happiness.

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By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

Part 4 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

According to our research, 12-to-24-year-olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The first two paths included "Transitional Traditional," and "All About Me."

The third path is “ MyLife, MyTime, MyWay," for we will see this group take control of their pursuit of happiness. They are not expecting society or anyone or anything else to provide happiness for them. This notion of taking control of happiness differs from previous generations, where happiness was more seen as a birthright. For these youth, it’s not taken for granted, but is something that needs to be planned for and worked towards.

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By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

Part 3 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

According to our research, 12-to-24-year-olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The second of these is “All About Me,” or a focus on personal development and a “what’s in it for me” perspective on the world.

Whereas the youth on the "Transitional Traditional" pathway rely on family, friends, and faith for support, these youth rely on themselves. Dreams of beauty, fame, and fortune are central to those on this pathway, but here we also we see their practical nature kicking in. They realize that not everyone can be rich and famous, and therefore they have developed a “Plan B.” Do they want to appear on MTV’s “Real World?” Absolutely. But are they going to jump off a bridge if they don’t? Absolutely not.

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Part 2 of a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

According to our research 12-24-year-olds are pursuing four principal pathways to happiness. The first is what we call “transitional traditional.”

In fact, this group appreciates tradition, in the sense that they value the cultural structures they are growing up with. They like the familiarity of cultural activities and rituals, such as Thanksgiving and family reunions, but they aren’t necessarily attached to the specifics of how these traditions are carried out.

So in the future we’ll see them celebrating Thanksgiving – but instead of wearing a new sport coat and serving a 15-poiund turkey, they’ll be donning Birkenstocks and eating the latest vegan tofu recipe. Instead of watching the Dallas Cowboys on a network TV station, the group might gather around and participate in a multiplayer online game.

At first glance, this pathway may look like old news. But on further investigation, we foresee that the reinterpretation of traditional will lead to different approaches to the pursuit of happiness.

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Part 1 in a 5-part series on The Future of Happiness

By Andy Hines, Director of Custom Projects

What do today’s 12 to 24 year olds consider to be happiness? That was a question MTV hired us to look at earlier this year, and the findings were intriguing.

We discovered that, like most people, this group pursues happiness with a combination of three strategies: the pleasure of the moment, relationships with family and friends, and the long-term search for meaning and purpose.

After probing more deeply, though, we found that more than any generation that has come before them, today’s youths recognize that happiness is something that can and should worked toward. In short, we found they have adopted a very practical approach to happiness.

They see an uncertain and rapidly changing world and recognize they can’t do it alone, and thus are highly reliant on friends, and perhaps more than is recognized, on family—and perhaps a bit more surprisingly—on spirituality or faith. Thus, the tools youth use to pursue happiness could be summed up as friends, family, and faith.

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