Q: people are less happy and satisfied today than people were in the past.
Some may think that people were happier and more satisfied in the past than today. Even though it is somewhat true that today’s complicated society creates some causes for stress, I would like to assert that people are happier today for mainly two reasons: wider range of choices for jobs, and diverse kinds of entertainment.
First of all, increased kinds of jobs enable people to easily choose more attractive one. In the past, occupational clusters were so simple that it was difficult to have a job that one really wants. In contrast, as complicated as modern society becomes, occupational clusters also become more subdivided. This means that now people have more opportunities to choose a suitable job for them. For example, one of my friends was mad about playing computer games during his teens. His parents extremely worried about his future since playing game brought only negative results in their conventional thought. However, he chose computer programming as his major in university and became a successful computer game developer.
Second, now people have a tremendous range of entertainment. While reading a book or chatting with friends are only way to spend leisure time in the past, nowadays there are uncountable ways of having fun such as certain places like movie theater and amusement park, electronic equipments, car racing and so on. My recent favourite entertaining is IPAD because it makes me enjoy music, video clips, articles about hot issues whenever and wherever I want. Boring times like taking public transportation and waiting on the line have changed to useful and enjoyable time with my IPAD.
To sum up, I firmly agree with the statement that people are happier and more satisfied than those were in the past for two reasons I have mentioned above: today’s people can choose attractive and suitable job for them more easily, and have expanded range of entertainment for their leisure time.