People at the lower end of the income scale take more pleasure in their relationships and enjoy caring for and connecting with others, according to a study published Monday in the journal Emotion.

"People who are poorer are more reliant on others to get by," said Paul Piff, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. "They really prioritize relationships because of their reduced resources, and so they are more likely to really focus on emotions that bind them to one another and find satisfaction and delight in relationships through compassion and love."

For the new study, "We break happiness down into all of its emotional components: all the different kinds of positive emotions we want to experience on a daily basis," he said.

"What is the meaning of life?" It's one of those enormous questions that's so important -- both philosophically and practically, in terms of how we live our lives -- and yet we rarely, if ever, stop to really think about the answer.

After studying 1,300 subjects from ages 21 to more than 100, the authors found that older people were more likely to have found their life's purpose, while younger people were more likely still searching. That's logical, given that wisdom is often born from experience. According to research by Stanford education professor William Damon, the author of "The Path to Purpose," only 20% of young adults have a fully realized sense of their life's meaning.And according to the new study, the presence of meaning in one's life showed a positive correlation to one's health, including improved cognitive function, while searching for it may have a slight negative effect. Mental and physical well-being was self-reported, and having a sense of purpose tended to peak around age 60, the study found.

According to two other studies published in 2014 -- one among 9,000 participants over age 65 and another among 6,000 people between 20 and 75 -- those who could articulate the meaning and purpose of their lives lived longer than those who saw their lives as aimless. It didn't seem to matter what meaning participants ascribed to their life, whether it was personal (like happiness), creative (like making art) or altruistic (like making the world a better place). It was having an answer to the question that mattered.

(CNN)"Have smartphones destroyed a generation?" Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, asked in an adapted excerpt of her controversial book, "iGen."In the book, she argues that those born after 1995 are on the "brink of a mental-health crisis" -- and she believes it can be linked to growing up with their noses pressed against a screen.

For those who responded 10 to 19 hours per week, that number was about 18%. For those who spent 40 or more hours a week using social media, that number approached 24%.

By the twelfth grade, however, the negative correlations between screen time and teen psychology had somewhat dissipated. In addition, less is not always more: Teens with zero hours of screen time had higher rates of unhappiness than their peers who logged in a few hours a week.

For some, anxiety and worry are so toxic and burdensome that medication and/or therapy is needed to fully function. "What worries you," John Locke wrote, "masters you."

Begin by writing down all the major things you're currently worried about. It's not pleasant to ruminate on them, but the fact is that your brain is constantly thinking about them anyway. Just because a worry is subconscious doesn't shield you from its negative effects.

I suggest two rules for making the list. First, try to make the time frame for whether they will happen just six months. That limits you to concrete and quantifiable worries. You may have general anxiety thoughts like "I think something bad is going to happen" or worries over the next year -- or four -- but for the purposes of this experiment, limit your worries to those outcomes resolved in the next 180 days.

Step one: "Calm your mind"Read MoreTo introduce his first piece of advice, Meng led the SXSW audience through a short collective breathing exercise to calm the fluffy particles in the "snow-globes" (his metaphor) in our skulls. He advocates finding easy ways to take pauses during the day and be mindful of your breath. "If that's too hard, then just think about nothing for little bit," he joked.

Step two: "Log moments of joy"This means simply saying to yourself -- as you sip a great espresso, laugh at your friend's joke or buy that shirt you've wanted -- "I am having a moment of joy!" When negative things happen to us throughout the day we tend to hold on to them, while the good things are more fleeting and ephemeral. So, by consciously acknowledging the good things, says Meng, we increase our chances that when we reflect on our day, we conclude it was happy one.

Step three: "Wish other people to be happy"According to Meng, altruistic thoughts benefit us because we derive a lot of joy from giving, even more than from receiving.Meng makes eloquent arguments for the (I think) self-evident need to infuse your life with more compassion, but only cites one study -- on people performing acts for others -- to back his claim that "kindness is a sustainable source of happiness."

Family. Friends. Love. Health. Freedom from war and natural disaster. Imagination. Community. A roof over our heads. Common decency. Hope. Opportunity. Memories. Financial stability. Favorite places. Days off work. Good weather. The golden age of television. Books. Music. Ice cream. Weekends. A friendly exchange. Something good that happened today. Something bad that didn't happen today. A good cup of coffee.

What keeps us from longer and more frequent visits to a grateful (and graceful) mental place is that we think about other things. In fact, we are wired to. Our primitive brains smartly evolved the capacity to quickly sense potential threats, to keep us safe. But in a post-saber-toothed-tiger era, we get easily annoyed, worried and distracted by a lot of extraneous noise.

Instead, we need more focus on the positive, And you don't have to set the bar high. Allow yourself to be thankful for the small, mundane things that give you joy and meaning, as well as the big ones. And don't try to gather heaps of blessings to count; a handful each day should do it.

"Change in humanity must start from individuals," the Dalai Lama told the mayors. "We created this violence, so we can reduce this violence."

Paying attention to the matters at hand may sound simple, but most Americans aren't doing it, studies show. Though the experts say there's a lot more research to be done, the number of scientific studies has grown exponentially over the past decade. They show that mindfulness is more than a passing fad; there's early evidence it can help your health.

n their 2010 study, they created a computer program that sent questions at random moments to people by iPhone. The program asked, "How are you feeling right now?" "What are you doing right now?" and "Are you thinking about something other than what you're currently doing?"

Habits -- actions performed with little conscious thought and often unwittingly triggered by external cues -- are powerful influences on behavior and can be our greatest allies for positive change. But because they are so difficult to break, habits are also frequent saboteurs of personal progress.

The first thing to identify for yourself is the habit you want to work on, whether it's starting a new (good) one or ending an old (bad) one. That's a minor distinction, by the way. Eating healthier is eating less junk. Exercising more is being less sedentary. One is often the inverse of another.

We know what many of the most common areas of improvement are, at least when it comes to making resolutions. People want to lose weight, eat better, be more mindful, spend money more wisely, sleep better and improve relationships. By eliminating bad habits and starting new ones, you can succeed in most of these areas.

Beyond improvements to your general mood and happiness, taming your anger can have important benefits to your health. Constant stress and aggravation is linked to a range of issues including overeating, insomnia and depression, and angry outbursts increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Anger "is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control," the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. I aimed to teach myself how to rob it of oxygen and snuff it out.

At the first moment you realize you are experiencing annoyance or anger, just breathe. Ten slow, deep, even breaths do wonders. Sometimes, the annoyance will have passed in just that time.

Just a few months ago, the New York Times declared that "studies have shown an indisputable link between having a positive outlook and health benefits like lower blood pressure, less heart disease, better weight control and healthier blood sugar levels." Plenty of news articles present similar ideas in a stark black-and-white fashion: optimists live longer; pessimism kills.

But some research suggests that things aren't so simple. In 2016, for example, a study of more than 700,000 British women failed to find a link between happiness and longevity. Which raises the question: What makes this particular group of study participants any different? Could it be that culture plays a role -- that British people, overall, are just more tolerant and accepting of gloominess?

Even after accounting for things like a person's age, gender, socioeconomic status, and chronic health conditions, there was a significant difference between the two groups: "American adults who experience high levels of positive emotions, such as feeling 'cheerful' and 'extremely happy,' are more likely to have healthy blood-lipid profiles," explains lead study author Jiah Yoo, but the same was not true among Japanese adults.

A new 25-year observational study published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that a $1 increase in the minimum wage resulted in an estimated 3.4% to 5.9% decrease in suicide rates among adults ages 18 to 64, and a $2 increase could have prevented an estimated 40,000 suicides alone between 2009 and 2015.

In 2017, there were an estimated 1.4 million attempted suicides among American adults and 47,173 suicide-related deaths. An estimated 1.7% of unemployed US adults attempted suicide in 2017 compared with 0.4% of those working full-time and 0.7% of those working part-time, the study said.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and 29 states and the District of Columbia pay more, while 21 states pay the federal rate. If the minimum wage had increased by $1 from 2009 to 2015 — following peak unemployment in 2009 — the researchers estimated that 13,800 suicides could have been prevented among people in that age group with a high school education or less. A $2 increase in the minimum wage could have prevented an estimated 25,900 suicides in the same period, the study says.

Rich people live healthy, disability-free lives an average of nine years longer than less wealthy people, according to a major study that lays bare the troubling economic inequalities behind lifespans in the US and UK.

The biggest socioeconomic factor in predicting when those problems began was wealth, the team discovered, with richer people enjoying almost an extra decade before experiencing difficulties.

Research in 2016 found that men in the top financial 1% in the US can expect to live until the age of 87.3, nearly 15 years longer than those in the bottom 1%. The gap for women was 10 years.

The value of reading to our kids -- for them and us -- is reinforced by the growing body of research on the topic. Just last week, a meta-analysis of 19 studies published in the journal Pediatrics found that reading aloud was significantly beneficial to children and their parents.In most of the studies -- which involved more than 3,000 families -- the parents were assessed as well as their kids, and reading aloud appeared to strengthen parents' feelings of competence, improve the quality of their relationships with their children and even reduce parental stress or depression.

mproving a child's reading skills and cognitive ability is important to their success in school, work and life. "If you are going to get anywhere in life," Roald Dahl is credited with saying, "you have to read a lot of books."The conversations children have around themes and ideas in books help them make sense of the world. And it's a joyful way to connect and be close with your kid. While reading in bed, my daughters and I lie next to each other, sometimes leaning into one other. We laugh and are surprised together and have deep conversations sparked by the novels. It's as high a quality as quality time gets.

Turning book reading into a ritual is as simple as repetition paired with a certain time or situation. Reading to kids just before bed is popular because routine makes for easier bedtimes as well -- a twofer!

The research, published Tuesday in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, involved interviews with almost 10,000 children between the ages of 13 and 16 in England. The researchers found that social media may harm girls' mental health by increasing their exposure to bullying and reducing their sleep and physical exercise.

In other words: Social media itself might not be to blame for mental health issues; rather, it takes away from girls' sleep quality and exercise while exposing users to cyberbullying, and that's what leads to lower well-being and problems with mental health.

The researchers found that, in both sexes, very frequent social media use was associated with greater psychological distress. The effect was especially clear among girls: The more often they checked social media, the greater their psychological distress.But nearly 60% of the impact on psychological distress in girls could be accounted for by low sleep quality and greater exposure to cyberbullying, with decreased physical activity playing a lesser role. But for boys, those factors explained only 12% of the effects of very frequent social media use on psychological distress.

A few years ago, when my girls were in the second and third grades, they raved about the dance breaks they would occasionally have during the school day.

My kids' teachers were certainly not alone. More teachers are incorporating some form of movement into the school day, especially as the research is pretty clear: Physical activity in school leads to better cognitive performance and fewer behavioral issues, not to mention cutting down on stress and anxiety.

It all seems like a no-brainer, especially as research shows that childhood obesity seems to be getting worse. As former first lady Michelle Obama advocated, let's get our kids to move.The challenge, though, is persuading school administrations to consistently make time for physical activity when they are pressed to meet stringent academic requirements and find the money to pay for some of the training.

Spanish for "beautiful hill," Loma Linda, California is nestled between mountain peaks in the middle of the San Bernardino Valley. The city is known as an epicenter of health and wellness, with more than 900 physicians on the campus of Loma Linda University and Medical Center.

Experts say that's because Loma Linda has one of the highest concentrations of Seventh-day Adventists in the world. The religion mandates a healthy lifestyle and a life of service to the church and community, which contributes to their longevity.

'I never had stress'"As far as I am concerned, stress is a manufactured thing," Dr. Ellsworth Wareham told CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in 2015 as part of a Vital Signs special on blue zones. Read MoreWareham was 100 years old at the time and still mowed his front yard.

A mini- or micro-resolution is any behavior you commit to for four weeks. And even longer-term goals to, say, eat better or learn a new skill, can be broken down into more achievable goals on the way. Before you can land on Mars, focus on landing on the moon.

To create your micro-resolutions, you can start by thinking of 12 "bad" habits or indulgences you'd like to cut back on or give up entirely. This is what I did last year for what I called my "Year of Abstinence." My plan was to learn something about myself through self-denial, and it worked: I gave up alcohol, sweets, television and nine other things, but just for a month each. The mini-resolutions were as positive as they were eye-opening.

In order to simply increase my own, general awareness, every day in January my goal was to notice something new. I kept my eyes open, looked a bit longer, stopped to read the history markers, noticing buildings or took a different route than normal -- small ways to avoid sleepwalking through life.

Adults in the United States who binge drink are consuming even more alcohol per binging episode, according to a new study published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers analyzed data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System over a six-year period and discovered that the annual number of binge drinks among adults who reported excessive drinking jumped on average from 472 in 2011 to 529 in 2017. That's a 12% increase.It's not just college kids. A new study says older adults binge drink, tooThe CDC defines binge drinking as five drinks or more for men or four or more for women on a single occasion. Binge drinking has serious health risks, according to the CDC, including car accidents, domestic violence, STDs, unintentional pregnancy, stroke, heart and liver disease.

In 2017, the number of binge drinks pear year among adult binge drinkers ranged from 320 per year in Massachusetts to 1,219 in Wyoming. The number of drinks among those who reported binge drinking increased in nine states -- Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia -- while the number of drinks decreased significantly in Massachusetts and West Virginia.

When Netflix debuted "13 Reasons Why" in 2017, some mental health experts argued the show was "dangerous" for its depiction of teen suicide.

Research Director Daniel Romer of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania reanalyzed the data while adjusting for the broader increase in suicide between 2013 and 2017. His study was published in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Public Library of Science.

"When you have a jump in suicides starting in March and going into April, it's hard to say it's because of the show," he said.Meanwhile, for 10- to 17-year-old girls, Romer said there was a small increase, though so small, that it's not actually statistically significant. It could have been because of the show, but because the jump isn't statistically significant, they can't say for sure, he said.

What's that worn-out phrase? Shouting into the wind? Well, after a decade of rising pollution, failed politics and worsening disasters, it seems the many, many of us who care about the climate crisis increasingly are shouting into the hurricane, if not the apocalypse.

On the cusp of 2020, the state of the planet is far more dire than in 2010. Preserving a safe and healthy ecological system is no longer a realistic possibility. Now, we're looking at less bad options, ceding the fact that the virtual end of coral reefs, the drowning of some island nations, the worsening of already-devastating storms and the displacement of millions -- they seem close to inevitable. The climate crisis is already costly, deadly and deeply unjust, putting the most vulnerable people in the world, often who've done the least to cause this, at terrible risk.

There are two numbers you need to understand to put this moment in perspective.The first is 1.5. The Paris Agreement -- the international treaty on climate change, which admittedly is in trouble, but also is the best thing we've got -- sets the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 or, at most, below 2 degrees Celsius of warming.