What a time to be taking a social problems course! We are living in a social problems society, in which we are constantly confronted with stories about troubling issues and people telling us what we should think and do about them.

This is partially an artifact of 21st Century communication networks – social media, Internet, and streaming services – that have transcended the traditional information gatekeeping roles played by universities, the news media, and government agencies. Today, ordinary citizens have quasi-public platforms to air grievances, express viewpoints, share experiences, and connect to organizational networks. The accessibility of information is heightened, but the quality of that information is somewhat weakened.

As a result of research I conducted on activist groups (see Chapter 5 of this text), I have come to understand that the loudest voices around a problem are not necessarily the direct stakeholders to the issue, and that most problems are many-sided. Being in the business of constant curiosity, I have also had plenty of opportunities to learn how much I don’t know that I don’t know about how the world works. These experiences have encouraged me to take a more data-driven approach to exploring social problems.

While there are plenty of data points to freak out about, the fact remains that the lifestyle of the average household in the U.S. today is unimaginably rich compared to 200 years ago, and that’s a good thing for many reasons.

For example, while completing an oral history project for my college women’s studies course (and in response to what question, who knows), my grandmother – born in 1911 – told me a story about the time that her mother brought home “the first roll of toilet paper” from the grocery store. There were six women in their house. One roll. And what did they use before that? Anyways, the material well-being of Americans today is so advanced beyond the imagination of previous generations that we can’t even see it squarely.

It’s currently popular to teach a class about social problems by focusing on everything that is wrong with the world. I mean “problems” is literally the title of the course, right? But lately I’ve had quite enough of hearing about all the things that are going wrong – there is plenty of bad news available without spending an entire semester of college dissecting it further. I think it’s time for a fresh approach.

Upgrading Your Worldview

Lately I’ve developed an interest in ideas coming from a group of intellectuals who call themselves rational optimists. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more in need of a dose of optimism. You may be wondering what there could possibly be to feel good about. I admit it’s a stretch. But if we take a step back from the non-stop noise of grocery prices, global warming, and guns, and actually take a look at the facts about global indicators of human well-being, we see a surprising picture taking shape.

Stop right now and use the link below to take the Gapminder test.

How did you do? If you did badly on the Gapminder test, you’re probably not alone. Hans Rosling, author of the (2018) book Factfulness, was a Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. From 1998 to his death in 2017, Professor Rosling posed hundreds of fact questions about global patterns and trends – including poverty and wealth, population growth, births, deaths, education, health, gender, violence, energy, and the environment – to thousands of people across the world. His audiences have included medical students, teachers, university lecturers, prominent scientists, investment bankers, corporate executives, journalists, activists, and senior politicians. The majority of even these educated, interested individuals got the basic facts about the world wrong.

Professor Rosling noticed that not only are most people’s worldviews inaccurate, they are also systematically wrong. On test questions with three answer options, if you selected an answer at random you would have a 33% chance of getting it right. But when Rosling averaged the scores from his audiences, over and over, less than 33% chose the right answer. They were worse than randomly wrong.

Further, random selection would result in the wrong answers being equally split between the two incorrect answer choices. But instead, most people picked the wrong answer in each case that was more frightening, more violent, more hopeless than is actually true. Prof. Rosling calls this the overdramatic worldview writing, “We need to learn to control our drama intake. Uncontrolled, our appetite for the dramatic goes too far, prevents us from seeing the world as it is, and leads us terribly astray” (2018: 15).

To help people start developing a more accurate worldview, the Gapminder team created an amazing collection of digital resources that allow users to access data visualizations from statistics compiled by the World Bank and the United Nations. When we examine this empirical, or observable, data, we see that a broader trajectory of human improvement is occurring across the globe, and it has experienced a remarkable jumpstart over in the last fifty.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Professor Rosling has to say:

Social Problems or Social Progress?

From Spears to Avocados: A Perspective Shift

The very fact that we have gone from chasing down rabbits with spears to fretting about the carbon footprint of an avocado – in a time span that is, in planetary terms, barely a blink – should be cause for celebration. That shift represents enormous progress in the human condition. We now live in a world where our problems are increasingly the result of abundance, not scarcity. That’s incredible!

The Anxieties of Now

But no one seems to be celebrating. In fact, many people – particularly college students – report feeling anxious, depressed, overwhelmed – or all three. According to Boston University’s The Brink (see link below), mental health among college students is steadily worsening.

So maybe it’s insulting to suggest there is actually reason for hope. How do we hold space for emotional distress while also recognizing the very real ways in which global well-being is improving?

The Case for Optimism

Here’s where data can help us out. When we set aside the relentless stream of emotionally charged headlines and look closely at long-term, global trends, we begin to see a different picture – one that tells a story not of collapse, but of progress.

Yes, serious problems still exist. But progress and problems are not mutually exclusive. Rosling tells us that it is important to maintain the perspective that things can be both bad and better.

“Better, and bad, at the same time. That is how we must think about the current state of the world” (Rosling 2018: 71).

If we ignore the progress, we risk dismissing the very strategies that have helped get us this far. Professor Rosling warns: “When people wrongly believe that nothing is improving they may conclude that nothing we have tried so far is working and lose confidence in measures that actually work” (2018: 69). 

This is not to say that everything in the world is “just fine” or that serious problems don’t exist. Everything is not fine. It’s about maintaining the perspective that some things are working – and that recognizing what is working helps us design better responses to what isn’t. 

Product Disclaimer

As a first generation college student, I am familiar with the challenges of juggling jobs, classes, and extracurriculars, and I wanted to find an open access, concise, and entertaining book for my social problems students. Nothing available cut the mustard, so I decided to write my own. The topics and perspectives offered in this text therefore reflect my personal experiences and interests.

I’m an applied researcher and a pragmatistic. Within the sociological field there is a strong intellectual tradition of critique, including deconstructing systems, questioning institutions, and imagining radical alternatives. That is not my lane. I use data to analyze and develop solutions for problems affecting people right here, right now.  Imperfect as they may be, the systems we have are what we’ve got to deal with today, and it seems important that someone gets to work right away. 

That’s why I helped co-found the GVSU Social Science Lab. My students and I help a variety of organizations understand what matters to the people they serve. Our aim is to gather input that reflects a wide range of voices so that our partners can more effectively direct their investments, resources, and communication. 

In this class we will work on developing your ability to research, analyze, and present information about problems currently impacting our social world. We’ll practice digital literacy skills applicable to any professional pathway, using exercises applied to social science subject matter. Along the way, we’ll do our best to maintain a high standard for the information we generate or circulate in class by keeping these best practices in mind:

• Avoid generalizing about an entire group, especially based on a single case or example. (That’s a stereotype!)
• Reject a singular explanation or solution about a problem. (Assume problems are multifaceted!)
• Resist using extreme cases to represent average experiences. (Moderate your drama intake!)
• Assess research methodology critically for errors that could invalidate results. (Question the science!)

In Sum

I’ve found in the last few years that I have developed a profound lack of patience for solutions to social problems whose entry point involves flipping our current world completely upside-down. That’s not to say that I don’t think there are grave and deeply rooted problems in our society – I do. But I’ve also grown skeptical of ideas that refuse to engage with empirical data or acknowledge the real gains people have experienced.

It’s easy to get swept up in the narrative that everything is broken. But when we zoom out and take a closer look at the data, we see a more complicated picture – one that includes setbacks and suffering, yes, but also steady improvements in health, education, rights, and overall well-being. In other words, the bigger picture can look bad and better at the same time.

You don’t have to believe me right now, but over the next several weeks I plan to work diligently to dislodge your overdramatic worldview and complicate the cultural narrative of catastrophe dominating conversation about current events. If the thought of looking for signs of hope makes you roll your eyes, this may not be the text (or professor!) for you. If you’re up for some optimism, you’re in the right place. May we find it together.