Youth! How is Your Life?

Subjective well-being is an important indicator of how young people evaluate their lives and experience positive and negative emotions.Although Kerala has achieved considerable progress in education, healthcare and human development, the subjective experiences of young people may reflect a complex combination of life satisfaction, social enjoyment, unmet aspirations and concerns about the future.Against this background, the present study examines subjective wellbeing among youth in Mananthavady Municipality, Wayanad district, Kerala, using Diener's conceptual framework of life satisfaction, positive emotions and negative emotions.A cross-sectional descriptive research design was employed, and data were collected from young people aged 19-29 years across five geographically selected wards.Subjective well-being was assessed using a contextually adapted, Malayalam-language inventory comprising ten items across three dimensions.Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha, corrected itemtotal correlations, Spearman's rank correlation and multiple linear regression were used to analyze the data.The findings indicate that youth subjective well-being is characterized by the coexistence of positive emotional experiences and considerable future-related concerns.Social gatherings emerged as an important source of happiness, with 48.5% of respondents reporting complete happiness from such interactions.However, 51.5% reported worrying about their future completely, while 42.4% experienced such worry to some extent.Although respondents expressed satisfaction with their living standards and life decisions, only 4.5% reported completely achieving the things they desired.Life satisfaction was moderately correlated with positive emotions (ρ = 0.554, p < 0.001).Multiple regression analysis revealed that reported health problems were significantly associated with lower overall subjective well-being (B = -4.339,p < 0.001), whereas age showed a small positive association (B = 0.193, p = 0.033).Gender, marital status and education were not statistically significant predictors.The study highlights the importance of understanding youth well-being beyond conventional development indicators and emphasizes the need to consider social connectedness, health, aspiration fulfilment and future-oriented concerns when assessing young people's quality of life.