What Is Flourishing?
According to Tyler VanderWeele’s team at Harvard, flourishing consists of six domains that can be measured through self-report surveys tracking individuals longitudinally. They are: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability.
The OECD describes flourishing as “Five central student competencies: adaptive problem-solving, ethical competence, understanding the world, appreciating the world and acting in the world.”
LearnerStudio argues “Human Flourishing in the Age of AI” is a worldview positioned between “Nostalgic Humanism” (resisting technology, returning to simpler times) and “Technocentrism” (efficiency above all, radical individualism). Its framework calls for centering distinctively human competencies—skills that are difficult to automate—while leveraging AI as a tool. They propose a “Humanics” curriculum emphasizing AI literacy alongside modernized disciplinary knowledge and human literacies: human skills (adaptability, collaboration, critical thinking) and human knowledge (history, philosophy, anthropology—domains studying the human experience). The goal is to shape young people who are “inspired and prepared for lives of purpose, human connection, hope, shared prosperity, and robust civic thriving.”
We see strengths in each:
We like the Harvard effort for its careful attention to measurement.
We like LearnerStudio’s blend of tech resistance with appropriate tech use, especially their naming the trap of nostalgic humanism.
We’re particularly interested in the “Acting in the World” component of the OECD framework: “It is a concept that includes but goes beyond the contribution one makes through paid work. At its heart is the invitation to develop purpose and intent, through chosen activities. For young people, these activities may lie in art, design and making; music, dance and acting; sport; or volunteering and service.”
Our Center for Teen Flourishing, launched in November 2025, defines teen flourishing based on precisely those activities—that is, what happens from 3:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. We measure how many hours per week a teen engages in non-screen activities that research shows are good for teens: in-person time with friends, exercise, participation in arts, sports, or clubs, pleasure reading, outdoor time, volunteering, or part-time jobs.
Why that time period? Because once you include 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the definition of flourishing, you tilt the discussion substantially towards what the school experience should be. You end up locked in the century-old “Tinkering Towards Utopia” stalemate that Stanford historian Larry Cuban chronicled.
The 3:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. period needs its own deep examination. Languishing teens today often were, during their childhood and preteen years, doing things after school—sports, play, arts. But over time, they “voted with their feet” and became teens who mostly reject those offerings. They’re on their couch or bed, scrolling. We need field studies to better understand the 3:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. window; we need fresh, measurable interventions that provide on-ramps back to “acting in the world.”
