"In fact, Gen Z might just be the most risk-averse generation on record. Fewer Gen Zers got a driver’s license, drank alcohol, or had sex as teenagers than their parents did. The same young adults now report skyrocketing rates of anxiety and other mental illnesses, with some estimates finding that as many as 1 in 5 18-to-24-year-olds have been diagnosed with depression. Timidity—not to mention self-conscious neuroticism—is increasingly the norm.
“An ongoing study from Montclair State University argues that some of this risk aversion is due to the current political climate—or perhaps young people’s perception of it. “Gen Z’s mental health has deteriorated due to a worldview that the society and environment around them are crumbling,” writes justice studies professor Gabriel Rubin. “Rights are being taken away, the Earth is burning, maniacs could kill you with a gun, and viruses could shut down society again.””
See also, for counterpoint: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2024/06/18/gen-z-thriving-entrepreneurship/
Millennials were not told that. Millennials grew up on in the golden era and then it all fell apart on them when they became adults. They were raised on high hopes.
I am a mid to early melenial. I was born in 1986. My first time concerned about the future was y2k. Yes, nothing ended up happening but it was a lot of doom and gloom(and long hours for the people preventing the doom and gloom becoming reality). I remember freshman year of hs when September 11th happened. Most of my friends graduated college in 2008-2009 during the financial collapse. We recover but significantly struggling more than expected and more than our parents. Now in the background there is still the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which seem to be at a stale mate.
The you have the chronic issues… Aids appeared in the 80s, probably never to leave. Global warming… Need I say more?.. The multiple diseases spreading like Sars.
Then you have the crazies pushing that a apocalypse will occur in 2012.
We get out of that all and enter into trump. Then covid 19 occurs. Now inflation.
What do we have to look forward to? The housing bubble collapse. Increase global warming. Automation reshaping the job land scape. The loss of the ability to truly own something. The same wage as 30 years ago with prices exponentially growing.
It was the golden age before mellenials… We just hung on through the downfall…
Fuck now I’m depressed…
Maybe that’s what makes millennials different. So many of the big scares ended up being big nothings.
AIDS was going to kill everyone… except it’s a STI, and now can be almost fully managed with drugs.
Weed was going to kill everyone and make everyone else go crazy… except it’s arguably less harmful than even caffeine, let alone tobacco or alcohol.
Y2K was going to end the world… except people put significant money and effort into solving it.
The hole in the ozone layer is growing… except we put regulations in place to stop it from growing and saved ourselves.
We managed to save ourselves, as a species, from all of these things. It wasn’t until 9/11 when we didn’t really know what to do and never really recovered from it as a society.
It makes sense that that’s often where people say the 90s really ended. And it’s a decent cut-off for when someone is Gen Z. If you don’t really remember 9/11 (and especially nothing before it), you’re not a millennial.
The US was fighting wars in the Middle East for the first 30 years of our lives, we watched the worst mass casualty event since pearl harbor on live tv, we lived through the worst economic crisis since the great depression, covid, tea party, trump, Katrina, isis, Putin, etc etc. When were these high hopes you speak of?
2008-2020, very high, me.
I mean… I’m 29 and grew up being told that everything my parents enjoyed would literally never be a reality for me. I was 14 when the economy crashed in 2008 and 17 when gas prices first started spiking and never went down. I had to take out a $40k loan just for 1 year of university when my parents had the chance to graduate nearly debt-free and use their summer jobs to qualify for a mortgage.
Maybe you’re thinking of Gen X or something, because I really wouldn’t consider 1995-2015 (roughly the time when Millennials were coming of age) a golden era.
Millennials include people 10 years older than you. We were definitely being sold a future of sunshine and rainbows until at least late high school, if not our 20s.
I have siblings that are 12 and 10 years older than me and they had my same experience, but okay.
Millennials were sold the same promises as Gen X, only it was quickly becoming apparent that those promises were straight up lies. The young millennials cam of age in the wake of the 2008 crash while the older ones lost everything in said crash. Zoomers are still being sold the American dream, only now it’s more of a hostage demand.
Yeah, my brother is an elder millennial (43), I’m 33. It’s wild the different stories we were told about how our lives were going to be. If he hasn’t gone into the military, I doubt he’d be any better off then I am, and I am… Not doing great, financially.
Yeah I’m 30 and had to explain to my father that he could raise a family on a single engineer’s income, but I wouldn’t be able to. That was when I was a teenager
Kyoto protocol was 1997, and that was just extending a climate treaty from 1992
You’re thinking of boomers