"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?
Basically, pre-2008.
Wars in the middle east were the norm, but they were always elsewhere, and the govt sold us that they were fighting the bad guys, that everything was under control, and that home would continue to be safe and prosperous. There basically weren’t any other militaries that could reasonably rival the US World Police. Yeah, it was seen as problematic, but in a way that seemed TOO safe, never unsafe. Random acts of terrorism was sold to us as the only real threat (even though it realistically wasn’t).
As kids, millennials were told that the American dream was real, that if you go to college you will get a good job and be able to provide for your family. It wasn’t until around the time of the 2008 recession that people really started noticing how worthless a lot of their college degrees were, and how much debt they had been saddled with.
Similarly, climate change was being successfully sold as “maybe a complete hoax” in the media. Even if you did believe it was real, it wasn’t crazy to feel optimistic that there was still time for the science to settle, and voters/politicians to make the right decisions before things got too bad.
Putin, Trump, and Covid were all solidly during Millennial adulthood, not representative of their youth.
2008-2020, very high, me.
Kyoto protocol was 1997, and that was just extending a climate treaty from 1992
You’re thinking of boomers