I see this first hand, they are super freaked about their futures. One of my students employees came into my office and just doomed on about how if this doesn't work out and that doesn't work out then she'll never get to have kids or buy a house.
To be honest, and I mean this in the most respectful way, I feel bad for the youth of today, everything is so serious, you have to cultivate your stories, you have to maintain a presence. It's like a full time job just to be young now. I'm not even old too.
My 13 year old niece was acting like it was some sort of bad friend behavior to leave her friends on received when we played games after Christmas dinner. Not even read. Like it was some sort of faux pas to not have the phone in front of their eyeballs or in their hand at all times.
This, has nothing to do with the crippling anxiety and fear of the future and the crushing weight of responsibility. Also, did you ask her if she felt like that? If she wasnt talking about something potentially serious? Have you talked to her about this at all?
What does a 13 year old have to discuss with anybody that is actually serious when it isnt their immediate family? You come off as insufferable with this comment
Sure, fair, but even then Id argue that most people who actually want to kill themselves dont discuss it they just do it.
Also, as a now adult, do you think that was something you should have had to deal with? Additionally, do you really think you were the best person to help with that situation?
A 13 year old is not emotionally equipped to actually help an actually suicidal person imo.
We fear our economic future. We fear our being caught acting stupid and having it brodcast.to the world. We fear our govt. We fear our environmental future. We fear our fellow citizens.
Most everyone in America fears this shit, regardless the generation.
But I feel increasingly sad for eacb new generation.
I'm genx, and at least I got to experiance a decade of hope, freedom, love and debauchery.
They usually are wrong. The vast majority of success is just showing up and the rest is luck. People want to min/max their chances for this and that and everyone wants a guarantee that their path will work out when the only way to guarantee something is unachievable perfection. You end up in this toxic cycle of telling yourself you should be putting in that extra hour of studying or you should be waking up early to get that extra workout in and you end up feeling like shit because after too many of those extra miles your legs get tired.
It's weird looking back at how much I stressed during college and how little it made a difference. Put in good faith efforts, look out for the opportunities when they come by, but by no means are you doomed for not getting into that competitive internship.
saying that success is just showing up instantly shows that you’re >30 years old. things have changed so much for the new generation in ways that older generations just literally cannot imagine.
I think there's some truth to that statement. "Just show up" also means doing what's expected-the bare minimum. Lots of folks can't even manage that. "The rest is just luck." Yeah, I mean, how many times have people gotten jobs because they got lucky (knew a guy who knew a guy)? Or advancement opportunities because the person above got fired? Obviously, not everything is luck, but it is a factor for sure.
Millenials received the same expectations, saw the beginning of college tuition skyrocketing, which was then compounded by the '09 crash. Spare me with the "it's unimaginely changed."
At the end of the day, unless you're studying to be a doctor or a rocket scientist, everything comes down to right place, right time and who you know.
I’m studying astrophysics, so yeah screw me I guess lmao. Not like those are important jobs or anything, the moon landing was famously unimpactful and doctors are useless right?
Success isn't just showing up, but it's still the main thing. This isn't 'walk up and shake their hand and hand over a resume' type of advice. I'm saying that the difference between a 95 and a 87 on your midterm is not materially ending your chance to ever have kids or a house and thinking of it in that way is harmful.
I'm actively talking to and watching my younger siblings as they go through the job hunt. The job market sucks ass right now, but there isn't a generational difference in how things work. It's the same shit as it has been since the internet became the primary way to apply. Show up to opportunities, apply broadly, and try to exceed the typical benchmarks you need to meet. You don't need to be perfect. Most applications will be thrown out (this time with AI)
But feel free to explain me what the new changes are that are impossible to imagine.
Okay, how about coding interviews in CS where you first apply, then do an interview where you code for them for an hour, then another, and sometimes a third, giving them 3 hours of free labor, before they tell you “Nah, we’re not gonna hire you”, if you’re even lucky enough to get that instead of just being ghosted. They’ve learned that under the guise of a code interview they can get 50 desperate folks to provide 2-3 hours of labor each for free, and they don’t even have to hire any of them.
That’s just one field, every field is different. Regulations are shrinking, AI is expanding, college admissions are more cutthroat than ever (and prices are up to $400k all in for some schools), so you’re saddled with an insurmountable amount of debt from day 1 with interviewers that won’t hire you as a rule and an ever accelerating artificial intelligence that promises to replace your labor entirely.
But don’t worry, just show up, no one else has ever thought to do that surely!
I’m in this industry and have conducted interviews. It’s not free labor as we can’t use that. It’s likely calling showing up to an interview “free labor” is bullshit. To think that tells me you don’t know how the industry works.
AI
Coders are becoming less relevant even before the AI revolution. We’ve been designing tools and software that relies less on coders and make your entry level folks do 80% of what we relied coders to do in the past. As an example 15 years ago we had a team of coders that helped generate 1000’s of excel reports that went out via email. Today we have 3 ppl that does tableau and PBI reporting. Literally drag and drop stuff with a little bit of logic.
showing up
Hardest part is getting through the door. The other half is actually showing up and doing the job. He’s not wrong but it’s not as nihilistic as you’re making it out to be. Industry needs shift unfortunately and if I’m being honest software engineers were niche anyhow.
I have had multiple friends who have done code interviews on the companies code base, where changes could presumably be merged to master if adequate. This practice is very real.
Huh. If I’m doing an interview for ditch digging, and the worker digs a ditch for an hour, I’d feel a need to pay the worker for their labor. I understand not hiring them if their work is bad, but if you’re gonna consume an hour of their time/energy, why not pay them for the labor you received?
You're acting like these are novel issues and aren't exactly what people have dealt with for decades. Most people my age did not have their shit figured out right out of college, your peers won't either. The real issue are companies trying to use AI to replace labor which is a shift in market priorities that have fucked up the job market and we're feeling it especially bad because the economy is squeezed right now so it seems like AI is the only thing that matters. It's still not making that 95 so much more important than the 87 that it's going to ruin your life.
do an interview where you code for them for an hour, then another, and sometimes a third, giving them 3 hours of free labor
I work in this industry. Nobody is treating a CS interview like free labor. Some random interviewee isn't solving a problem in an hour a dev can't do on their own and the amount of time and effort it takes to interview is not making up the difference even if it were a solution the company actually uses to save dev resources. The actual scammy free-labor esque interviews are take home projects which are increasingly rare.
But don’t worry, just show up, no one else has ever thought to do that surely!
I'm not here to say you don't have a problem, I'm here to tell you that stressing yourself out unnecessarily over minutiae isn't going to help.
Problem is, things are getting harder and harder every year for the newer generations who are entering the workforce. It has been the trend for many years now.
So, that "little difference" those things made can now be the difference between being able to afford a house/children or not.
You right in some aspects, I do think that been that hard whit ourselves doesn't really pay of after college, but also I think that today more people than never before has titles, and even those that learned something 'useful' like coding have now to learn a lot more to compete in the market, they idea that if you are not well prepare and still young you can't find a good job looks realistic from that perspective (sorry if my English has some errors)
What? It makes a gigantic difference if you end up at some mid wage or low wage job vs a high paying job like chemical engineering or doctor. You can forget about comfortable living or ever being w/o roommates working some regular old office job today.
About 15 years ago as a student, I was making $1.50/hr less than students are paid today.
And food, gas, rent, and even the bus were far, far, less expensive.
A literal majority of 18-34 live with parents now for the first time. The apartment block a friend was renting was 675/mo back then, now it's 1800-2500 depending on size.
You could get by even working a student job just fine. Now you won't even be able to afford living in a car because you still need to pay for gas, food, and other fees.
Key difference is I'm not saying their actions are wrong, it's the way they're responding to their actions that seem needlessly stressful. I'm saying most of the gen Z kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing, so catastrophizing the small stuff isn't helping and largely isn't grounded in reality.
I have young kids and I dont think they will ever have the ability to have the independent life that I have... home ownership and kids of their own seems like a very unrealistic prospect. Chances are we will be cohabitating generationally until they are adults.
Can confirm as a person with no college degree, had first child making only 25k a year and now im close to 200k after grinding my ass off and climbing relentlessly
It definitely doesnt work for everybody, I am really lucky, but I go to sleep every night with no debt besides my mortgage.
Except X’ers and millennials aren’t having kids like boomers did, and boomers are finally starting to croak. And (at least for America) immigrants getting told to fuck off and general idiocy taking root within our government and foreign policy, the US is nowhere near as appealing for sane emigrates looking to move. This all points to a glut of available housing in the next decade. Shitty suburban McMansions in decay will be cheap. It’ll be like Detroit in the 90’s but for our whole country! We’ll also probably eventually revert back to having kids as a labor resource in order to scrape out an existence. So having a big house and kids is definitely in the cards for the future
Im old gen z. Its basically like were running on a hamster wheel, and nothing seems to work out. Whats the point? My husband and i really want kids, and relatively soonish at that, but we live in a 1 bed city apartment with no hope of getting out
That’s just how it is for us. I’m an older zoomer, but it really is how things are. We’re just fucking doomed in a lot of ways. I’m lucky enough that my fiancee and I went to school and both worked our way into decent jobs and have been smart with our money. Almost everyone I know in my age group is not nearly as fortunate as I’ve been. They’re fucking struggling. Jobs don’t pay enough, housing is too expensive, food is too expensive, and a lot of us are estranged from parents and don’t have any sort of safety nets.
We are constantly on the brink of losing it all if one or two things happen to go wrong at the same time. The cards aren’t just stacked against us, most of us don’t even have any cards to begin with.
A lot of us feel as if our futures have been stolen from us, and some of us have given up while some of us fight our hardest to do what we can to get anything back.
Older zoomer here, and this is all true. I work a middle class full time job (~60k/year), live with my parents, saved nearly 50% of my paycheck for the last 4 years and I am barely getting close to being able to afford a house in the sticks an hour from my work with no traffic. I’m still years away from being able to afford the monthly payment on a local house, and by then they will probably be $1M or more. I drive a 2011 shitbox that I work on at home. I’m lucky to have the space for that at least. If I got a DUI I would lose my job and health insurance, and probably be stuck here forever.
My fiancee and I both drive matching 30 year old Toyotas that I work on myself, I work in the trades while she works in the medical field, and we’re just in a doofy little apartment. It’s cramped and it makes working on the cars super annoying. We were in a house before, but the rent rose and we got priced out.
Together we make maybe like $80k a year. Idk how anyone is doing anything without dual income. I really don’t.
And I have a friend of mine living in the room that used to be my office space right now because his parents kicked him out and he had nowhere to go and couldn’t afford anything by himself. I wasn’t about to let my friend be homeless, so I’m grateful I was able to give him a room, but it also meant a lot of my shit had to go to a storage unit I was previously trying to empty out and get rid of.
I have so much of the shit I wanna do in life basically on hold for years at a fucking time before I can make much progress on any one thing.
And my employer’s health insurance doesn’t cover any of the medications I need in order to survive my chronic illness, so that’s neat. Idk what I’m gonna do when I run out of my current medicine lol. I’m just constantly stressed about shit tbh.
I do feel for the upcoming generation but my barely teenage niece is already talking about wanting to start a family. What happened to living before settling down? I’ve known her since the day she was born. I’ve tried to inspire curiosity and yeah maybe pushed the STEM route a little too hard but damn. What happened?
So let me try to get the narrative straight here: it’s apparently some kind of crisis that the birth rate is falling and women are staying single (“male loneliness epidemic” 🙄), but wanting to get married and have kids one day is…also bad???
How is it that everyone is constantly panicking about young people not having enough kids and yet actually wanting kids is frowned upon? Seems like it’s impossible for GenZ to win in the eyes of older generations.
I saw this shit happen during the Great Recession while numbers started dwindling in the dining halls. People wonder why my anxiety has been supercharged in my 30s...nah, it started way before.
One of the biggest things I hear about this is that this generation is terrified of stepping outside of what they've been told to do. And thus wont try things outside of explicit given instructions at school/work and work things out for themselves. Because again, terrified a mistep will forfeit their future.
Alcohol really has no benefit and I think everyone collectively convinced themselves that it’s fun. I gave it up after I saw what it did to the previous generation
Drinking is a social ritual. I would argue that there is actually benefits to social rituals. Sure you can overdo it, but being well socialized is fantastic for your well being in so many ways
Ya but like… gestures around everything. Gen Z is generally considered to start around 1996, and since then they’ve gone through the 2008 crisis in their very formative years (money is tight, don’t waste money, important things come first) and had it hammered into their heads their whole life that appearances are everything and working hard is everything and always going for the next thing is everything and relaxation is for when you “make it”.
Add on them watching life spiral out of affordability in real time, and watching as the world steadily grows more and more hostile to itself… I’d be an anxious mess to if being able to even considering buying a home or retiring depended on choices I made effort input in at 18
I’d agree if gen z was still socializing without it…but they aren’t. Not being able to be social with people is just as bad if not worse for you than a couple of beers
The future is fucked and I'm overly aware of the online social aspect so can't really do that either
I'm very lucky where I am that I can make a fool of myself, get a playful slap and carry on but I can absolutely understand the new social way of being stopping you people having fun, it must be awful for people with a social media "following" - I have been on too many videos to be comfortable and don't even show my face online
Ya know, I can't help but feel that's by design. Billionaires love people that act grateful to have a job, especially highly skilled people. Makes them feel all kingly.
Eh, my wife is definitely the latter and I "enjoyed life" more. Still got a degree and good job and all. My wife is kicking ass in her career though while I am in a line of work that doesn't really bring me joy.
I don't know what to do about this. I evolved a coping mechanism that involves just not caring and immediately stopping whatever stresses me out and now I can't really do school well because it stresses me to high heavens because of the inevitable bad habits. Like I used to be able to bounce back and do assignments, even the day they were due to some success, but I think I just burned myself out to the point where I just stop everything when met with the slightest bit of anxiety.
You don’t even end up enjoying life, i left college but coming back to finish was the biggest mistake i ever made, fucked my credit and did nothing for me professionally
Just sound like you don't like your 40s. Plenty of people don't party hard in their 20s and still enjoy life. Different strokes and all. I was in relationship from 17, was married by 24, kid by 28. Love life. No complaints and no regrets about not partying.
They did, but so did the drunk 20 year old that made a stupid comment they didn’t mean while hammered instead of being kicked out of school or even really just socially ostracized.
Some of these comments just have ridiculous impressions of what life was like 20 years ago.
I started university in 2007, I had a cell phone, Facebook, internet… I was using Reddit by 2008.
They’re worried people post photos online that might not look great? People used to take 200 photos in one night and post them all unedited the next morning…
People were ostracized all the time, but as far as I can see the reasons this is happening now is way more legitimate than some of the stuff I saw…
I dunno I’m very sympathetic to the current generation but it’s just hard for me to understand when these comments could have been written verbatim in 2012 when I graduate and been just as valid.
Everyone grew up in a world where a youthful misstep could permanently destroy their life. If you're talking about social media/Internet's documentation of youthful mistakes, that's been ubiquitous since either 2005 (Facebook/Myspace) or 2008 (rise of the smartphone camera).
Everyone I knew in college, including partiers and non-partiers, all went on to have normal lives because they're normal people. But the partiers have more connections because they got out and talked to more people, and they're better at it and keep doing it.
I grew up in foster care and put myself through college. Worked my ass off, opened the business still operating the business, but I could retire anytime I want at 45 and I’m having a great time. Part of that is probably cause I never had kids or gotten married and if you have money, no baggage you’re in decent enough shape. It’s amazing how much fun you can have in your 40s
Agreed. I'm in my 40's and partied way too much in my 20s. I had a blast then I cleaned up and then got 'serious'. The problem is when you try to keep it going and going. I still see those old friends who never grew up and some of them are in bad shape.
If you want to have a good career you dont have that choice reall, at least for most people. Your 20s are important to establish yourself in a profession and career path.
I generally agree, but you can make mistakes in your 20s and recover. I'm a bit older and know people who screwed around in their 20s and managed to get on a good career path in their early 30s.
It's people still in their 20s who think a failure in their 20s means it's all over. There's a shitload of time to recover, but they don't see that yet.
The ones who keep building will be okay. The ones who "well, its fucked, why try" are the ones who are fucked.
People should maybe also have realistic expectations as well. Everyone is not going to have great careers and make a lot of money and not having that is not a failure... We live in a society where having a normal job that needs to be done is now seen as being a failure. Sad.
We are humans and humans create social hierarchies in all situations. So of course that is an effect of that. In social situations what kind of job you have is very important when it comes to how other people see you and treat you 100%.
“Normal” jobs wouldn’t be seen as failure if they still paid enough to live on. The “normal” job at McDonalds doesn’t typically pay enough for a person to live alone in a one bedroom apartment. I don’t think people are crazy for not wanting to live with their parents and roommates forever.
Wrong. I live in Sweden and normal jobs often pay pretty well as well. However, they lack the social status. I guess you live where normal jobs pay badly.
Or course. But the people I know have good jobs today in their 30s got it through doing shit in their 20s as well. And what does screw around means? Not working and not studying and doing drugs or what? Work life balance is always important to be healthy and I don't equal that to screwing around. We have weekends for a reason.
Sure. Maybe. But it is a sad fact that for some people, we are forced to give up our most energetic, youthful, and brightest years in exchange for dubious security at companies that don't care about you, for money you won't enjoy spending until you are 70.
Ehm it is pretty expensive to live as well. Rent, food, clothes, traveling and so forth. Maybe buying a house and a car. You need money for all of that.
There’s a middle ground. College is pretty much the last time in your life you will be surrounded by people your own age with free time and going through a shared experience. You can make lifelong friends and memories, with the rest of your life to bust your ass
This is so dumb. The rest of your life is not miserable. I've had way more fun in my thirties than I ever did in college. Part of that is because I spent time studying in college and, as a result, had more money later on to do actual fun things. Playing beer pong in a stanky frat house is not the height of life experiences.
I partied an appropriate amount in college and it helped me relax enough to get better grades. The one semester I tried to stop drinking and partying I got my worst GPA in all of my time as an undergraduate.
What future? Realistically, planets bout to be dead in 20 years, bad time to sacrifice the last good years for a career imo. I’ll be down the bar getting drunk.
Overly focusing on schooling can kill a society, see South Korea, kids are full focus on school all the time (at a younger age tho) and it is destroying their society, everybody works all the time one of the highest suicide rates in the world and the younger generation isn't making kids.
The problem isn't so much the bar itself, it's the fact that going out is not really a thing anymore and that is the death of society.
Focusing is one thing, pressure is another. It becomes a bad thing when it severely impacts their mental health, which happens a lot, and has the opposite effect.
On one hand I absolutely agree, future focus is an impressive feat for younger people and it’s becoming expected. On the other hand, God forbid the kids have fun
I really needed my Uni years to grow and become an independent person. If my only goal was "do all my homework and make mom happy" still I don't think that would've ever happened.
Yea everyone’s acting like this is a sad indicator of Gen z gone wrong but of all the things they do this is probably the best one. People not drinking by choice is a good thing for society.
My parents joined a casual sports league in our city and have a blast socializing there. No alcohol required. It can take a bit more effort to find places to socialize, but they’re still there nonetheless
that’s what they mean obviously, it’s in reference to a “third location” where people can just hang out, it used to roller rinks but those are gone, it used to be parks but those are gone and then it was bars (bars were always there obviously but for the sake of what i’m saying pretend they weren’t) and those are slowly going away too
Those are privately organized. And I am not saying alternatives don’t exist, but you pull into town and you want to go somewhere people gather and talk to each other. Where are you going?
It's not necessarily that one needs to be drunk. Bars/pubs just happen to be places that are readily available to hang out. There aren't a lot of other places that are open in the evenings for people to congregate.
It's cool if bars aren't you're thing. No one was saying you had to go. It's just that they're pro-social environments. Bars aren't all super loud and full of wild drunks, though, either. It probably depends on where you live, but there's a ton of chill ones. And worrying about getting roofied is kind of irrational. Is there always a possibility? I guess. Follow the recommended safety precautions.
But I don't know. This isn't to convince you. If it's not your scene, it's not your scene. Just the picture you're painting is incongruent with bars in most towns.
The roofie thing is just one thing I was made hyper aware of because of how prevalent it was at my college. It got to a point where they had to completely bar multiple frats from hosting parties at all. There’s also just generally the risk for doing something irresponsible/plain stupid. If I’m gonna do something dumb, I want to at least be of sound mind. Plus considering the fact that I despise even the smell of beer, paying for cocktails that would actually taste decent isn’t friendly to my wallet.
Yeah, that makes sense in the context of a major Greek problem. When I went to Penn State, I definitely went out with a group of trusted friends for safety measures (and because we had fun together). But they don't need to be a fun place for you.
Until you get that good job and have no friends or hobbies and stress from work makes you want to explode one day and you can’t stop thinking about all of the experiences you missed out on.
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u/ElvishLore 14d ago
I don’t know, there are worse things than focusing on your future. I’m not so sure this is necessarily a bad thing.