Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up(slate.com) |
Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up(slate.com) |
Is it possible - and this is just me talking here - that maybe our generation isn't composed of a bunch of emotional weaklings who can't bear the stress of life, but that you guys fucked it up pretty badly for us? Your self-interested conservative personal responsibility do it yourself policies bankrupted the economy because you were asleep at the switch, and now we can't find jobs.
I can guarantee you that if you flip back several decades you'll find an article in Life Magazine written by some asshole asking the question "Why are the baby boomers such pussies? We fought World War II for crissake!"
A load of horseshit. Life is hard. Help, you assholes.
I'm reminded that a friend of mine in grad school occasionally gets phone calls from the parents of the college students in some of his classes when they do poorly, and that parents are often the ones setting up tutoring and such for their in-college kids, rather than the students themselves.
It's plain ridiculous.
Feeling like you want to become self supporting and out from under the parental thumb definitely seems to be unusual in my generation.
This is a vicious slander.
I mean, clearly the student loan education bubble, Freddie and Fannie-backed mortgage bubble, and the Social Security ponzi scheme were based on policies of "personal responsibility" and "do it yourself."
As a successful person who is most likely in the same generation as you, I'm looking forward to potentially trying to move to a country where I can take personal responsibility---rather than having people like you claw away whatever I earn to spend on more boondoggles.
It is clear that I am no longer welcome in most of the Western world, but just a piece of meat to be taken advantage of.
No matter what the reasons for that are, you can't refute that it's bound to have some interesting consequences on the psychology of the 20-somethings in question.
About a hundred years ago it was common for men in their very late 20's to have finally built a life of their own and get a bride. A bride who was 16 or so because that meant she still had plenty of child bearing years ahead of her.
What if men just got back to that same state, while women have joined men in this status instead of having the whole teenage pregnancy thing?
Actually, maybe we could, if we had some evidence, which you don't.
Are you serious with this statement? This is exactly the attitude that the article and all of the others like it are referring to.
Life is hard. Be harder.
And if you can't, sorry kids. Guess you were just too weak.
(There's a name for this philosophy, by the way. Perhaps as a hard competitor in this post-industrial knowledge economy, you already know it.)
Look, a strong work ethic and resourcefulness are great personal advice. Once you start talking about an entire generation (particularly the younger one) as we are in this article, we're well out of the realm of personal advice, though, and likely enough heading into Cicero-times-are-bad territory that maybe -- just maybe -- it's worth also examining some systemic issues and talking about how we can help each other.
Or if that's a little too kumbaya for you, cultivate the future demand and labor pool.
Surveys have shown that companies are having more trouble hiring people who have enough relevant experience than people with sufficient educational qualifications or technical skills [1]. To the extent there's a structural unemployment problem in the US, it's a bootstrapping problem -- too few entry-level positions in professional fields to supply the long-term need for experienced workers in those fields. This fits with my anecdotal observations of my 20-something friends -- their BAs won't even get them on the bottom of the ladder.
"who can't be bothered to master these STEM fields": Try: can't afford training in those fields. Try: can't get a job in those fields without years of experience.
[1]: http://business.time.com/2012/06/04/the-skills-gap-myth-why-...
Maybe this will help: http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butt...
This article described the movie The Graduate, which everyone felt described a generation coming of age in the 60s. Pick other movies and books for other times.
Take it far enough back and you have this quote
"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."
which sounds contemporary but dates back centuries (often attributed to Socrates, but not likely that old). It sounds contemporary in every time.
I conclude things aren't suddenly getting worse -- http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse -- which makes my life better.
A highlight for the those of you that couldn't make it through the whole way:
"A generation ago, my college peers and I would buy a pint of ice cream and down a shot of peach schnapps (or two) to process a breakup. Now some college students feel suicidal after the breakup of a four-month relationship."
This shit is publishable?
Honestly, if the Onion were stuck for content they could publish this article word-for-word and I'd gladly believe it was supposed to be satire.
Why generalize an entire generation? ... because, page views.
I'm 32 and I HATE laundry and every single person in my age group that I have met hates it too.
"Her case is becoming the norm for twenty- to thirtysomethings I see in my office as a psychotherapist. I’ve had at least 100 college and grad students like Amy crying on my couch because breaching adulthood is too overwhelming."
If you're brought up to follow all the rules & go to college, work 40 years and then retire & as soon as you get through the first part (follow the rules & graduate) and you can't get a job at Starbucks - life might seem a bit harder than you expected.
I'm not sure of the exact cause, but I do think people having children later in life (late 30s, early 40s for many people I know) coupled with the fact that most of them are only having one child causes a bit of over-involvement and softening of parenting. There are too many "special snowflakes" who grow up and cannot handle the fact that none of us are these special creatures and you have to compete for everything you want and need to live.
I think shifting blame to older generations is a result of some of these things. Yes, there have been some messed up things handed down to us, but it's nothing we can't fix. We just have to get our act together, plan things out, and work hard.
Life IS hard, but it's how you respond and adapt to hardships that define you. Blaming everyone else is not going to do anything.
What I realize quite often when I'm talking to friends and what I hear very often when I talk to my parents is a lack of deep social connections.
If you have a social circle you really like and you can count on it's far easier to organize yourself and get your stuff done. Because you learn that stuff together in your circle. You just grow faster in a group of like-minded people than fighting all the bullshit alone.
Finding this social circle is pretty hard for me. If this social circle is lacking or you just does not care about you if you don't fit their worldview you are on your own. Now you are scared and desperate to to fit somewhere in.
Everyone is fighting their fight alone. It's more often than not a piss-match about status and money and importance than a real friendship. The partying is the illusion of this social circle that you want to keep in your life. If you drop this you'll have to face that you are totally alone and nobody gives a fuck about you.
If I talk to my parents or grandparents I realize that they still meet with their colleagues from school or university or old jobs.
If you don't function now nobody cares. Old friendships just vanish.
This may be my problem. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm an loner or idiot. But there is a difference in comparison to earlier generations and most people I know or talk to feel pretty alone very often.
Maybe this "Great Recession" is an effect, and not a cause, of the fact that white Americans are increasingly too decadent to work for a fucking living.
I graduated during the recession of 2003-2004 which was almost as long as the Great Recession. We've been technically out of the recession for over 3 years.
http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/
http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/
I particularly appreciate the data from PEW as it allows for contrast vs. Gen X / Boomers at the same age / place.
Meanwhile the older generations are screaming at them "Pay for my medicare and medicaid that won't be there for you! Pay taxes to pay my state funded pension! I don't care that you cant afford a home, or medical care, or college! I don't care that we outsourced your jobs and that you can't make enough money to be poor!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-...
This is more the extrapolation of one struggling 30 year old onto a generation rather than the symptoms of an entire group of people
The Job Market - Automated and outsourced jobs have limited workplace opportunities over the decades. From all the older folks I talk to, they mention how much easier it was to get a job and how many jobs there were back when they were young compared to today.
The Money - Inflation has made the price of everything more expensive, yet most wages have relatively stayed the same. So I'm getting payed the same amount yet the price of everything around me is getting higher. I feel like I can't ever catch up.
Growing up and Relationships - Almost every single friend I have ever had has divorced parents. The rare few whose parents are still married are miserable. Is this what awaits me? Find love, start a family, be miserable? Growing up is extremely discouraging when you can see the terrible results of "growing up" all around you. I don't want to hate the person I love. I'm afraid of finding a spouse because I've seen what happens when others do. It's like walking down a dark alley covered in others' blood, and every time you turn around to run away a sea of voices taunt you with "stop being a pussy! grow up and go down the dark alley like we did". I don't want to go down a road knowing there's something bad at the end. Sorry.
Work Hard/Don't work hard Paradox - It pisses me off when I hear someone say "kids these days don't work hard enough!" and "Go to college so you can get a good job in an office somewhere and not doing manual labor" in the same conversation. This one is just confusing. Which is it? When I get a job working hard I'm looked down upon by peers because I don't work at Google or Facebook. I'm looked down upon by my parents because the job doesn't have dental and health and 40 hours a week and $20/hour. Hard working jobs do not pay well because they're so plentiful and there's a lot of people trying to get hired. So the prices are crap.
America's Greed Problem: You cannot tell me you don't see it. From the bank bailouts, to the behavior of the car companies that needed to be bailed out, to outsourcing jobs, to the housing market (caused by people buying up homes, barely doing work on them, and flipping them to the next sucker) it feels like America's collective goal is to #1) create as shitty of a product as possible and sell it at the highest price possible and #2) find the most efficient and legal way to fuck people over. My parents worked so hard to buy the crappy house we have now at 7 times the price of a house in Bulgaria, and still it's always falling apart and needs maintenance while homes in Bulgaria are built like a rock, out of brick and cement, more energy efficient, and cost less.
Extremist Politics: It feels like the liberal and conservative parties have gone to more and more polarizing extremes to differentiate themselves and counter-balance the other party's philosophies. This has turned into 2 parties that don't listen and don't think but instead react using old traditionally memorized values. When looking at Republicans and Democrats, they've all but stopped "thinking" about each problem that faces the nation and instead throw their "blanket solutions" over whatever problem comes their way. If one party were truly better than the other, we would have kept them in power permanently. Instead we switch parties every decade or so. This political environment isn't getting problems solved. It's not giving me hope for a better future. And it sucks that my only choices every few years are between people who are either hard working but backwards thinking or people who are educated but lazy and bureaucratic.
Oh and the best part: Every 4 years I get to pick a president from 2 unproven daydreamers with unrealistic promises.
For me personally, I don't want to grow up because I don't see the payoff in growing up. I know watching my parents abuse themselves by overworking only to come home and be tired and miserable isn't much of a motivation. And the response from others has always been "well that's life you lazy p.o.s.". People don't even know me yet they call me lazy. I've worked outdoors, in warehouses, in tree removal, at theme parks. I've had really hard manual labor jobs. I can assure you I'm a hard worker and not "lazy". People will work hard but there has to be a payoff, that's how all games work. And when the game of life doesn't come with its rewards, people don't want to play anymore. Even the makers of Farmville knew that.
Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry
I actually agree with your quote - but a surprising number of your posts / comments / submissions are or have links / references to your site.
That's not inherently bad (I'm not against self promotion at all), but it sort of comes across like your contribution to the site is one big promotion for your site rather than focused on the contribution to the community.
Hopefully this isn't too out of line - but I thought I'd mention it as I've seen a few of your posts in the past couple of days referencing that site multiple times & realized they were all yours.
He mentions that the current generation thinks it's moving faster. And he cites some inventions (the train, the telegraph, the radio, the telephone).
Well, didn't all of these "inventions" happen in THE SAME generation?
We're not talking about 5 generations between the inventions, many of them happened within years of each other. This certainly allow me to believe that technology changes people.
Look at the dinner table. Who even eats together at the dinner table? It's not a "normal" thing to do in many "modern" cultures. Even when they do, many don't even speak anymore, but instead they are on their smartphones / tablets.
I happened to know very the members of my family from the previous generation. And, to tell you the truth, things have changed A LOT within the last 100 years. Work is different, life is different, even relationships are different.
The "new problems" you refer to may be what is inherent for humans. To show disrespect, to contradict parents, etc. are all things that every young generation has to deal with. Parents are not new and neither are children.
What's different may be how the generations deal with these inherent traits. What people considered to work in the 1900's probably won't work nowadays.
Your definition of generation is 3-5 times longer than the usual definitions.
Addressing approximate timeframe of commercialization:
> the train
1812. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamanca_(locomotive)
> the telegraph
1837, +25 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_telegraph
> the telephone
Bell/Gray was 1876, commercialization by 1878. +40 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone
> the radio
Mid-to-late 1890s. 1895-1877=18 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio
So. Much. More. Fun.
The way I see it, there just isn't any valid reason for wanting to "grow up". I have never seen anyone who is happy claim they are a grown up. "Grow up" is something people who are disappointed in life say when they see you having more fun than they are.
It's about accepting and owning what's expected of you as an individual, autonomous, functioning member of society. Nothing more. Owning control of yourself.
Does this mean you have to get married, have children, and stop partying? No, not at all. Does it mean you take the initiative to pay your bills on-time and hold up your end of the bargain at work, at home, in your relationships, and society in general? Absolutely.
I'm in my mid-30s, and I did a lot of very hard partying clear into the twilight of my 20s well into my 30s. The money might have helped, but "growing up" made it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy those times simply because worry wasn't even on the radar knowing everything I could personally control was in check--because I made sure of it. Nobody else controls any aspect of my life that I myself can control.
And yes, with wife, child, and more micro-manageable responsibilities than I could have ever imagined when I was younger, I'm a hell of a happy person. Family, friends, gadgets, code, etc, etc.
What makes you grown-up isn't arbitrary; in the end, it's in fact a pretty clear line that transcends generations: Own. Your. Shit. But I'll leave the rest of the thread to conduct the typical older/younger generational ad hominems.
All the stupid things he did as a kid are now illegal, and while some segment of the youth population will continue to do those stupid things despite the law, many others will feel the need to refrain, causing pent-up energy, for lack of a better description. Until you get that out of your system, it is difficult to move on to the next stages of life.
From anecdotal observations of the people in my life, it does make a lot of sense to me. The recurring theme I hear is when people are ready to settle down is that they have grown tired of the youthful lifestyle. That is something that only happens after you have experienced it.
The majority of our daily problems are caused by ourselves, not other people. We think too much about ME and not enough about others. Try taking 30 minutes a day to intentionally improve someone else's day.
And as long as I'm writing here, I'll note that parenthood becoming something we hold out as long as possible to start down is probably one the single greatest issues facing Western culture, and I'm not even convinced it's altogether a bad thing (teenage pregnancy not great, yada yada yada). But the full weight of responsibility of keeping someone else alive is enough to wake anyone out of their delusions of self.
I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age have grown too lame to party. If parties are fun, why stop?
If you can party and still keep your shit together, more power to you. I see too many people who CANNOT, though, and the partying is just an escape from real issues they face.
I don't agree that "the majority of our daily problems are caused by ourselves". I think most people's daily problems are the result of more intelligent and selfish people taking advantage of them.
I agree that "taking 30 minutes a day to intentionally improve someone else's day" is great advice and a fantastic investment of your time.
They were only rich because my great grandfather bought the farm where he used to work as essentially slave labor (they'd only get food and board in return for being manual labourers, it was a thing back then).
But anyway, this age thing was something I read in books about late 19th and very early 20th century.
It is literally the case that the later taxpayers are paying for earlier taxpayers' social security.
It's not formally a Ponzi scheme, because it's not entered to involuntarily, it is forced.
Social Security is a defined-benefit entitlement, so its spending requirements are fairly predictable. The rate of growth of the economy and the population, on the other hand, is not so easily predictable. This is why the Social Security trust fund was established in the 80s -- to patch the gaps that would result from the smallish Generation X paying SS for the Baby Boomers.
Depending on how long the Baby Boomers live and how the economy performs over the next few decades, the trust fund may run out in the next few decades. This will require either a cut in benefits or additional revenue for the system. Adjusting the inputs and outputs for a program to keep it in equilibrium in a chaotic, unpredictable world isn't fraudulent or a sign of a broken program.
So no, I'm not aware that Social Security will become insolvent in the future. Any of a number of fairly simple adjustments between now and then would prevent the projected benefit cuts. Even in the absence of a fix, Social Security will still pay out the lion's share of its promised benefits.
What you call "additional revenue for the system" is actually a government bailout by tax increase (plus inflating the money supply).
It is absolutely fraudulent. It is fraudulent to force me to invest in a fund when I want to invest my money elsewhere because I think I can get a higher return.
It is also fraudulent to force me (as a taxpayer/holder of USD) to bail out such a fund.
I called it a "Ponzi scheme" because of the idea that later "investors" pay for the prior generation of "investors"---which, like a Ponzi scheme, fails (and requires a bailout) when the next generation isn't large enough.
Admittedly, my definition of "fraudulent" above isn't true in a strict accounting sense. AFAIK the books are essential "open." Nobody is being deceived. However, it is someting worse than being deceived. It is knowing the unfortunate truth, but being forced to "invest" (and to "bailout") anyway.
Quit looking backwards with green tinted glasses and consider how good you yourself have it right now. Take some goddamn responsibility for your own life decisions.
How? She was given secretarial work in the 70's and slowly clawed her way up while raising 3 kids, and was even lucky enough that her 7 years out of the work force in the early 90's when we were young didn't affect her career trajectory very much.
The possibility of this happening nowadays is slim to none. You need a degree to even be looked at for a lot of office work these days, and you can be sure you're not going to be promoted when they can bring in someone younger, with a degree relevant to their business sector, willing to work for less to fill any positions you could potentially be considered for. This also applies to lots of liberal arts majors as well as just high school students.
It also doesn't help that for as long as I can remember, my teachers, parents, and counselors have told me, my siblings, my friends, my classmates, and my generation that we should follow our passions and dreams, and success will follow. Luckily I like math, science, computers, and I've been a bit of a geek since I was a toddler, so I fell into my, coincidentally, highly-in-demand CS degree quite naturally. The same cannot be said of the bookish history, literature, or philosophy nerds I know.
There is blame all around, but from my perspective it seems like a lot more of it lay at the feet of our forebears than us.
But hey, at least us computer geeks have it good, eh?
What has changed is that pretty much everyone goes to college now, and many of them go for liberal arts degrees. You can't have 1000 people going for 1 job and expect them all to get it.
Unless it was Harvard, no, it didn't. People always joked that a liberal arts degree left you prepared to work in fast food and little else.
Why does no one tell the millenials then? If I wasn't already in tech before college, I would have no idea that it was a good career move (Computer Science is a very small department). Where do you get information to make a good decision?
It seems silly, but I feel compelled to remind today's youth that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, none of us know as much as we think we do.
And while lots of manufacturing jobs have moved overseas or whatever, automation has had at least as much impact. If you look at it in terms of production, U.S. manufacturing has grown over time. Even something like the steel industry is pretty much at par with the output of 40 years ago, they just do it with a lot fewer people.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 (fiddle the dates)
You are thinking of Social Security as an investment program. It is not. The government is not forcing you to invest in a fund, it is taxing you to pay for other peoples' benefits. Eventually, it will tax other people to pay for your benefits.
The essential quality of fraud is intentional deception. You might not like being taxed for Social Security, but you are not being tricked, gulled, or conned into it.
You are right---I am not being conned. Just forced. I will eventually go to a country that better allows me to pursue my values if I can find one.
Please do your research. The government claimed no such thing.
here is as good a place to start as any:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html
Social security was a government program. Funded by taxes. From the start.
Note, the first generation? yeah, the retired folks got social security benefits right away, even though they had paid in nothing. This very clearly made it not work as an investment.
I mean, it's perfectly reasonable to disagree with safety net programs.
But don't claim that our safety net programs are bad as investments when they are clearly not investments at all.
