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It is honestly ludicrous to see the results of decades of economic warfare and the nonstop closing of proverbial doors of economic opportunity done by boomers and to a lesser extent gen X and then boil everything down to "Social media means more people compare their normal to everyone else's best."

It isn't that it's not true, it is! Social media sucks for mental health. It's just also true that there are many legitimate reasons to be upset. I say this as a 24 year old that has been very very lucky to have affluent parents and gone to a good university and gotten a good job. I make more money than I honestly think anyone needs at my current cost of living and yet despite this I have so many friends that are barely scraping by.

Depending on what stats you go by, the average American household couldn't spare a $400 expense: https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/05/23/guess-how-many-am... That's a fucking Playstation. That's absurd.

So sum the constant anxiety of basically no economic safety net, climate change (which is looking to be "how bad", not "if"), social media reminding you of these AND how much better your friends are doing.. Is it any wonder everybody feels like shit?

I think it's a tricky one, because there are a couple of factors here.

It's not just one thing, but rather a ton of things - for example, there is social media which is a great way to see which of your 500 friends is currently on vacation right.this.second (and someone always is). While in some senses there's more opportunity than ever before for some groups (e.g. minorities / women) in the workplace, there's also more competition than ever before as more people go for these jobs.

Baby boomers and to a lesser extent, Gen X don't really understand that the economy is different for young people, in that everything that was cheap for them (housing, healthcare and education) is now grossly unaffordable, but the things that were the domain of the rich now cost next to nothing (international travel, cellphones, computers etc).

I make a lot of money (I'm 26) compared to most my age. But like most young people in San Francisco, I have a roommate. I couldn't buy a house on my own. But I could fly anywhere in the world with no worries. The housing situation will be fucked in California for the foreseeable future because politicians don't care about the poor and the vulnerable.

We look at business efficiency as a good thing (and it broadly is), but I think we don't fully account for the costs, in the inherent stress it places on us all. So we now all need a college degree to get an entry level job. That's led to a bifurcation of the economy, between those with a credential and those without.

The climate thing is tricky. I think we'll sort it out, but it is a big problem.

> now cost next to nothing...international travel

I'd like to know your travel agent. Or could it be that despite your very real housing woes, you're making a high salary (as you say) and don't realize that international travel is still well out of reach for most Americans?

The issue with social media and mental health is that the topic is just being researched. Millennials and Z's are the consumers in which that technology is being tested and we don't really know all the effects and damages that this new thing is causing on people. We sure know that it is pretty addictive and causes some damages to people who use social media mostly passive and binge on it.

Another damage that Social Media does is that now most peoples attention span is quite short, really short actually, and it doesn't help for the workflow. Add the depression(FOMO?) caused from the "comparison is the thief of joy" produced by Social Media and you have a really bad mix that will make you fill like shit on the regular basis.

> ... the choice between chemistry and chemical engineering. Both majors are STEM and seem quite similar, but chemical engineering is the one with good job prospects.

Anyone know why this is the case? I took chem 1 in college (in the lib arts school), and while it probably wasn't as difficult as most of my classes in the engineering school, it certainly wasn't as easy as, say, the few electives I had to take in sociology, psych, or English.

So why do chemical engineers seem to have it even better than CS or CE majors (in terms of salary and job prospects) while most lib arts chem majors are paid crap and require lots of grad school, even PHDs, to get even an entry level research or similar job in industry?

Millennials and Gen Z are having greater difficulty achieving basic levels of economic stability that were somewhat easier for previous generations

Easier than what? Their great grandparents who lived through the Great Depression? Their grandparents who lived through Stagflation of the 1970's? Or their parents who lived through the Great Recession?

> Easier than what?

Easier than Boomers and Generation X, to be clear. I'd be willing to listen to claims that Millennials / Gen Z are doing well if you have some numbers to back those claims, so please, do change my mind. I'm not really interested in lists of economic recessions that happen to have names, especially since the 2008 recession also affected Millennials.

Easier for members of Gen X and Baby Boomers (note that young people in the workforce during the Recession are generally classified as the older end of the Millenials).

From the Federal Reserve Board:

> Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations when they were young, with lower earnings, fewer assets, and less wealth. For debt, millennials hold levels similar to those of Generation X and more than those of the baby boomers. Conditional on their age and other factors, millennials do not appear to have preferences for consumption that differ significantly from those of earlier generations.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018080pap...

Job prospects in STEM vary widely; S & M are not exactly known for being lucrative, and E is only lucrative in specific subfields.