Why millennials are angsty: A software engineer’s perspective

My parents tend to have the news in the background for hours at a time, and I pointed out that watching a 24 hour news cycle didn't do much good for one's anxiety.

They said that they were staying "in the loop" and I had to do the same.

It does help to stay informed, but it sure makes it seem that there's nothing but bad out there. As the quote goes, "If it bleeds, it leads."

I think the endless news reporting global issues constantly is part of it, but I don't think this is really digging into the root cause much.

Millenials have higher expectations to find good work than any generation before, with jobs that never used to require post-secondary to get now do.

Millenials have more responsibilities at work, often doing jobs that used to be done by two or three people. They also get paid less for their work as wages and salaries have been relatively flat since the 70s.

They also have to compete with a much more global workforce than in the past, which is part of why those salaries are stagnant.

Add all of that to the constant news fear mongering, society seems in chaos, global warming is going to kill us all, and yeah...

Then you start to have a more complete picture I think.

Stop looking at the news? lol.

I feel this is more a consequence of angst than a cause.

Overall the world is more peaceful and human beings are better off than they have ever been.

On the face of it, even the Covid pandemic has been extremely mild in historic terms. The large economic drop is due to very strong reactions by governments, which was not really happening before, but the shock has so far been very cushioned (at least in Western countries).

Maybe it is the constant over-dramatization of things that gets to some people, but again not too long ago people were told that nuclear armageddon could come any minute and the world was split in half, so the current situation still seems rather better.