They do cite a number of randomized controlled trials that show it's social media: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...
> Or is it also the knowledge that they effectively have no future. Rent is going up and mortgage rates are going up faster. A shrinking portion of young adults can now afford housing. The economy is becoming so disfunctional there's almost no reason to bother participating. When children end up in that position their family will turn on them and they have nothing materially or socially.
As a side note, "problems occurring" do not mean "they effectively have no future".
Speaking as still a young person, these are problems the last generation has left us. But they're their problems; hold overs from the generations best known for their blood lead levels. We'll fix them and, with any luck, we'll be better ancestors to our children. I'd rather you not throw us over the boat yet.
I think that the anxiety might come from the view that we might not fix those problems in time, because the amount of work needed to do so is that vast.
Yeah, but why should I solve them ?
Modern media and modern world has taught us that our existence is merely here to satisfy our own needs. Sure, humans' main objective is to prevail the existence of the human species. But why live ?
Why exist ? As a person with (recovering?) depression, I am not motivated enough to contribute to anything at all. Maybe making software is my thing. But what are we? endless Consumption machines ?
I apologize in advance for not sounding optimistic at all. I think that lackthereof religion has brought us to question our existence even more.
With a seemingly more-accessible we've made some things easy (survival, basic needs except mind) and others hard (purpose & happiness, setting expectations).
This sounds exactly like you are reading too much social media.
The people for which success is out of reach do not browse HN.
It depends how you define "success" of course, but by my criteria of "living with financial independence, real happiness, and the ability to choose what impact you have on the world" very few HN readers will ever be successful. We trade our happiness and satisfaction that comes from making a real impact on the world for a pile of cash to make tech people don't care about.
I wouldn't call living paycheck to paycheck "making it." Most people aren't making it--by the numbers.
I know the type of person that posts these kinds of incredibly out of touch comments on here. You work at a corporation, or your skills are currently in high demmand. You are surrounded by people making good money. This insulates you, leading you to extrapolate the conditions you are living under over the WHOLE WORLD--today's world!
Let them eat cake?
In today's world it's: let them withdraw from their 401k if they fall on hard times.
It's ridiculous and frankly insulting and dismissive of the plight of many struggling people. It's the old aristocratic mentality: anyone that doesn't succeed is a fuck up. It's a method of projecting the failings of the system onto those it fails, used over and over throughout history.
I suspect with the political instability of this nation, we won't be having these types of arguments much longer. As the system fails, debates will become viciously partisan. There will be no more "if you try hard, you can succeed." Everything will be reduced to, "Submit to the will of the party, and you're good. Don't and you're a traitor deserving of elimination." This is what happens when people retreat behind slogans and refuse to address reality. Things break down, then things get out of control because we have failed to adapt. Then comes the age of horror where the system has to destructively seek a new equilibrium.