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Comment by ogoparootbbo | Hacker News Reader

> People who can't unplug from the 24/7 news feed and instead adopt the world's stresses on to themselves, manifesting as a never-ending cycle of stress and doom

The adopting the world's stresses seems to be something I've observed with the newer generations. No actual problem solving but merely adopting the stress which I wonder is a symptom of being overly empathetic but I can't understand why the adoption doesn't progress into actual problem solving? Is it because the average joe regardless of the generation is a bad problem solver and more unrefined free stress is bound to paralyze said joe. Or is it something else?

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I tend think the problem is that the world is under-stressed.

Personal tragedy used to be unbelievably common for humans. Just consider the sheer number of childhood deaths before the year 1800.

If you are a generation that has been raised in a world with few diseases, famines, foreign invasions, and even fewer things like verbal abuse or bullying - by the time you reach adulthood you are probably much, much more sensitive to any sort of negative emotion anywhere.

It's like growing up in a zero-G environment and coming back down to Earth - you have no emotional muscles.

I agree. In prior generations, if you survived childhood you probably went to fight in a war as a young adult (if you were male) or you had a loved one who did and you had to struggle to keep things together at home. If you survived that, you had a hard life working in fields or factories until your body was so broken you couldn't do it anymore. You didn't have time to worry about the types of things that many young people have as their big concerns today.

In my experience, intentionally stressing yourself in controlled ways (i.e. with exercise) is an incredibly effective way to counteract this issue.

> Personal tragedy used to be unbelievably common for humans. Just consider the sheer number of childhood deaths before the year 1800.

While the troughs of that sorrow are undoubtedly deeper, childhood deaths in your family weren't a 24/7 stressor.

I think the issue is that people can log in to Reddit, Twitter, or even any news website and receive a constant stream of tragedy, bad news, and worry. It's no longer an exception, it's the everyday experience available on demand.

I see this come up in extremely online young people I work with: They're always invested in a new tragedy or catastrophe or drama or concern somewhere in the world, but those worries disappear and get replaced with a new one as soon as the news cycles shift. They weren't actually invested in it, they were just reacting to what they put in front of their eyes for hours per day.

This probably depends on the parent. One of my older brothers died when I was in 3rd grade. After that, the head vice was pretty much constant until my mother kicked me out at 14. Things rapidly improved after that.

> I tend think the problem is that the world is under-stressed.

I'd say that it isn't the world that's under-stressed, it's upper-middle class NYC/London feature writers. Other people still suffer plenty.

I would say it's because they are stressed about problems that are much too big for them. A single person has essentially 0 influence over politics, climate change, and social issues, yet people spend hours a day getting fed news and hot takes over these issues, on any side of the political spectrum. Surely ingesting so much of this content will impact your mental health. If it turns into some sort of productive action, that's great, but that may not be the natural response for everyone.

> I would say it's because they are stressed about problems that are much too big for them.

I have heard these described as gravity problems; problems that might be worth solving, if they are solvable at all, but which are almost certainly not the problems you should be concerning yourself with. Instead finding the right sized problems and solving them can be very satisfying.

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