My anecdote after working with college students: It’s obvious to me that they’re doing better than my generation in many metrics: Easy access to information that can improve their lives, massively more acceptance of everything from LGTBQ+ to simply being a nerd (which was relatively stigmatized even a few decades ago), significantly more job opportunities, remote work, international travel is common, they drive nice cars, get paid well (CS students in my case) and on and on.

Yet their expectations have advanced faster than their quality of life. Some of the things they tell me are so pie in the sky that it’s hard to even begin to imagine how to return their expectations to reality. For example, many of them have picked up ideas that we should all be working 8-10 hours per week due to societal progress, or that the government could easily institute UBI at levels that had everyone living comfortable middle class lifestyles and made work optional. There is no critical thinking about where the money would come from or how anything would get done if nobody had to work, but they’ve seen it repeated so many times on Reddit that it’s accepted as incontrovertible truth. Every year I hear one student repeat the same argument that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or some other figure could cure global warming, world hunger, or other concerns and still have millions left over. Some people truly believe this.

The other strange angle I’m hearing frequently is the idea that life was so much easier in the past. College students are convinced that I grew up in an era where work was easier and everything was cheap. They don’t believe me when I explain how hard my parents had to work, or the fact that my dad grew up in a house smaller than their college dorm (new construction college dorms are incredibly large and lavish, for some reason). The internet has told them that every prior generation had it easy and they their generation was the first to encounter any financial challenges, so that’s what they believe.

Against impossible expectations like these, no amount of reality could ever be satisfying. I feel like I’m becoming an old man by watching these college students live comfortable lives, secure good job offers (this is what we help with), do work they enjoy, live in nice places, and still be convinced that everything is terrible because it can never reach the level of their expectations about the world.

Note that many of these students are the kinds to turn their nose up at TikTok, have deleted their Instagram years ago, and scoff at people for consuming viral YouTube shorts, like mentioned in the article. Weirdly, the content they consume on their platforms of choice (usually Reddit) is actually worse in many ways. I think we underestimate just how bad and inflammatory the content on Reddit can be.