In all the cases in the article it looks like shame plays a big role. I wonder if hikikomori is caused by a loop of [adverse circumstances that cause the person to feel shame] -> withdrawal to avoid shame -> being ashamed of having withdrawn [loop]
I am not giving an excuse but rather want to point to our society and our behaviour. When an expat at work asked me yesterday where to move to make sure that his 5 year old will have the best schools of the country… with such an elitist behaviour, I can only facepalm and see this is going to be much worse in the next 5-10years.
Today's kids are competing with the entire world, and the middle class is disappearing. So it's much higher stakes. And it's bimodal: You're either one of the few winners and get to live a comfortable life with a professional job, or you're off to WalMart or an Amazon warehouse, or Prison. The "kind of comfortable middle class life" is shrinking quickly. So it's not enough to just get straight A's. You need extra credit, get a 5.0 GPA, take all the "right" AP classes, have the "right" extracurriculars, and the "right" community service and so on. Otherwise you risk landing on the bad side of the career bimodal distribution.
It only did not feel like a slugfest for a select few in developed countries like the US/Canada/UK/Aus and maybe some other European countries.
For the vast majority, hustling has always been a thing, including immigrating across oceans and leaving all of your friends and family behind.
It just so happens that people in the US who used to or whose parents used to have security of shelter/healthcare/food no longer have that security.
This seems a little hyperbolic. The requirements you describe are probably true enough for top 20 universities, but they aren't true for top 100, and there still seem to be plenty of random white collar office jobs that hire people from merely medium-ranked universities.