Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up | Hacker News Reader

Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up

slate.com

40 pointsmsohcw88 comments

Yay! Another article where the older generation shits on a younger generation.

Is it possible - and this is just me talking here - that maybe our generation isn't composed of a bunch of emotional weaklings who can't bear the stress of life, but that you guys fucked it up pretty badly for us? Your self-interested conservative personal responsibility do it yourself policies bankrupted the economy because you were asleep at the switch, and now we can't find jobs.

I can guarantee you that if you flip back several decades you'll find an article in Life Magazine written by some asshole asking the question "Why are the baby boomers such pussies? We fought World War II for crissake!"

A load of horseshit. Life is hard. Help, you assholes.

Classic butthurt!!

Maybe this will help: http://bluebirdofbitterness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/butt...

The average parent's age for first child has never been higher, just like the rate of 20-somethings still living with their parents.

No matter what the reasons for that are, you can't refute that it's bound to have some interesting consequences on the psychology of the 20-somethings in question.

you can't refute

Actually, maybe we could, if we had some evidence, which you don't.

I completely agree. Hell, some first-time parents are as old as many first-time grandparents.

Average age is only up because women started child bearing later.

About a hundred years ago it was common for men in their very late 20's to have finally built a life of their own and get a bride. A bride who was 16 or so because that meant she still had plenty of child bearing years ahead of her.

What if men just got back to that same state, while women have joined men in this status instead of having the whole teenage pregnancy thing?

Either you have rich grand/great-grandparents or we come from VERY different places. My family has been historically poor up until my dad, who is just middle class now. Both sides of my family have struggled until death. I don't know of anyone other than maybe one or two who had parents growing up that had "built a life of their own," then married and started a family in their very late 20s.

Historically I come from a family of peasants. Especially after WW2 both sides of my family were poor, but there was a period before then that one side was rich farmers.

They were only rich because my great grandfather bought the farm where he used to work as essentially slave labor (they'd only get food and board in return for being manual labourers, it was a thing back then).

But anyway, this age thing was something I read in books about late 19th and very early 20th century.

Life is hard. Help, you assholes.

Are you serious with this statement? This is exactly the attitude that the article and all of the others like it are referring to.

Life is hard. Be harder.

Ever wonder why people in third-world countries generally don't grow up to be successful like boomers did? Did you always think it was because they weren't tough enough? Actually, it's because the boomers had an awesome environment to grow up and have a career in. That environment doesn't exist anymore because the economy has tanked. Boomers literally have no idea how good they had it.

So you are stating that the hardships of a college student in the USA right now even remotely comparable to a poor person trying to get along in a third world county?

Nope, I'm saying you have to have a really good environment (i.e. "help") to be that successful.

What does successful mean to you?

Yes, and the millennials have an awesome environment to grow up and have a career in. The tech industry has one of the lowest barriers to entry ever seen. The more advanced science fields are making dramatic strides, all you need is the education and motivation to get into the industry.

Quit looking backwards with green tinted glasses and consider how good you yourself have it right now. Take some goddamn responsibility for your own life decisions.

The tech industry has one of the lowest barriers to entry ever seen

Why does no one tell the millenials then? If I wasn't already in tech before college, I would have no idea that it was a good career move (Computer Science is a very small department). Where do you get information to make a good decision?

I'm in tech, and am not really complaining for myself. But non-STEM folks are having a pretty tough time. The digital age has devastated non-STEM fields and majors. There was a time when getting an English or History degree from a respectable university opened a wealth of opportunities. Now they're more likely to be found selling shoes or making my coffee. My mother, a sweet 55 year old woman who never attended college, is the accounting manager for a business with tens of millions per year in revenue.

How? She was given secretarial work in the 70's and slowly clawed her way up while raising 3 kids, and was even lucky enough that her 7 years out of the work force in the early 90's when we were young didn't affect her career trajectory very much.

The possibility of this happening nowadays is slim to none. You need a degree to even be looked at for a lot of office work these days, and you can be sure you're not going to be promoted when they can bring in someone younger, with a degree relevant to their business sector, willing to work for less to fill any positions you could potentially be considered for. This also applies to lots of liberal arts majors as well as just high school students.

It also doesn't help that for as long as I can remember, my teachers, parents, and counselors have told me, my siblings, my friends, my classmates, and my generation that we should follow our passions and dreams, and success will follow. Luckily I like math, science, computers, and I've been a bit of a geek since I was a toddler, so I fell into my, coincidentally, highly-in-demand CS degree quite naturally. The same cannot be said of the bookish history, literature, or philosophy nerds I know.

There is blame all around, but from my perspective it seems like a lot more of it lay at the feet of our forebears than us.

But hey, at least us computer geeks have it good, eh?

At what point in history was it ever easy for liberal arts folks? Unless you were commissioned by someone to do something lucrative, you're pretty much shit on your entire life. Whether it's undervalued or not is debatable, but I will say that nothing has changed as far as perception of liberal arts other than some broader acceptance.

What has changed is that pretty much everyone goes to college now, and many of them go for liberal arts degrees. You can't have 1000 people going for 1 job and expect them all to get it.

I worry a bit that you might be confusing liberal arts and fine arts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Liberal_Studies

> There was a time when getting an English or History degree from a respectable university opened a wealth of opportunities.

Unless it was Harvard, no, it didn't. People always joked that a liberal arts degree left you prepared to work in fast food and little else.

This is conjecture and hyperbole on your part. The economy has grown substantially and rather consistently over the past 40 years (except for manufacturing).

It seems silly, but I feel compelled to remind today's youth that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, none of us know as much as we think we do.

There are some interesting confounding factors though. Between 1970 and 2000, U.S. workforce participation increased by about 8%, while the population grew by 80 million people.

And while lots of manufacturing jobs have moved overseas or whatever, automation has had at least as much impact. If you look at it in terms of production, U.S. manufacturing has grown over time. Even something like the steel industry is pretty much at par with the output of 40 years ago, they just do it with a lot fewer people.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 (fiddle the dates)

http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table

http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/#steel

> Life is hard. Be harder.

And if you can't, sorry kids. Guess you were just too weak.

(There's a name for this philosophy, by the way. Perhaps as a hard competitor in this post-industrial knowledge economy, you already know it.)

Look, a strong work ethic and resourcefulness are great personal advice. Once you start talking about an entire generation (particularly the younger one) as we are in this article, we're well out of the realm of personal advice, though, and likely enough heading into Cicero-times-are-bad territory that maybe -- just maybe -- it's worth also examining some systemic issues and talking about how we can help each other.

Or if that's a little too kumbaya for you, cultivate the future demand and labor pool.

I'm in my early thirties and pretty successful (because I worked hard and am clever). Yet, even I can see this generation is being squeezed, between high unemployment, low wages and student debts. Not to mention high housing prices (and rent). What's the point of saying "be harder"? It doesn't change reality.

Overall I think the article is true, but I've also been saying the same thing myself about people my age for several years.

I'm reminded that a friend of mine in grad school occasionally gets phone calls from the parents of the college students in some of his classes when they do poorly, and that parents are often the ones setting up tutoring and such for their in-college kids, rather than the students themselves.

It's plain ridiculous.

Feeling like you want to become self supporting and out from under the parental thumb definitely seems to be unusual in my generation.

Yay! Another comment where the younger generation blames the older generation. You see the problem with this type of argument, right?

The older generation effects the younger generation.

And vice versa. We are all in this together.

The older generation literally creates the younger generation.

> Your self-interested conservative personal responsibility do it yourself policies bankrupted the economy

This is a vicious slander.

I mean, clearly the student loan education bubble, Freddie and Fannie-backed mortgage bubble, and the Social Security ponzi scheme were based on policies of "personal responsibility" and "do it yourself."

As a successful person who is most likely in the same generation as you, I'm looking forward to potentially trying to move to a country where I can take personal responsibility---rather than having people like you claw away whatever I earn to spend on more boondoggles.

It is clear that I am no longer welcome in most of the Western world, but just a piece of meat to be taken advantage of.

You either don't know what "Social Security" means or you don't know what "ponzi scheme" means.

Are you aware that the US social security system will become insolvent in the future?

It is literally the case that the later taxpayers are paying for earlier taxpayers' social security.

It's not formally a Ponzi scheme, because it's not entered to involuntarily, it is forced.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go social insurance program, not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is fraudulent because it promises to pay back a greater return than is invested. Social Security is designed to pay back about the same as was invested on average. The reason this works is that the economy and the population are growing over time, so you have more people paying for the current SS generation's retirement than are in the current SS generation.

Social Security is a defined-benefit entitlement, so its spending requirements are fairly predictable. The rate of growth of the economy and the population, on the other hand, is not so easily predictable. This is why the Social Security trust fund was established in the 80s -- to patch the gaps that would result from the smallish Generation X paying SS for the Baby Boomers.

Depending on how long the Baby Boomers live and how the economy performs over the next few decades, the trust fund may run out in the next few decades. This will require either a cut in benefits or additional revenue for the system. Adjusting the inputs and outputs for a program to keep it in equilibrium in a chaotic, unpredictable world isn't fraudulent or a sign of a broken program.

So no, I'm not aware that Social Security will become insolvent in the future. Any of a number of fairly simple adjustments between now and then would prevent the projected benefit cuts. Even in the absence of a fix, Social Security will still pay out the lion's share of its promised benefits.

Thanks for the explanation, though it basically confirms the same picture I already had in my mind.

What you call "additional revenue for the system" is actually a government bailout by tax increase (plus inflating the money supply).

It is absolutely fraudulent. It is fraudulent to force me to invest in a fund when I want to invest my money elsewhere because I think I can get a higher return.

It is also fraudulent to force me (as a taxpayer/holder of USD) to bail out such a fund.

I called it a "Ponzi scheme" because of the idea that later "investors" pay for the prior generation of "investors"---which, like a Ponzi scheme, fails (and requires a bailout) when the next generation isn't large enough.

Admittedly, my definition of "fraudulent" above isn't true in a strict accounting sense. AFAIK the books are essential "open." Nobody is being deceived. However, it is someting worse than being deceived. It is knowing the unfortunate truth, but being forced to "invest" (and to "bailout") anyway.

How is it a "bailout" for the government to adjust the funding of a tax-funded program by adjusting the tax? By that definition, I'm being forced to bail out the military every time they spend tax money to buy a jet fighter.

You are thinking of Social Security as an investment program. It is not. The government is not forcing you to invest in a fund, it is taxing you to pay for other peoples' benefits. Eventually, it will tax other people to pay for your benefits.

The essential quality of fraud is intentional deception. You might not like being taxed for Social Security, but you are not being tricked, gulled, or conned into it.

It is a "bailout" because the government originally claimed that Social Security would be a self-sustaining investment system, as far as I understand it. But I'm not dead set on arguing for calling it a "bailout." It is what it is, the terminology here is not that important.

You are right---I am not being conned. Just forced. I will eventually go to a country that better allows me to pursue my values if I can find one.

>It is a "bailout" because the government originally claimed that Social Security would be a self-sustaining investment system, as far as I understand it.

Please do your research. The government claimed no such thing.

here is as good a place to start as any:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html

Social security was a government program. Funded by taxes. From the start.

Note, the first generation? yeah, the retired folks got social security benefits right away, even though they had paid in nothing. This very clearly made it not work as an investment.

I mean, it's perfectly reasonable to disagree with safety net programs.

But don't claim that our safety net programs are bad as investments when they are clearly not investments at all.

There a literally millions of open positions in the US economy, and millions of upper-middle class liberal-college educated jobless millennials who can't be bothered to master these STEM fields to qualify. They all want to be an aid worker & save the world or something, or to be paid for playing a banjo. The only reason half of the people even get jobs is better qualified, harder working foreigners are kept out of the United States with immigration barriers. Dear whiny millennial: It's going to get much worse.

The previous generations didn't exactly do anything to help us realize this reality. Hell, I feel like I won the roulette wheel of life sometimes in that my CS degree, which I naturally graduated towards, is in great demand. And other kids were pushed equally strongly to their history, sociology, philosophy, and english degrees.

Instead of blaming parents for 'no one told us', a second option would be look around and ask: How does philosophy, history, sociology, english help me do something in a company, besides HR, Sales, Marketing, and with luck, Management? What exactly did your friends think they'd do with their degrees, vis-a-vis getting a job?

"literally millions of open positions in the US economy": And almost four times as many unemployed people seeking work. Those open positions numbers are based on self-reporting, too, and they don't account for whether companies are actively seeking candidates, are offering a competitive salary, or are expecting reasonable qualifications. Lots of companies would love to hire busloads of experts at a bargain rate if they were available, but in the absence of a bumper crop of cheap geniuses they're happy to stand pat.

Surveys have shown that companies are having more trouble hiring people who have enough relevant experience than people with sufficient educational qualifications or technical skills [1]. To the extent there's a structural unemployment problem in the US, it's a bootstrapping problem -- too few entry-level positions in professional fields to supply the long-term need for experienced workers in those fields. This fits with my anecdotal observations of my 20-something friends -- their BAs won't even get them on the bottom of the ladder.

"who can't be bothered to master these STEM fields": Try: can't afford training in those fields. Try: can't get a job in those fields without years of experience.

[1]: http://business.time.com/2012/06/04/the-skills-gap-myth-why-...

This would be more credible if I didn't find qualified candidates who are 20 years old with skills + knowledge many in their 30s lack. I have nothing against a liberal arts degree, but not teaching yourself / taking computer science, mathematics, statistics during college automatically disqualifies you from many white collar jobs requiring strong quantitative reasoning skills. This is not about on-the-job experience, it's about basic skills.

On the other hand, today you can start a business in your bedroom, collaborate with people all over the world to develop a product, and instantly reach a world market with your product, all for pretty much $0.

It seems every generation discovers the same new problems of every generation before it. And as each earlier generation matures, it describes the new generation disparagingly.

This article described the movie The Graduate, which everyone felt described a generation coming of age in the 60s. Pick other movies and books for other times.

Take it far enough back and you have this quote

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

which sounds contemporary but dates back centuries (often attributed to Socrates, but not likely that old). It sounds contemporary in every time.

I conclude things aren't suddenly getting worse -- http://joshuaspodek.com/arent-suddenly-worse -- which makes my life better.

Hey Josh,

I actually agree with your quote - but a surprising number of your posts / comments / submissions are or have links / references to your site.

That's not inherently bad (I'm not against self promotion at all), but it sort of comes across like your contribution to the site is one big promotion for your site rather than focused on the contribution to the community.

Hopefully this isn't too out of line - but I thought I'd mention it as I've seen a few of your posts in the past couple of days referencing that site multiple times & realized they were all yours.

I go back and forth because I usually prefer to post on topics I like to write about, which means I've often written about them elsewhere. I try to write posts that get votes, implying the community values them, so I try to make posts that stand on their own without clicking the links but get more depth with clicking. If the material is relevant I could still leave it out, copy it, or link to it. I'll use your feedback as a data point suggesting reducing the links. I'm a fan of constructive criticism, though it feels funny doing it publicly like this.

I'll discuss the first point in the article:

He mentions that the current generation thinks it's moving faster. And he cites some inventions (the train, the telegraph, the radio, the telephone).

Well, didn't all of these "inventions" happen in THE SAME generation?

We're not talking about 5 generations between the inventions, many of them happened within years of each other. This certainly allow me to believe that technology changes people.

Look at the dinner table. Who even eats together at the dinner table? It's not a "normal" thing to do in many "modern" cultures. Even when they do, many don't even speak anymore, but instead they are on their smartphones / tablets.

I happened to know very the members of my family from the previous generation. And, to tell you the truth, things have changed A LOT within the last 100 years. Work is different, life is different, even relationships are different.

The "new problems" you refer to may be what is inherent for humans. To show disrespect, to contradict parents, etc. are all things that every young generation has to deal with. Parents are not new and neither are children.

What's different may be how the generations deal with these inherent traits. What people considered to work in the 1900's probably won't work nowadays.

> Well, didn't all of these "inventions" happen in THE SAME generation?

Your definition of generation is 3-5 times longer than the usual definitions.

Addressing approximate timeframe of commercialization:

> the train

1812. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamanca_(locomotive)

> the telegraph

1837, +25 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_telegraph

> the telephone

Bell/Gray was 1876, commercialization by 1878. +40 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone

> the radio

Mid-to-late 1890s. 1895-1877=18 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio

Hooray for anecdotal evidence! I even agree with some of it, but there's sweet fuck all to back up any of it.

A highlight for the those of you that couldn't make it through the whole way:

"A generation ago, my college peers and I would buy a pint of ice cream and down a shot of peach schnapps (or two) to process a breakup. Now some college students feel suicidal after the breakup of a four-month relationship."

This shit is publishable?

In past times, people were too tough for suicide, clearly.

Ok i din't read it all the way through so thanks for posting that. But SERIOUSLY?!?!? You know it wasn't our generation that wrote "romeo and juliet".... And i thought this was backwards now? I thought young people now care even far less for relationships and more for sex...

I had no idea Sylvia Plath was a millennial.

This isn't a story representative of a generation, this is a story about one messed-up 30 year old. I can't think of anyone I know who can't figure out how to do laundry and homework in one day, and I don't think it's because I'm in a circle of particularly self-sufficient Gen-Yers.

Honestly, if the Onion were stuck for content they could publish this article word-for-word and I'd gladly believe it was supposed to be satire.

If I understood the author correctly, she is a psychotherapist talking about people she sees professionally. So, this could just as easily be a story about how Millennials are much more willing to see a therapist for these sorts of problems than their parents' and grandparents' generations were.

Or maybe it is about people who are 30 and need therapy?

Why generalize an entire generation? ... because, page views.

I'm 32 and I HATE laundry and every single person in my age group that I have met hates it too.

This therapist alone has seen more than 100:

"Her case is becoming the norm for twenty- to thirtysomethings I see in my office as a psychotherapist. I’ve had at least 100 college and grad students like Amy crying on my couch because breaching adulthood is too overwhelming."

Does this have anything to do with the variance between the "expectations" that were laid out for Millennials & the reality of what actually exists.

If you're brought up to follow all the rules & go to college, work 40 years and then retire & as soon as you get through the first part (follow the rules & graduate) and you can't get a job at Starbucks - life might seem a bit harder than you expected.

It doesn't help that educational standards have been falling and college prices have been rising.

I agree. Especially astonishing that he mentions as an aside in the last paragraph that his case study patient is gay. Oh, but that can't be relevant. There is no data showing that gay kids are more likely to be depressed! It's clearly just a generational problem.

I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age cannot grow up. It's not even just a matter of getting a job. Most of the folks I know are still partying all the time as if they're at a high school kegger.

I'm not sure of the exact cause, but I do think people having children later in life (late 30s, early 40s for many people I know) coupled with the fact that most of them are only having one child causes a bit of over-involvement and softening of parenting. There are too many "special snowflakes" who grow up and cannot handle the fact that none of us are these special creatures and you have to compete for everything you want and need to live.

I think shifting blame to older generations is a result of some of these things. Yes, there have been some messed up things handed down to us, but it's nothing we can't fix. We just have to get our act together, plan things out, and work hard.

Life IS hard, but it's how you respond and adapt to hardships that define you. Blaming everyone else is not going to do anything.

As a guy who has suddenly become closer to 30 than to 20: Man, partying is SO MUCH MORE FUN when you have money than when you're a broke student counting pennies.

So. Much. More. Fun.

The way I see it, there just isn't any valid reason for wanting to "grow up". I have never seen anyone who is happy claim they are a grown up. "Grow up" is something people who are disappointed in life say when they see you having more fun than they are.

Growing up isn't about not partying. It isn't about being boring. It isn't about getting married and churning out children. It isn't about being "the man" in any way. It isn't about becoming a fiscal miser who doesn't enjoy his/her money, nor does it prevent you from enjoying some drinks or even your drug of choice, if that's your thing.

It's about accepting and owning what's expected of you as an individual, autonomous, functioning member of society. Nothing more. Owning control of yourself.

Does this mean you have to get married, have children, and stop partying? No, not at all. Does it mean you take the initiative to pay your bills on-time and hold up your end of the bargain at work, at home, in your relationships, and society in general? Absolutely.

I'm in my mid-30s, and I did a lot of very hard partying clear into the twilight of my 20s well into my 30s. The money might have helped, but "growing up" made it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy those times simply because worry wasn't even on the radar knowing everything I could personally control was in check--because I made sure of it. Nobody else controls any aspect of my life that I myself can control.

And yes, with wife, child, and more micro-manageable responsibilities than I could have ever imagined when I was younger, I'm a hell of a happy person. Family, friends, gadgets, code, etc, etc.

What makes you grown-up isn't arbitrary; in the end, it's in fact a pretty clear line that transcends generations: Own. Your. Shit. But I'll leave the rest of the thread to conduct the typical older/younger generational ad hominems.

well said

> I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age cannot grow up. It's not even just a matter of getting a job. Most of the folks I know are still partying all the time as if they're at a high school kegger.

I'm thirty but I do notice many of my coworkers and other folks my age have grown too lame to party. If parties are fun, why stop?

Maybe they're fun for you but not them. Your idea of "fun" doesn't apply to everyone, sorry to tell you. The idea of being grown up and responsible does apply to everyone, though.

If you can party and still keep your shit together, more power to you. I see too many people who CANNOT, though, and the partying is just an escape from real issues they face.

"you have to compete for everything you want and need to live." I think I'm a special creature. This really depresses me. Do you think this is the ideal situation? I don't understand why this is currently the case. In my opinion there is more than enough to go around, and the majority of our daily problems are caused by other humans.

Woah. That's the problem to a T. You hit it right on the head. You are not a special creature. There are approximately 6 billion other creatures nearly as capable as you trying to make a go of it right now, and a substantially greater number who tried to make a go of it and are now dead.

The majority of our daily problems are caused by ourselves, not other people. We think too much about ME and not enough about others. Try taking 30 minutes a day to intentionally improve someone else's day.

And as long as I'm writing here, I'll note that parenthood becoming something we hold out as long as possible to start down is probably one the single greatest issues facing Western culture, and I'm not even convinced it's altogether a bad thing (teenage pregnancy not great, yada yada yada). But the full weight of responsibility of keeping someone else alive is enough to wake anyone out of their delusions of self.

I agree that "we think too much about ME and not enough about others". I don't understand how "having to compete for everything you want and need to live" will encourage people to care less about themselves and more about others. I think the opposite is true as evidenced by the current state of affairs.

I don't agree that "the majority of our daily problems are caused by ourselves". I think most people's daily problems are the result of more intelligent and selfish people taking advantage of them.

I agree that "taking 30 minutes a day to intentionally improve someone else's day" is great advice and a fantastic investment of your time.

I don't think anything in life is ideal. That's just not how it works. You have to escape the fairy tale and accept the world as it is. I agree with the other guy who said most problems are caused by ourselves. It's really important to understand that you share this planet with 6 billion other people. Step back and reassess yourself, ensure what you think you need is actually a NEED, and be kind to other folks.

I never suggested that life was ideal. I don't understand how "most problems are caused by ourselves" and "understand that you share this planet with 6 billion other people" can co-exist while there is very high inequality throughout the world. I will not "accept the world as it is".

I was discussing this topic with my uncle recently. To paraphrase, while hopefully not destroying his argument, he speculates that the youth of today struggle to grow up because previous generations have taken away the outlets youth have to "go wild".

All the stupid things he did as a kid are now illegal, and while some segment of the youth population will continue to do those stupid things despite the law, many others will feel the need to refrain, causing pent-up energy, for lack of a better description. Until you get that out of your system, it is difficult to move on to the next stages of life.

From anecdotal observations of the people in my life, it does make a lot of sense to me. The recurring theme I hear is when people are ready to settle down is that they have grown tired of the youthful lifestyle. That is something that only happens after you have experienced it.

I fit into that description. 30. Lot's of problems related to money and discipline. No helicopter parents through.

What I realize quite often when I'm talking to friends and what I hear very often when I talk to my parents is a lack of deep social connections.

If you have a social circle you really like and you can count on it's far easier to organize yourself and get your stuff done. Because you learn that stuff together in your circle. You just grow faster in a group of like-minded people than fighting all the bullshit alone.

Finding this social circle is pretty hard for me. If this social circle is lacking or you just does not care about you if you don't fit their worldview you are on your own. Now you are scared and desperate to to fit somewhere in.

Everyone is fighting their fight alone. It's more often than not a piss-match about status and money and importance than a real friendship. The partying is the illusion of this social circle that you want to keep in your life. If you drop this you'll have to face that you are totally alone and nobody gives a fuck about you.

If I talk to my parents or grandparents I realize that they still meet with their colleagues from school or university or old jobs.

If you don't function now nobody cares. Old friendships just vanish.

This may be my problem. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm an loner or idiot. But there is a difference in comparison to earlier generations and most people I know or talk to feel pretty alone very often.

Maturation cannot occur without independence. The Great Recession has prevented independence for a large number of young people.

I don't buy it. If it was a real recession rather than a chronic shortage in marketable skills, some of these millennials wouldn't have mommies and daddies who could afford to keep them around. My dad grew up in the Depression and somehow managed to support himself from manual labor from the age of 14. Show me an unemployed hipster 20-something willing to do day labor but unable to find any. You can't find one.

Maybe this "Great Recession" is an effect, and not a cause, of the fact that white Americans are increasingly too decadent to work for a fucking living.

Amen. And of course eventually we'll have something like a massive ecological disruption (or War with China) that will fuck everything up all over again and we wont have time to write asinine op-eds about "what's wrong with people" (or comment on them, pot ... kettle black). We'll be too busy digging our asses out of despair.

A lot of these parents are enablers. They made it ok for their overachiever kids to have no job as opposed to a job not in their field of study.

I graduated during the recession of 2003-2004 which was almost as long as the Great Recession. We've been technically out of the recession for over 3 years.

What's wrong with contempt for authority? Is there a more appropriate target for contempt? As for lacking respect for elders, why do they deserve respect? I certainly should not have listened to my elders when I was younger. They did me no favors, and it took decades for me to stop listening to them. Now that I'm old enough to be one of them, I must say that I am supremely unimpressed.

I'm 21, do not have a college degree, work for 7.50hr, and feel exactly like this with the exception that I have to deal with it on my own because I neither have the time or money to spend on therapy. I've learn to deal with things and keep it moving because no one else is going to lend you a hand unless you have something to give in return; that's how I see it anyways.

Find a friendship :-)

Similar situation here, my only problem is that while I am able to (barely) sustain myself, depression and similar issues are continuing to stymie what attempts I can make to better my situation. I honestly don't know what I think these days, other than that something needs to change, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not as much of the problem as I like to tell myself.

Stop thinking that. Think of yourself as the last piece of wonderful on earth and that everyone is here to compliment you, as egotistical as this sound it will boost your morale.

This is just a bot regurgitating all the mille stereotypes.

Yet another "Millennials Suck" article. Woooptie doo. What's really going on is the Baby Boomers are getting old and they're sounding like that old Grandpa in his rocking chair bemoaning "kids these days."

Things are inherently different with and for the Millennials:

http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/

http://cew.georgetown.edu/failuretolaunch/

I particularly appreciate the data from PEW as it allows for contrast vs. Gen X / Boomers at the same age / place.

I think millennials are simply on the verge of realizing that the American dream they've been sold is a lie, and they don't know what to do.

Meanwhile the older generations are screaming at them "Pay for my medicare and medicaid that won't be there for you! Pay taxes to pay my state funded pension! I don't care that you cant afford a home, or medical care, or college! I don't care that we outsourced your jobs and that you can't make enough money to be poor!"

This is entirely anecdotal but "Amy" could very well be my sister-in-law. Yes, she's 30. Her previous two boyfriends had the same first name and the current guy she's seeing also has the same first name. I don't think that's coincidental. I think partly my mother-in-law is to blame because of helicopter parenting and always leans on my wife (the older sister) to serve as an emotional support.

Great counterpoint in the New York Times the other day on the shifting values of millenials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/millennial-...

This is more the extrapolation of one struggling 30 year old onto a generation rather than the symptoms of an entire group of people

People keep looking for that magical ONE reason why everything is the way it is. It's NOT just 1 cause of these problem, it's numerous.

The Job Market - Automated and outsourced jobs have limited workplace opportunities over the decades. From all the older folks I talk to, they mention how much easier it was to get a job and how many jobs there were back when they were young compared to today.

The Money - Inflation has made the price of everything more expensive, yet most wages have relatively stayed the same. So I'm getting payed the same amount yet the price of everything around me is getting higher. I feel like I can't ever catch up.

Growing up and Relationships - Almost every single friend I have ever had has divorced parents. The rare few whose parents are still married are miserable. Is this what awaits me? Find love, start a family, be miserable? Growing up is extremely discouraging when you can see the terrible results of "growing up" all around you. I don't want to hate the person I love. I'm afraid of finding a spouse because I've seen what happens when others do. It's like walking down a dark alley covered in others' blood, and every time you turn around to run away a sea of voices taunt you with "stop being a pussy! grow up and go down the dark alley like we did". I don't want to go down a road knowing there's something bad at the end. Sorry.

Work Hard/Don't work hard Paradox - It pisses me off when I hear someone say "kids these days don't work hard enough!" and "Go to college so you can get a good job in an office somewhere and not doing manual labor" in the same conversation. This one is just confusing. Which is it? When I get a job working hard I'm looked down upon by peers because I don't work at Google or Facebook. I'm looked down upon by my parents because the job doesn't have dental and health and 40 hours a week and $20/hour. Hard working jobs do not pay well because they're so plentiful and there's a lot of people trying to get hired. So the prices are crap.

America's Greed Problem: You cannot tell me you don't see it. From the bank bailouts, to the behavior of the car companies that needed to be bailed out, to outsourcing jobs, to the housing market (caused by people buying up homes, barely doing work on them, and flipping them to the next sucker) it feels like America's collective goal is to #1) create as shitty of a product as possible and sell it at the highest price possible and #2) find the most efficient and legal way to fuck people over. My parents worked so hard to buy the crappy house we have now at 7 times the price of a house in Bulgaria, and still it's always falling apart and needs maintenance while homes in Bulgaria are built like a rock, out of brick and cement, more energy efficient, and cost less.

Extremist Politics: It feels like the liberal and conservative parties have gone to more and more polarizing extremes to differentiate themselves and counter-balance the other party's philosophies. This has turned into 2 parties that don't listen and don't think but instead react using old traditionally memorized values. When looking at Republicans and Democrats, they've all but stopped "thinking" about each problem that faces the nation and instead throw their "blanket solutions" over whatever problem comes their way. If one party were truly better than the other, we would have kept them in power permanently. Instead we switch parties every decade or so. This political environment isn't getting problems solved. It's not giving me hope for a better future. And it sucks that my only choices every few years are between people who are either hard working but backwards thinking or people who are educated but lazy and bureaucratic.

Oh and the best part: Every 4 years I get to pick a president from 2 unproven daydreamers with unrealistic promises.

For me personally, I don't want to grow up because I don't see the payoff in growing up. I know watching my parents abuse themselves by overworking only to come home and be tired and miserable isn't much of a motivation. And the response from others has always been "well that's life you lazy p.o.s.". People don't even know me yet they call me lazy. I've worked outdoors, in warehouses, in tree removal, at theme parks. I've had really hard manual labor jobs. I can assure you I'm a hard worker and not "lazy". People will work hard but there has to be a payoff, that's how all games work. And when the game of life doesn't come with its rewards, people don't want to play anymore. Even the makers of Farmville knew that.

Related (humorous) video:

Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4IjTUxZORE

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