Why Millennials and Gen Z’ers are the Most Miserable Generation in 50 years and - what we can do about it.

Being young today is inexplicably difficult. We're richer, healthier and more connected today than anyone growing up before us. And - our parents and grandparents are quick to remind us of that when we suggest we have difficulty in our lives. 

The truth is - our generation is the most miserable one growing up in over a 50 years. We may not have to work in factories, or start families at age 14, but our suicide rates are at a record high. Depression, and by this I mean the serious kind, is pervasive. Almost 1/3 students are majorly depressed at any point of their high school lives. Suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst 13-24 year olds. Social media shows us how imperfect our lives are compared to all those around us when in reality we are all struggling. Competition for that top grade or spot in the top university breeds a culture of jealousy and worthiness that we didn't even ask for. Through our phones, we are judged and talked about relentlessly and every small decision we make is on a stage for the world to watch. We're told to leave our dreams unattended until we reach the destination that has been set for us. 

And that's if we are lucky. For many of us, we're constantly derided, underestimated and assumed to be hopeless from the very beginning. We're not even worthy of a destination.

Even looking at the few of us who are lucky enough to have supportive family, resources and opportunities (myself included), we are put on a path and told to follow a destination that we don't fully understand. Like how the sun sets in the west and rises in the east, or how winter becomes autumn, our journeys up until the age of 18 (and arguably beyond) are simply a reality we do not choose. They are not about choices we make, failures we experience or things we want to become. In many senses, we are almost like charity beneficiaries with our goals set for us, our days structured for us and our activities set for us. 

What once worked for our parents - a stable career at one or two companies where one could acquire the skills to do a job over a lifetime of work, are vanishing. Over 56% of college graduates today take jobs completely unrelated to their degrees. 48% of them will quit or are fired from their first jobs within 18 months of starting them. The lifetime of a Fortune 500 company, supposedly the strongest most profitable companies on the stock market, has plummeted from 75 years in the 60s, to 15 years and continues shorten. Even if we wanted to spend our lives at one company, the chances are it would be cease to exist well before we retire. An exponential increase in innovation and a more connected world than ever mean that an education system once built for a lifetime of single-purpose work is defunct.

Today's students are expected to choose ~12 subjects, boil those down at age 15 (on the basis of exams) to 6 or so - and from those 6 subjects determine a career interest in one of millions and millions of jobs. In addition to this, our meritocratic system is kind of fucked. A 'successful' student today scores A*s around the board across all their subjects, like a perfectly polished diamond - equal on all sides. But in reality, we only know what we like or are good at, through our failures.

The reason I know that my favourite fruit is a banana, is because I've tried every other fruit out there and i'm always tasting new fruits. When I don't like something, or I like it less, that helps me learn what I like more of. Our education system today trains young people to like all fruits equally and maximally. The equivocal result in my fruit preferences would having to like banana as much as Durian, even though to me Durian tastes like raw onion.

More importantly, in a world with more opportunity than we can all imagine, our education system doesn't help us at all in determining what lives we want to live, what problems we want to solve - what we want to do. In fact, if you adhered and flourished in the present education system you are left almost the same way you started without the slightest idea about what you might be particularly good at or particularly enjoy.

That is all without even going into the fact that the choices about what we can choose to study for 18 years of our lives is determined for us by society. A society it would seem that has completely lost touch with the realities of the modern world, where jobs are in a constant state of flux, where there are more opportunities than ever, where I truly believe the world is your oyster .

So what is the result of this? We spend our entire childhoods worrying about things we don't care much for with the goal of getting into university - something we mostly don't question. We get to university and we get caught up between studies, exams and perhaps a lot of drinking. "Don't worry" - we say to ourselves, we'll take a job consulting or working in a big bank to find the time to figure out what exactly it is we want to do with our lives. We defer our important questions and dreams one more time. Then we get to the company and start our 9 to 5s, we find an incredible man or woman and we marry. The bills pile up and those dreams that used to scream at you fade away into the background. We lose jobs, gain promotions and before we know it, are dead fish going with the flow. One day, we have kids and some of us realize what we missed and we try to help them find a path in this world we were never helped to understand, enjoy and make the most of. Instead of deferring our dreams, we defer our entire lives to the next generation.

This, in a sense, is the American Dream - that our children can have better lives than we did. But for the first time in history, in 2014 the majority of parents surveyed by Pew Research believed that their children would have worse lives financially than they would. If I reach my middle ages and have a moment to reflect, and realize that life sped by like a bullet train and I was on a path that I never wanted or had a choice in, I might be content that at the very least, my family had a better chance at it. But it appears, that dream is now a dying one.

Much like the frog that doesn’t realize it is being slowly boiled alive, we need to be suddenly plunged in boiling water to feel the pain and realize that this situation is serious, and that plunge into boiling water may be closer on the horizon than we realize.

As I mentioned earlier, I do believe that this misery is mostly unnecessary. The world today is better than it has ever been, with more opportunities, equality and empathy than ever. So what can we do to change the reality that so many young people face?

First, I think education needs to be adapted so that even in high school, students get dozens if not hundreds of opportunities to study different courses and experience different workplaces. Simply by leveraging the network of parents, students could be offered dozens of ‘half day’ onsite work exposure or experience. A blend of in-classroom learning and online content could allow students today to spend time learning their interests.

I don’t dispute the value of today’s education system. But - I think we should spend more time connecting studies with the ‘real world’. One of the most frequent complaints I hear (and made myself) is how nothing you study or learn is applicable in the real world. In truth, it all is - but you need that real-world experience to see that and value it.

Imagine being a high school student who is fascinated by video games and as a part of their work, they were encouraged and facilitated to study online courses, with a mentor, in video game design and development. We shouldn’t have to wait until college for this type of experience to become a reality. In today’s connected world, there are 100s of 1000s of online teachers eager to donate part of their time to mentoring the next generation.

Second, I think we need to see today’s social media as a mental health crisis for young people that is leaving us more depressed and anxious than ever. Nobody’s life should be on a stage to be micro-examined and the reality is that constant comparison of where we are at compared to the best moments of the lives of those we follow is not healthy. As an avid social media user, I’m not sure what the solution is to this. But I think we should acknowledge that a problem exists.

Third, we need to treat failure as just as important (if not more so) than success. For young students today to identify their strengths and weaknesses, they need to understand that figuring out what they /don’t/ like is just as important as finding their strengths, and that there is immense value in failure. In a sense I think of Simon Sinek’s “Lean Startup” and “Product/Market Fit” fly wheel. Students must be encouraged to rapidly ‘iterate’ by trying lots of new things and clearly identifying what they are passionate about and good at, and what they aren’t.

As the old joke goes:

A sculptor famed for his statues of lions is asked how difficult it must be to produce such works of beauty.

He responds by saying “it is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like lion”

While it sounds funny, I think this joke contains a deeply philosophical point: we are defined by chipping away at things that are ‘not’ us, rather than by the features that ‘are’ us.

In the same we way we have to try as many things as possible to constantly update our strengths / interests, we have to chip away as much as possible and essentially, define ourselves by what we /don’t/ like and what we struggle for. Ultimately, we may end up with a lion.

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I’m not an expert in these matters, but I am concerned that a generation is growing up deeply anxious and sad, when the world is in deep need of a passionate, inspired generation to solve the next generation of problems - which are exciting, but formidable. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are and whether you disagree or agree with what I’ve written.

Originally published on my personal website: www.camelsmouth.me/blog/why-millennials-and-gen-zers-are-the-most-miserable-generation-in-50-years-and-what-we-can-do-about-it