Millennials are more stressed than other generations. All generations worry more now than in the past when the economy looked more promising, but young adults feel the blues the most. With current unemployment and underemployment rates, soaring student loans and generally bleak opportunities, it is hardly surprising that young adulthood in the 2010s is stressful. The reality today is in stark contrast to MTV’s happiness study from half a decade earlier, which found the corresponding age group to be far more optimistic back then than they appear to be today.
It’s not cool to have your dreams messed up before you even got a shot at them. But from my generation X perspective I am somewhat surprised that millennials are walking off with the “stress award”. A fact less known than the oft-cited injustices experienced by millennials these days is that generation X was the hardest hit by the recession and it’s aftermath. Think being underemployed and underpaid is hard in your 20s? Try that in your 40s! All while warding off house foreclosures and figuring out how to fund your children’s orthodontic treatment and skyrocketing educational expenses.
So while millennials worry about not getting around to live the American Dream, gen-X got to live it for a while – until they lost it all to the bank. But somehow they just trudge along, often too exhausted to notice or say anything. Maybe it’s the nihilist in us. The self-loathing cynic. Or maybe there are simply too few of us to get much press.
Anyway, here are a few reasons I think might help explain why you millennials are more stressed out than the rest of us:
1. You are young – and you want to burn brighter than the sun. The band Fun. sings to you about setting the world on fire. Yes, we too see this catchy sing-along of youthful exuberance as a sarcastic anthem to the disconnect between the hopes and aspirations that envelop your cohort and the morose reality you now realize you have to adjust to. You can embrace it or mock it in you post-ironic hipster ways, but you were indeed raised by cheering helicopter parents who told you the sky is the limit. “We are young” – when Pat Benetar sang that same refrain for us gen-Xers back in the ‘80s before irony became a mainstream communication style, she just told us straight out that love is a battlefield and that “there are no promises, no demands”. We learned not to expect too much from others, nor from ourselves. We X’ers might be self-loathing gluttonous materialists, but when it comes to the end of the American Dream as we know it, maybe we’re a bit more hard-nosed about it after all?
2.You are more connected. Why is this a bad thing? Constantly comparing yourself to other people’s self-projections of’ happier more successful lives can be unhealthy. We literally and figuratively filter the pictures and snippets we want to share with the world, and it’s easy to feel like a miserable loser in times driven by digital one-upmanship. Likewise, cyberbullying, sexting and ostracism started with your generation, at least among it’s youngest members. 24/7 reminders that you’re only so-so or even fallen off the social ladder can’t be good for your sleep quality. 
3.Are you lonelier? No, really! I know millennials are more “social”, but are they more social? Is your touch screen a good replacement for eye contact? Do your Instagram followers and Facebook friends think of you as a genuine friend or mainly as “Klout capital”? Possibly the most extreme example of isolated but connected millennials is the Japanese Hikokomori, the young man of Japan’s ‘Lost Generation’ who hibernates inside his boy rooms long into adulthood.
Long before baby boomer Steven Tyler went under the knife, he sang to us about all those lines in his face getting clearer every time he was looking in the mirror. Ironically while we young gen-x’ers were sitting around moping and stuffing our CD players and our youth’s ennui with melancholic musings and angst filled screams, our emo attitudes might have been just what saved us. We learned to keep our expectations down. We weren’t told that life would be easy if you just “do your best and believe in yourself”. At least few of us really bought into those catch phrases. We weren’t really expected to raise our countries’honor by competing with whiz kids from competitive STEM-countries. We weren’t expected to be heroes. Not even just for one day.
And maybe that’s just it. We don’t have these lofty expectations connected to our generation as you do. So dream on, millennials. Adjust your expectations, but don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Alright, that’s it. Obviously everything I’m writing here has already been said or sung before. Time to say good night.
Images: Flickr: axelrose, mischiru CrazyJoeDavola, SongLyric
4 comments. Leave new
Very interesting post! I do wonder if millenials feel the pressure because their parents are on top of their every move — from micromanaging their social life to going on college interviews to being involved in their work life. I really hope it’s only a limited few who do this, but I do think we are more involved in our parenting and I can only assume this stresses our kids out.
Good question, Nicole! I think from a generational perspective some of us Gen-X parents who grew up in the ’70s are overcompensating for their own “latchkey-childhood”. And then there is a more urgent sense of competition these days in anything from test-driven schools and college admissions to global competition in the workforce. I’m sure this must feel stressful for a lot of kids as well as their parents. I’m very interested in those movement as of late that prescribe “less is more” type solutions. Those theories that stress quality to over quantity. I’m trying this myself by pulling back on extra-curricular activities. I want my kids to be bored sometimes. Just so they can experience how that feels to, lest we forget in our busy world 😉
I think millenials are stressed because they are being educated to think abstractly (by the school systems) therefore have it figured
out (from observation) that their futures have been hijacked. They discuss amongst themselves and KNOW that housing, transportation, jobs, etc
are all going to be harder for them to obtain and heaven knows, they also are away that with over 7 BILLION humans on earth
the long term scrambling for water and resources, long term, has hardly begun. Who wouldn’t be stressed being born into
this world we now how ? I say acknowledge millennials are stressed, give them lots of hugs, and LISTEN to their millennial generation suggestions
for fixing this mess & then DO IT. ps: Move over baby boomers. That would also help.
Chickie Pea,
Thank you for your comments. Absolutely! You are making some very good observations. The older generations have screwed up royally leaving behind a less bountiful world than the one they took over. And in some countries even leaving debt and depleted resources behind instead. We were warned already back in 1972 when ‘Limits to Growth’ came out, that the level of extraction of natural resources would be unsustainable and that our environment would be damaged. And what did we do with this information? We just scorned the theory and continued living the largest consumption fest in history! Now we are starting to sense that ‘payback time’ is upon us, which unfairly is deferred to the generations that had the least to do with it. All of this can make your blood boil and head spin, so no wonder the Millennials are stressed out! I want to remain an optimist, so I think there are ways out of this. For one thing the distribution of wealth in this country is extremely dysfunctional. The Gini koefficient (measure of equality where you want to be on the lower side) in the U.S. is around .47, the highest in any Western nation. I try not to be political in this blog, but any society without a strong middle class is destined to experience some problems. The politicians may disagree on the means, but they can’t deny the need to spread the wealth better if they want a well functioning society. Also I find comfort in the book “Abundance” by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, which helps me restore some faith in humanity – or at least in technology. Their hubristic hopes for modern technology are pretty “far out” to many readers, but desperate times call for desperat measures. And to quote the futurist Jim Dator, “Any useful statement about the future should seem ridiculous.”