Has Gen Z Had It Too Rough?
Here are some excerpts from the article:
“I’m scared that I might end up unemployed and living in my parents’ basement, which is where I’m calling you from right now,” Gia told me over an early-morning phone call.
“We grew up in a world where things have already gone terribly wrong and our lives are just preparing for the worst.”
During our lifetimes, the country has always felt like it was in crisis or teetering on the edge of another: an endless sinking feeling that begins when you realize just how severe the situation might turn out to be — climate change, gun violence, debt. You get the sense there’s no turning back to the world you knew prior.
I'm not writing this article to make fun of kids currently anxious about the state of the world. These are obviously troubling times and if they don't make you a little uneasy, you're probably Caleb's younger brother who lives in a constant haze of video games and leftovers that magically appear in the fridge every night.
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I'm writing this article to help you cope with your current situation. It may seem like your entire life has just been one shitty crisis after another but I'm going to ask you to zoom out and look at the past 100 years.
Pretend you're an American kid who was born in 1913. Your name is Frank. The US enters World War I when you're 4. Maybe your Dad goes off to fight in it. Maybe he dies in combat. Or maybe he survives but then is killed by the Spanish Flu epidemic which lasted from 1918-1920 and wiped out 500,000 to 850,000 Americans. Let's say he survives though and returns to provide for your family…until 1929. That's when the Great Depression hits and financially cripples him. You're 16 and people all around you are starving. Your parents can no longer support you so you decide to hop on a freight train in search of opportunity and eventually find a job on a dairy farm making 10 cents an hour. You spend the next decade living in poverty. At age 28 the US enters WW2 after Pearl Harbor is bombed and you get drafted. You head to Europe to fight the same exact people your father fought and witness countless atrocities. Maybe you die. Or maybe you survive and suffer from severe PTSD for the rest of your life.
See Gen Z? It could be worse. Even boomers, who all in all had it pretty good, had to live in constant fear of being nuked by Russia. Nowadays the biggest threat coming from Russia is twitter troll bots. So think on the bright side, you guys got to grow up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, can order McDonalds delivery, have endless hours of Tik-Toks in the palm of your hand to distract you from global calamities, and if you end up living in your parent's basement unemployed, you can now watch porn on their computer without crashing it, a luxury even us older millennials didn't have.