High school class of 2020 here. We wish we could have the life our boomer forefathers did, but their life was so hedonistic, they destroyed ours by proxy.
In the economy of the 70s you could walk into a business with a high school diploma, ask for a job, and get offered enough pay relative to housing costs to save for a home.
Now you have to spend 4 years studying and go into debt to have a chance at that life. But aside from having a cash flow problem, you can't get caught doing anything a college admissions counselor or job recruiter doesn't like or the plan will fall apart. So don't break any laws, get filmed doing anything unsavory (and everyone has a recording device in their pocket), and expect to have gray hair before you get your feet under you financially--if that day ever comes.
Now regardless of who you blame for this economy (though I suggest you look at the age of the people in charge), it's striking how the only decent social safety nets in the US are for retirees. Baby boomers can get government healthcare, social security, along with more benefits/tax breaks at the state and local level. The young have to pay for their own educations, pay for their own healthcare, and then get taxed to pay for the older generations too.
One generation hollowed out the economy, voted to give benefits to themselves while cutting them for everyone else, and ran up debt at every level of government in the process. Now no one else can afford to live the life they did.
Unemployment is at 7.7% if you include discouraged workers, and participation of all working age adults is 61.6%.
Participation was lower in the 70s (60%), due to most Women not entering the workforce. But ours includes most women, so your point is genuinely incomparable.
No, the kids aren't "all right". I'm not blaming you for this, just pointing out that yes, we have it much, much worse, not even taking into account just how lonely, sick, and poorer we are, per salary, per dollar, and our lack of homeownership (that's an entirely different set of data I'm not posting here).
Remind me of your purchasing power? Your home ownership rates? Value of your dollar? Wages relative to lifestyle? Mental Illness rates? Chances of entering a high paying job, or prestigious University? Labor Unions? Relationship rates? Debt?
Getting drafted is terrible, but at least you had a nation worth fighting for, even in a pointless war. (Not mentioning how many drafted were poor, non-college educated people, of which even if we are poorer, much more of us go to college for worse wages and outcomes)
The only reason we aren't drafted, is because we, by every metric, are starting worse off health-wise compared to you.
Also, the threat of nuclear war never went away, we just stopped caring about it.
Why? We brought numbers for one specific issue and you ignored them.
The first item on your new list is absurd. The 70s are the decade that coined the term stagflation. To be nostalgic for the 70s because of the value of the dollar is wild.
You must've been a kid in the 1960s right? If so, those were the best times for the US. I understand, what comes after feels worse, but I assure you, the post-internet, post-9/11, post-COVID world is much harder for a young adult.
Interesting. Can you give some examples of how boomers were more hedonistic than earlier/later generations, and how that destroyed your life? I'd be particularly interested to see how you feel boomers compare to your own generation with regard to hedonism?
I'm wondering if young people are really less hedonistic now, or if the types of hedonistic activies people engage in have just changed? Would you consider doomscrolling to be a form of hedonism, for example?
considering that the big cliffs of western fertility coincide with major smartphone releases, you are comparing that which the young gentleman would have appreciated experiencing (shared human experience of pleasure), with the death of his opportunity to experience such. do you genuinely consider lying in bed alone on the phone for hours on end to be comparable to sex/drugs/rock n roll in any manner outside of resultant dopamine spiking?
I would say they are comparable in that they are both pleasure-seeking behaviors that are fine in moderation, but carry a significant risk of turning addictive and self destructive.
There are pros and cons to both. Both provide outlets for creativity and socialization. But I've lost several childhood friends to drug overdoses, and spending too much time on the phone can lead to withdrawal and depression.
I feel like you are asking me pick one or the other as the superior pastime, but I would choose neither. IMO kids are better off playing sports, playing in a band (without the drugs), drama club, etc. Those are structured activities - but given enough time and space people will start to form relationships too.
I think they were never fine in moderation, but one at least had a chance of real human connection, love, marriage, and even the potential for it to grow into something "mature", and non-hedonistic. And it's not the one with smartphones.
sex drugs and rock n roll are fine in moderation because they take place during human socialization and serve to enhance an experience of connection. does doom scrolling enrich anything outside of dopamine receptors & corporate profits? rather than request your choice of option, I intended to note that doom scrolling alone in bed could not be compared to the hedonism of generations above in any way outside of a common neurological response.
I imagine a lonely young adult scrolling away, then I imagine woodstock. not many parallels outside of the species involved ..
From what I understand, current younger generations won't dance because they are terrified of being recorded. I'm don't know how rampant this is, but if true it's really sad. Dancing poorly is one of life's greatest pleasures (and really good exercise too boot!). While I absolutely despise "generation wars," the smartphone really did a number on... well, all of us. I hope more people start to ditch them.
EDIT: I actually don't really know what Huarache1 is really talking about. I'm an elder millennial (Xenial, really) and we were plenty hedonistic, just a little safer about it, so it could be the case of younger people relegating anyone they deem old to be a "boomer." I think Millennials have a lot of blame on their shoulders for being so willing to make social media such a huge part of our lives.
Elder Millenials, Xennials, even younger Millenials will understand that what we are going through is difficult, but almost incomprehensible.
There is this tremendous realization, for the few of us capable of not scrolling endlessly, of what we lost. I believe this is what's causing the immense political upheaval and anger between men and women. The System isn't working, and it's gotten so bad that I think trying to do anything is genuinely better than what it is now.
Yes, anyone can be recorded, which then dictates social norms for many who want to remain silent. This forces us to never be too open about our interests, and the few which are open about them, often are only doing what is acceptable within a subculture. And even then, it's likely to be laughed off by people not from those subcultures.
Now, because we are poorer, we mostly gamble what our meager pay gives us, on prediction markets and Gacha games. Some poor fellows even pay for steamers, or for Onlyfans girls and "believe the Sex Worker was into them" so to speak.
It's lonely, nobody wants to speak out publicly about their interests, those that do, often do so out of anger and are jeered off.
So, no wonder our mental health issues are terrible compared to the past. We're not even facing people most of the time.
in contemporary reality I have witnessed dance events where hundreds of young people filmed the deejay on their smartphones while a couple dozen danced at the back. if humans do not take the reins, our culture is already dead.
why are you blaming the kids who had their brains destroyed via algorithmic social media created by the generations above them? how did the kids ever stand a chance when they were given something stronger than drugs at an age before personality coalescing?
No need to be so confrontational. I also saw a bunch of your edits so full disclosure I'm trying reconcile what I read before with your edits so apologies if I get mixed up.
> you are blaming the kids who had their brains destroyed by your generation?
I'm curious as to what part of my post makes you think I'm blaming kids (today) when I explicitly said it's my generation that has a lot of blame. I thought I was pretty clear on that, going as far as to say I think generations ragging on each other is bullshit.
Non-tech people of my generation were also victims to a degree, though at the same time there were a lot, and I mean a LOT of us who HATED social media and avoided it for as long as they could. Unfortunately, I can't count myself as one of them.
You're also making the assumption that I'm sitting passively doing nothing about it. I don't do MUCH, but I have been removing a lot of tech from my life, and I talk about it with people, including younger people. I ditched my smartphone eight months ago, I give my money to as few big tech companies as possible (this includes all the "AI" companies), I don't use anything by Google other than YouTube, as well as some artist ventures. I know it's not much, but I'm a nobody. If you have any other ideas how I can do more, I'm open to listening.
Anyway, your experience at the DJ event is exactly what my Gen X'er friend was describing to me the other day (then I read about it online). She was at a work event and said the "older" folks were all dancing while the younger ones were standing around looking at their phones.
Oh, also my comment around "I hope things get better" is that I've heard that a lot of younger people are indeed ditching their phones and social media, but none that I know (and being 45 without children, I don't exactly interact very often with anyone younger than ~30).
EDIT: I think I got it, is it that I said "I think Millennials have a lot of blame on their shoulders" which makes I sound like I was blaming Gen Z and below? Really my intent there. That is the phenomena of assuming anyone successful and obviously adult is older than me and therefore, not part of my generation. In my mind, Zuck is like 10 years older than me when in reality he's three years younger.
I saw you identify as gen X then assign responsibility to the successor of gen X, this does not appear to have been the intended meaning, if generations raging on each other is bullshit then im not sure why generations were brought up at all. our culture is in its death throes, did you want that to happen a bit less confrontationally? it is rankling to watch older people milling about discussing the freedom of choice they love, while their successors are unavoidably forced into the opposite - subscriptions, social media, doom scrolling, ai, these choice deprivations are the default option now and avoiding them in favor of reality is extremely difficult for the avg joe. honestly you remind me of parents in your generation and how they ask their kids things instead of telling them things. for the record I'm also a nobody and I have plans to unfuck the youth even though the pursuit is likely futile thanks to global warming + the butterfly effect, u could come up with some plans too if u wanted ...
> I saw you identify as gen X then assign responsibility to the successor of gen X
I said:
> I'm an elder millennial (Xenial, really)
I’m a millennial. I could have left it at “elder millennial” I suppose. “Xenial” is a micro-generation, which is a searchable term.
> if generations raging on each other is bullshit then im not sure why generations were brought up at all
Because the original user, Huarache1, that you were responding to that prompted my response brought them up.
> u could come up with some plans too if u wanted ...
At this point it seems you have decided you just don’t like me and are looking for reasons to continue not to like me. That’s fine, you are a stranger on the internet, though odd because we’re fighting the same fight. And for the record, I really like your anger.
Also for the record, I told you what I’m currently doing, never insinuated that I had ever stopped thinking of things to do, and asked if you had any ideas yourself which you threw back in my face (in two different ways at that), so this is a pretty futile conversation.
I think you have been a bit hurt by my words, this was not my intention, if you wanted to fight you'd be fighting not asking about it, may we one day battle side by side
Not hurt, just confused, lol. Though reading back, I can pinpoint the spots where we misunderstood each other. But there is little point in revisiting at this stage!
>I think Millennials have a lot of blame on their shoulders for being so willing to make social media such a huge part of our lives.
Uh, it was heavily marketed towards us, too. And it was a godsend to those of us stuck at home in suburban hell, around the time when retailers and fast food joints stopped hiring teenagers and cars were becoming more expensive and harder to work on without a bunch of expensive tools.
Absolutely it was. It was also quite different in the beginning, though. Many people saw facebook as a photo-sharing site and a way to exchange stupid, public-facing messages. Remember a year or so after the news feed introduced and fb messaging was just becoming a thing (no dedicated app yet) and people started freaking out that their "private" messages were now public when really it was just stuff they had written on each others "walls" that in everyone's minds (with not fault to them) was private to their friend group?
> And it was a godsend to those of us stuck at home in suburban hell,
Very fair so ya, my life-long city-boyness is showing.
Boomer era hedonism is built upon the assumption that "this is the way the world works, and always will work", and as such, with so much affluence and wealth, they were essentially nudged to create a cultural boom via drugs, sex, and rock and roll, which won over the youth of the time against the intellectual Communists of Russia.
But as a result, the sexual revolution brought about a great "romance famine", wherein the modern day has everything to favor different people to stay separate. The specific reasons of which vary between the sexes, but point is that both have more to gain by staying single. Therefore there is significantly less sex taking place in my generation.
Not only that, but screen addiction, political polarization, mass inequality, the prices of everything keeps getting much higher. Our Dollars are also worth much less than that of the Boomer era. This means we have to work much more for less pay, and less value for each Dollar.
The Hedonism of our times is more solitary, more lonely, arguably more self-destructive, but that's because we feel as though we have little to lose.
This comes into spending more on food, more expensive tea and coffee (since Alcohol is still more expensive than that). Gambling, gacha games, prediction markets. Pornography, chatbots, social media, anything to kill the emotional apathy. As for drugs, that's just Xanax, anti-anxiety medications that are abused, as well as weed and opiates to "slow" down the world since it goes by so fast. Vapes, Codeine (Purple Drank), carts, etc.
All of these forms of Hedonism are inherently very insular, and lonely, rather than going clubbing, Woodstock, going for Joyrides with friends, or even having sex.
