Kids these days don't know how good they have it.

[Sixfortyfive]

2020 is a weird year to share this sentiment.

And even then, I'm very grateful to have grown up in the age before social media.

 

[whatsinaname]

With some of the highest wealth inequalities and lowest social mobilities we have seen in generations? I doubt it.

 

[silentg]

I'm nearly 40, and I disagree.

For adults, yes, a lot of what we enjoy has become better, more accessible, more immediate, and more diverse since the 80s and 90s. But this generation of children are bearing the brunt of a social experiment on a scale neither we nor our parents could have imagined. I was bullied as a child and younger teen, but I knew that when I left school, it would stop for the day. Had I been constantly connected, it would never have ended.

And by the same logic, I have enjoyed an international job and client market that has opened up in an incredible way, but I was also of an age where my career was already up and running and my primary challenge was growing it. Young people now are competing against not just their domestic cohort, but also the global one.

I'm not saying that 2020 isn't great, in terms of technological progress, but that's a dual edged sword for young people.

Click to shrink...

Fatoy Just thought I'd spread little positivity and say that you are one of my favourite posters. Your posts always come across as measured, thoughtful and well considered.

Kids these days have to absorb a huge amount of information. As a teacher, I never felt as much pressure to perform as these young people today have to.

 

[Gernau Morat Gurgeh]

Nah. Technology has got better, but the important metrics are almost universally worse. Good job? Nah. House ownership? Nah. Stable democracy? Nah. Climate change? Sure. Rising Fascism. Yeah.

 

[Fatoy]

Fatoy Just thought I'd spread little positivity and say that you are one of my favourite posters. Your posts always come across as measured, thoughtful and well considered.

Kids these days have to absorb a huge amount of information. As a teacher, I never felt as much pressure to perform as these young people today have to.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for this. That initial post came across a bit heavier than I'd originally intended, and on the whole I do think the opportunities available to young people have improved - or rather that access to opportunity is perhaps a little more universal now than it has been.

But like I said earlier, there's a lot about being a child or a teenager in 2020 that I suspect is far harder than it was for me at that age. And whether young people have it good or bad right now, it's just so incessant.

 

[dabig2]

When it comes to overexposure to social media and such for today's kids, American Vandal's 2nd season closing monologue got a lot right I think particularly with this line:

""Maybe we're not the worst generation, we're just the most exposed.""

The issues teens have today with all this added stimuli is something that barely existed 15+ years ago for me, so I can only sympathize but still not really relate (more guesses like the above reference).
I just know that it's an added challenge, and they've been getting mocked or ignored by older folks.

And of course a generation amount of time of more inequality and suffering and rapid climate change and now pandemics, as mentioned by others. It's a bad deal for all, but especially for the kids and teens today. Going to be worse for the next generations unless our societies change drastically very fast.