It really does seem as simple as that. I grew up dirt poor in rural appalachia but we were all poor so I didn't care. Really had a good life and it helped shaped my perspective on what matters even though I make good money now.

Weird. I grew up in a similar environment. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Maybe the rampant violent alcoholism and meth just isn’t my thing. Of course, it had other major issues.

I had a huge family, 100s, and all of us were pretty religious so if anyone was drinking, it was secretly and I never really experienced it. I mostly just experienced hard work, hunting, 4wheeling, and general redneck shit. People were annoyingly religious but that was about the worst of it.

Yeah, I don't know how much that represents the typical poor rural American life. Certainly doesn't match a lot of the narratives I've seen or heard.

It was a pretty common life in North Georgia and Southern Tennessee and Southern North Carolina.

Bingo, nr 1 reason why older generations now don't grok younger these days. There were always similar scenarios, lets be honest this ain't unique situation generally, despite many trying to claim otherwise, certainly for me and my peers say 25 years ago situation looked almost exactly the same, we just didn't expect to have a great life immediately but work it off gradually.

Heck, my first net salary after university (proper CS title) working 100% as Java software dev was what, cca 350-400$ a month? I could afford almost nothing and that was fine and expected. I don't think I need to calculate how many tens of times my salary went up till this day while still doing Java dev. Yet young folks who start are immediately pissed off they only get very high and not ridiculous amounts right out of school, complaining they can't buy some central housing. Buy?!? As said huge disconnect across generations.

This is related to the evaporation of "free time", socializing irl, and hobbies that I've observed vs. my pre-cellphone/pre-internet youth & young adulthood. Not having social media, work emails & slack, and all the group chats enforced periods of quietness, boredom, and being alone. You went out and socialized and did things in public more often just because you were bored and you couldn't just doomscroll and share memes with the group chat. The overall increase in baseline cognitive social load that is entirely digital and interruptive (notifications!!!) instead of planned irl activities just seems to add to general stress levels and decrease baseline mental wellness.

I’ll save it as the ultimate “just be positive” slogan as the world gets worse and worse.

Young adults got tossed into Covid lockdown as teens and higher education students. They worry about climate change. Wars have always happened but now with Ukraine it’s happening in proximity to the West. The second Trump administration is much worse than the first. The old “getting a better life than your parents” isn’t looking great, in fact it’s trending downward.

That people are perhaps more toxically “tuned in” to what everyone else is doing is just the cherry on top of objective reality.

Yes, exactly. It's why everyone is obsessed with 'inequality' these days. They all have a better life than my childhood was and I was happy then and I'm happy now. The difference is that I'm not always looking in the other guy's bowl to see if he has more than me.

That's victim blaming, to suggest the problem is that young people are comparing themselves to their parents' generation, rather than the problem being that their parents' generation has made the world worse for their children.

I don't think the parent comment is passing blame on a particular generation -- they're simply blaming the state of the era we're living in, and the tools that are available to all of us, including the younger generation that has (always had) less self discipline to moderate their behavior and addition to these tools.

They are comparing their lives to completely phony ones on the internet and finding it wanting. The no. 1 job they aspire to is influencer, because they see it as the ideal life, cause it's painted as such.

> Economic inequality surely is contributing to depression in young people. Exposure to wonderful people, products, opportunities and ideas from all around the globe is not.

Those two are linked though, exposure to competition from all around the world is the problem you are talking about. You can't have both these opportunities and avoid competition.

I do think this freedom is a good thing, but I also understand it leads to inequality. That is why globalism was typically a right wing position since it helps the rich.

Globalization is not the cause of economic inequality. The cause is political and cultural. Since the late 1970's, the top 1% of income earners (> ~$800,000 in income) in the United States has captured 60% of economic growth as income. The top 10% (> ~$200,00 in income) of earners captured 90% of the growth. The bottom 90% of the population has captured only had 10% of the growth in wages over that time period. The US now has might have the highest income inequality that we know of in all societies, present and historical. For example, India from 40 years ago that had a strict caste system and half the population was illiterate was more egalitarian the the current day US. Apartheid South Africa was more egalitarian than the current day US.

This started in the late 70s as that is when we started dropping the progressive tax on high income earners extremely low. This incentivized senior managers at companies, who set their own compensation, to set higher and higher wages for themselves, capturing most of the economic growth of the past 50 years.

Whether you think this type of inequality is justified or not, its worth looking at closely because it is hard to imagine an economy or society continuing to function indefinitely with such extreme difference in outcome between different social groups.

No nation on Earth is entirely isolationist.

No nation has absolute free trade.

The question is what to aim for.

All else being equal, globalization is better.

OP's comment says globalization comes with dark sides, that's it. Do you disagree? I think people are angry because so much of the discussion of it among people who have enjoyed the fruits of globalization is essentially to silence any talk of that fact and point to things that ultimately are not a crucial part of a better life (ability to buy cheap junk mostly).

Sure, I agree that free trade can have downsides.

The comment claims that 'globalisation' is depressing young people. Well, that's a hypothesis, not a universally agreed-upon fact. And the assumption that it's agreed-upon is probably a product of the propaganda I complained about.

There's a stronger case for globalisation making youth happier, on the whole, and other factors (such as economic inequality) making youth sadder.