The young are struggling to adapt to a chaotic and competitive world they haven't been prepared for

I saw this long opinion article from The Telegraph.

Do you agree?

I'll share some excerpts:

The young are struggling to adapt to a chaotic and competitive world they haven’t been prepared for

I used to believe, like many people, that Britain’s mental health epidemic is merely the symptom of a snowflake society. That is until I heard about the mysterious phenomenon of cowboys driving their trucks off the mountains in the American frontier. In my curiosity, I travelled to Natrona County, Wyoming.

Nobody has a definitive answer to why so many Wyomingites are struggling with their mental health. But what seemed to be behind so many of the tragic stories I encountered were grand life expectations that had crumbled in contact with life’s harsh realities. I spoke with mothers whose perfect sons had entered the adult world armed with prom-king looks and entrepreneurial animal spirits, only to suffer breakdowns when their businesses ran into trouble or they lost a job or a house.

Hyper-competitiveness is not just baked into the economy but into every aspect of life for the young. Take dating, where the app-based Disneyfication of romantic expectation intersects with cutthroat algorithms aimed at subscriber retention. This has created a deranged world where the delusionally desperate endlessly chase after the delusionally fussy, who endlessly chase after an elite who strictly date within their own pool of perfect specimens. On Tinder, it has been estimated that the bottom 80 per cent of men chase the top 20 per cent of women, while the top 80 per cent of women chase the top 20 per cent of men.

There are physical signs that the struggle between the ideal and the real is resulting in disturbing behaviours. Take the outbreak of “bigorexia” in the gyms of South Wales, as insecure young men with limited future prospects pump themselves with steroids, and fall into a spiral of body dysmorphia. Or the incels who are sinking into a dangerous kind of entitled self-loathing, as they succumb not only to suicidal ideation and self-harm, but an extremist ideology that teaches that women who refuse to sleep with men are committing “reverse rape”.

Our country (UK) is also tortured by its own spin on the American Dream, a diabolical lie that ours is a compassionate, kind, “fair-play” society in which even someone who coasts along can expect a quaintly comfortable life. These days, this myth is instilled from childhood through various practices – from the trend of teachers marking homework in “neutral” colours rather than red pen, to non-competitive sports days where it is the “taking part that counts”.

Britain might be more accurately described as a proletarian nation overseen by a cosmopolitan elite.

Decently paid manufacturing jobs have been replaced with cashier and call assistant roles. Degrees no longer function as certificates of education, but rather elite passports – with only those bearing the stamp of the most outstanding institutions gaining passage to the interview rooms of the top firms. Economic stagnation is making things worse.

I left Wyoming with the impression that it is a place where expectations of life and reality have become alarmingly divergent. On the one hand, it is the cradle of the American Dream ... But it is also one of America’s most stagnant states, battling poor growth, job losses, and outmigration.

An even more basic take is that, if misery springs from a disconnect between expectations and reality, then logically it follows that either expectations must be lowered or reality must be improved.

Endemic misery is pushing the UK towards a civilisational catastrophe, Sherelle Jacobs, 22 April 2024


other related threads which might be of interest:
Lack of opportunity for independence may be causing children's decline in mental health
Younger adult generation shows higher suicide rates amid rising financial pressures
Half of young adults had anxiety and depression in 2023

It seems like the younger generation--young adults--are not prepared for the world awaiting them--either physically or mentally.
The society is economically a tougher place, but that also seems to be combined with the young lacking an inner resilience that the older generation (born before 1932) seemed to possess.

 

I can't speak for Britain. But in the US... It is about the snowflake mentality. I'm Gen X. Well over half the things that kids get away with nowadays are things we would have been slapped upside the head with back in the day. We were taught to be Independent and strong. No "participation trophies" for instance. And we were taught that society doesn't give a crap about your feelings so buck up and keep going.

 

It's the internet and social media. It's the only real change from how things were before. Not that suicides didn't happen and not even that suicides wouldn't have higher pockets of regional frequency. But the loss of direction, the apathy, it's all social media. Younger generations are being bombarded with filth and garbage, but the difference between then and now is that it's other social media users creating the filth and garbage, not some mega corporation or movie/TV studio.

You're not going to watch a few videos on the internet and become disillusioned. It happens after sustained exposure that doesn't just end when you put down YOUR phone, because your friends all have phones and computers too.

That is also coupled with the need for instant gratification that seems to be prevalent. Things that take time or that don't reward you right away seem like daunting tasks, and the more you immerse yourself in the online garbage pool, the worse off your mental health gets.

And that's the real irony. A lot of social media is full of people talking about mental health. Every bad thought, every feeling a person has, now has an acronym name, a support group, and a vocal online contingent. But the sum of all of this is the prevailing belief that mental health is something the world should stop for and recognize and sympathize over. That's not going to happen. It's creating an alternate universe where people aren't responsible for themselves, where the world not validating every little problem you have is a great evil. All of this self-serving nonsense is shutting people down and making mental health worse than it was before.

There are other factors too, I'm not pretending to have the whole thing figured out. But the are major drivers.

 

.....I think I live in a different United Kingdom than the person who wrote that article....the whole article seems to have been based around this sentence and then there's been a whole load of bollock, hearsay and speculation tagged on

So it is BELIEVED that 1 in 4 in the UK to be affected by mental illness? So is it 1 in 4 or isn't it? Believed by whom and what definition of "mental illness".......Daily Telegraph really has gone to crap on the last 20 years only thing good about it is the cryptic crossword which is worth the subscription....

 

How could kids from any generation be prepared for challenges of life. Preparing and adapting is what growing up is all about. Were the Boomers prepared to deal with 'sex drugs and rock 'n roll' or the Vietnam war? Were their parents prepared for WW2? Or their parents for the Great Depression? Was Gen-X prepared for the arrival of the internet in the 90s? And no, the society is not economically a tougher place. We never lived in houses as big as now, and we never had 2 top of the line cars on the driveway.

There is nothing new in older generations in trashing the younger ones. What exactly is this thread all about?

 

One thread on Reddit:

Why do today's young adults seem to be so unprepared?
r/AskOldPeople - started by PlantComprehensive77

 

"Nobody has a definitive answer to why so many Wyomingites are struggling with their mental health."

too much Processed food (excessive carbs and seed oils)

I also agree with the op that social media is playing a role

at least that is my opinion.....