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Let’s Mock Millennials’ Stress List
A CBD oil manufacturer ran a survey of what stresses out Millennials. It seems that Gen-Y thinks that 2019 is most stressful time in human history. I think it is important for other generations to mock them and make their own lists. I’ll aggregate responses in the OP.
The Millennial (Gen-Y) stress list:
1. Losing wallet/credit card
2. Arguing with partner
3. Commute/traffic delays
4. Losing phone
5. Arriving late to work
6. Slow WiFi
7. Phone battery dying
8. Forgetting passwords
9. Credit card fraud
10. Forgetting phone charger
11. Losing/misplacing keys
12. Paying bills
13. Job interviews
14. Phone screen breaking
15. Credit card bills
16. Check engine light coming on
17. School loan payments
18. Job security
19. Choosing what to wear
20. Washing dishes
+ Endless war
+ Debt/GDP ratio >1
+ College credential not worth the debt as promised
The Gen-X stress list:
- Nuclear war
- Tornadoes
- Power outage/blizzard
- Starving kids in China
- Cigarettes/secondhand smoke
- Desegregation
- Muggings
- Degree technical obsolescence
- Dot-com bust *and* great recession
The Boomer stress list:
- Polio
- Smallpox
- Nuclear war
- Tornadoes
- Segregation
- Race riots
- Career technical obsolescence
Greatest Generation stress list
- The Great Depression
- 60 million violent deaths between 1939 and 1945
Mr Barnett’s English class was pretty stressful for me. After that being drafted and then shot at were significant emotional events.
Very true. I’m between those two groups and I remember playing outside with sticks and my imagination as a kid and then phones suddenly became a must-have thing for my cohort right around the start of high school. By the end of high school it was smartphones. I actually grew up as the technology changed and saw how much of a difference it made how old you were (and where you were developmentally) when you got your first cell phone and later smartphone. Between ages 12 and 16, one year makes a whole heck of a difference. Now they just stick an ipad in the kids’ hands before they can talk to shut them up when they cry and I can’t imagine that will lead to anything good.
You had me at “Let’s Mock…”
It was a major source of stress when I found out I qualified as a Millennial. Luckily under the New Rules I can choose to identify as another generation, but I haven’t decided which one yet.
Since, according to some measures, I am a millennial* I’m going to add:
– Changes to my favorite browser’s navigation bar.
Although, this intractability might just be sign I’m too old.
Grrrr, I’m still mad. :/
Not enough free detergent pods, and not enough free cell phones for Millennials posting photos of their friends ingesting free detergent pods.
Not enough generalizations for categorizing each generation’s failures.
When I was a 5-year-old boomer, my parents taught me to fear the midnight knock on the door. I don’t see that one in your list.
I fear any knocks on the door. It’s never anything good.
Phone calls are not generally fun either.
Have to agree. Born in 61. My oldest brother was born in 50. The wake of the early boomers heavily impacted my life. From education experiments (no walls schools) to the run up in real estate prices.
Did it ever occur to you that just maybe the ridiculous list of millennial stressors points to the fact that that generation has been robbed of an institution relied on for a millennia as a form of de-stressing? That being religion.
When I was in college, psych 101 was still teaching that religious rituals create in humans a sense of peace and predictability. Modern and post-modern attempts to diminish, impugn, ridicule, and destroy religion has prevented these boomer-educated fledglings from finding solace and stability in the very institutions boomers relied on.
Step One of the Twelve Step program: Admitting you have a problem. Hehe . . .
Personally, I prefer demographer David Foot’s system where generations are defined by the historical events that result in big changes in fertility. e.g. The boomers are defined as those born after the end of World War II but before the legalization of birth control.
We’d probably have to make Roe v. Wade a big event too . . .
I agree. The growing up experiences of my children (born 1985 and 1988) were quite different from the growing up experience of my niece (born at the very end of 1993).
I find it amusing to hear my son-in-law (born 1982, so at the old end of “millennial”) complaining about the lack of work ethic of the young millennial graduate students and post-docs that come through his work department.
I think the event that should separate the older “millennials” from the younger “millennials” is the ubiquitous smartphone. Those born early 1990’s and later have had essentially continuous electronic connectivity since they were in late middle school and high school, which has given them a very different “coming of age” experience than their predecessors.
It’s a fair argument.
On the one hand, while the downward slide of the US fertility rate was already in full-swing for almost a decade before Roe v. Wade in 1973, that downward trend ended around 1973 and transitioned abruptly to a flatline, so one can argue that 1973 represents a much clearer signal for a break between demographic cohorts than 1965 does (when Griswold v. Connecticut was decided).
Aside: The graph also supports the point made earlier about “Early Boomers” vs. “Late Boomers”. Those born between 1945 and 1956 when fertility rates were increasing almost certainly have different life experiences than those born between 1956 and 1973 when fertility rates were on their downward slide (but still high enough to be considered part of the “boom”).
In [sort-of] defense of the Millennial’s stress list that we’re having so much fun mocking [and I’m assuming from its content we’re talking mostly younger Millennials]: Young people have always exaggerated the worth of their own concerns, discounted the concerns and accomplishments of their parents, and elevated the value of their concerns over the concerns of others. How many of us Boomers, when we were in our teens and twenties, thought the world was going to end because 1) the girl turned us down for a date, 2) a zit appeared just before the first date, 3) our crappy car broke down and we had to walk a mile to someplace with a phone, 4) we didn’t get the score we wanted on the test, 5) our roommate wouldn’t get off the (landline) phone so we could make a telephone call, etc.
I have some (though limited) hope that the Millennials will grow (mature) out of it.
Apropos of Nothing: This graph from the “Population Research Bureau” tries to imply that the cratering of the fertility rate was due to the 1970s energy crisis. LOL!
https://www.prb.org/us-fertility/
David Foot addresses this question about early vs. later members of a cohort. According to him, it makes a big difference on which side of the peak (or trough) of the cohort one is born.
In the case of the Baby Boom, those born before 1956 got to enjoy greater attention from media, government, and employers, because they were an increasing market segment. At the same time, they were filling jobs that were being vacated by earlier cohorts retiring and/or dying.
By contrast, those born after 1956 had much more competition for jobs because so many positions had already been filled by the “Early Boomers”. Also, they were starting to see less attention from media and government because they were a decreasing market segment.
For a demographic trough like Gen-X, the dynamic is reversed. Those born before the trough bottoms out have more competition for jobs because they’re still competing with the tail end of the previous boom. Those born after the trough bottoms out have a better time because they have fewer peers to compete against economically, and also because media and government suddenly notice they exist (e.g. the grunge era).
At least, that’s David Foot’s way of looking at it.
Sometimes it’s pizza.
If it’s pizza then I know it’s coming. If there was surprise pizza I might be more willing to answer the door.
No matter what catastrophe the millennials, Gen X and Gen Y shall face, they will never have faced Sister Emily in French Class for four years.
I graduated from HS in the late 1960’s. For at least the next thirty years, I still woke up with drenched sheets and in dread terror of having forgotten to complete that nun’s homework assignments.
Millennials, just like all humans, are the product of nature and nurture. Millennials are genetically identical to their Boomer and GenX parents. The seemingly inane features of my Millennial generation can be laid at the feet of older generations and their failure to raise their children in a morally sound manner.
Let’s raise a bunch of kids in bubble wrap and then viciously mock them when they aren’t as tough as Great Depression-hardened WWII veterans!
You wrote that you fear any knocks on the door, not just the ones that you don’t know are coming!
It might be worth considering that while ridiculous millennials certainly exist, there are plenty of hardworking ones who have managed to build lives in spite of existing in an uncertain world. It’s always fun to kick around a strawman, but I’m 30. Here are some of the concerns my friends have:
Seriously.
My wife has been known to surprise me with pizza delievered to my workplace, on my birthday. Surprise pizza is best pizza. My wife is best wife.
My opinion of the younger folks went up more than a dozen notches during the 2015 fire storms here in Lake County California. The County put together a survivors’ camp, located in the Moose Lodge right before the town of Clearlake Oaks.
Yes, the Red Cross and their older staff came in and did this or that for a few days. But all through that long hot summer, it was teens and also 20 to early 30 Somethings that gave up their summer to ride forklifts, man information booths, help distressed new moms and dads, and on and on.
These young people could have been at the ocean or in a neighbor’s pool. But all through the 98 to 104 degree weather, they toughed it out and helped so many.
It is also worth noting that many of the fire personnel here in California and across the nation who are actually fighting the fires are young adults.