Current Events > "Kids today have it so easy."

(+) Yeah! (+)

I would not want to be a kid in the time of social media.

I dont think kids today have it easy.

Sure. If you like.

Or you could try to explain to me why you think Im wrong that the average person hasnt been that dramatically impacted by it. Id be happy to listen. Im not trying to be antagonistic.

I do wonder if youre American and perhaps thats why you see it as a dramatically life-changing event for everybody?

I would not want to be a kid in the time of social media.

It triggered a sharp rise of conservative right-wing populist movements in a lot of countries.

It triggered a sharp rise of conservative right-wing populist movements in a lot of countries.

"I want a better future for everyone"

"It's not fair that these kids didn't struggle as I did"

lol

I would not want to be a kid in the time of social media.

its worse in many way: cost of living , lower wages , no jobs, gun violence, climate change, social media

I wouldn't say 9/11 was the trigger factor for that. I think you're seeing correlation and mistaking it for causation.

If it isn't done exactly the same way that I did it when I was a child, then it doesn't count

I'd love to have lived in that rose-tinted past where everything was easily affordable, plenty of well-paid and secure jobs were just ripe for the taking, and the streets were violence free; but sadly, in my experience it never existed.

do you have the slightest idea of how much college used to cost 40 years ago? Housing? What about the salary vs cost of those ratio @Vampire_Chicken ?

I dont think kids today have it easy.

baby boomers and gen xers had the easiest childhood

All of human advancement has been for the express purpose of making life easier and less stressful.

BOOMERS: "No one is paying for MY student loans!"

US: "How much was college for you?"

BOOMERS: "I dropped out of school and got a job at the steel mill"

When you're young, everyone older than you must have had an easier time than the one you're having; when you're old, everyone younger than you always seems to have it easier than you did.

I'd say the class you were born into, rather than the year you were born in, was a bigger determinant of how easy you had it (or not). Believe me, I sympathize with people who've been hit by a double whammy of being born into modest means and brought up in painful times.

I appreciate you're looking at things and talking about things from an American perspective, but please keep in mind that it's not a universal experience and a boomer in a different First World country might look back upon the past quite differently. It's never just about the year you were born in.

The Boomers were handed unbridled prosperity and they burned it to ashes.

The Boomers were handed unbridled prosperity and they burned it to ashes.

The Boomers were handed unbridled prosperity and they burned it to ashes.

Very few people I knew personally went on to college after secondary school, because most working-class kids -- like me -- on the estate where I lived had to go straight from school to earning a wage where they could; higher education was out of reach for a lot of us. And for a generation of school leavers in Thatcher's Britain, caught in the middle of one of the worst recessions in living memory, finding and keeping a job wasn't always easy -- and in my experience they didn't pay particularly well, so it was tough to save. So no, I've no idea how much college used to cost 40 years ago. Housing? Dunno about that either, I was born and brought up in rented council housing because my parents couldn't afford to buy; I couldn't afford my first place until I was 30, when I took out a joint mortgage with my wife.

If you think you've got it rough today, trust me: I've been there before. Yes, this is a particularly crappy time for a lot of people, and not just kids either by the way (I was homeless for a spell in 2011), but the 1980s were a lot shittier than any rose-tinted nostalgia might sucker people into believing. There's winners and losers in every generation, every era, sure; but of all the people I knew, a lot of us at that time didn't feel like we were living the lives of winners.