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We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension.
For people who are currently teenagers it probably sounds like this: "Once you get a job, which won’t afford you a house, you’ll pay a decent chunk of your salary so the people who managed to destroy the environment and don’t care about you have a better end of life. You’ll not see anything of this money ever again."
And that is without including all the messaging during the pandemic that young people (more towards people in their early 20ies, but still) are at fault for nearly everything.
edit: I should mention that I’m still not discounting social media, I couldn’t, as I know next to nothing about it.
People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
We already had social media at the time (mostly facebook) and yes, I won't deny that there was already something anxious about feeling pressured to always show yourself/self yourself to other. When I look at Instagram today, I feel like it got even worse.
But, as someone still under their 30's, I think we shouldn't also deny what the original commenter said. In the case of Europe (and in my case France), we have seen the come back of extreme conservatism in politics, the slow decay of our public services, the inability for politician to make important decision for the environment, the idea that we will never retire/have a pension (which is not necessarily true but is definitely a strong belief), the imbalance in wealth creeping higher and higher every year, home ownership becoming harder and harder ... Whereas the generation of my parent (those from the 60's-70's) had, in general, a more positive/peaceful outlook on the future, I find that my generation and those younger that me tend to be more skeptical, if not negative.
I really think that the current mental health issues are a combination of multiple factors and that social media is just one (but maybe a big one) of those factor.
The same in Italy. It was very disheartening and certainly contributed to our discontent.
>home ownership becoming harder and harder
This is starting to weigh more and more in our life (mine and my age cohort). The average monthly pay in my region is 1200EUR while the average cost of an house is 250000EUR, so 17 years of salary. On the other hand my father bought two houses with a manual laborer stipend and my mother never worked a day in her life and she had four children. I really don't know when (or better, if) I will be out of my house.
I was super active on reddit though from late college until recently. People go back and forth on whether that's social media, but it definitely didn't help me. Short memes about how awful the world is, you could look at 100 an hour and ruminate for 3 more how messed up the world is. Stories of injustice, both real events and creative writing projects, were available by the dozens. Find something you want to be outraged by and join the sub because it feels good to feel irate with other people.
Again, my mental health took a nosedive years before I got on reddit. But having that echo chamber where the world is terrible and we're all getting taken advantage of was definitely not helpful either.
UK here, 42 years not dead, and my pension plan in my 20s as I started work after University, and most of my 30s too, was to not live long enough to need a pension¹.
I don't think it was anything I thought about at all as a teenager though, nor that teens (or very early 20s) today have it so much in mind. Those I know are far more concerned about being able to afford housing and other essentials² now, pensions are something they can't really plan for until they have some income left after paying for those things.
[1] in pursuit of that plan I invested heavily in alcohol
[2] food, fuel, ...
So from a young age students are basically taught to give up their power if not their lives to authorities, to politics. It has to be politics, it can't come from the individual. So they don't care about freedom or personal sovereignty (that's evil), they ask for government, rules, laws and taxes like would seniors. And they call that protection, if not "progress".
I don't blame you, it's hard to stand across a tidal wave, especially when young. But how about standing out a bit from the herd once and think outside of the political box?
French are generally very interested in politics from youngish age, for better or worse (the amount of outright communism supporters there among young anywhere I spoke to is disheartening, especially for somebody like me who went through proper communism and saw first hand how it always fucks up individuals and nations for generations, and consistently fails to deliver on every single promise that looks nice on paper). I attribute this to their naivety, seeing wrong in the world and instinctively going for some direct quick solution, despite proofs that it never worked that way and side effects were nasty.
French and some other southern states have really rich social support, even in decades it will be above-average for western world. So french complaining about it going south need to travel the world a bit and get a reality check.
There is too much information readily available, and humans for some reason tend to focus much more on negative part, as do media. So if already pre-teens are watching gruesome combat footage, hardcore porn, reading about depressing future prospects re climate and environment, demographic curves, terrorism and so on and on... its hard even on grown ups, and not even kids that should be carelessly running outside without a worry in their head. It can be just few in the group/class, but they will easily 'spoil the rest of the basket'.
Teen years are about forming a self image - social media fucks that up in so many ways - it's really next level compared to what my generation had growing up. Glad it was just starting when I was a teenager.
Is this the root cause forental health issues? I don't think so. I'd rate climate change, uncertainty and media living of controversial topics and FUD as serious reasons as well. All topped by social pressure. And all of that is drven, enabled and aggrevated by the current social media. We will figure it out, as we figured out mass media before. Maybe we just started figuring it out. Until er do so, we will pay a price.
Would ve interesting to hear what the affected people, teenagers, have to say about all that.
I remember my history teacher telling us about it and people saying they knew, and they also knew that they couldn't change it unless boomers were on board, which they weren't at the time, and definitely still in the same position.
This is happening, based on my own experience. I am 22, I have a safe job with an above average salary but I still cannot find an apartment with my partner. I can’t imagine affording my own place with the current prices, especially not at the age my parents were able to. And all of that concerns are completely ignoring the current price hikes which make everything even worse.
For as long as I can remember teachers and my parents told me that the pension system won’t be able to support my generation. Everybody my age who can afford to does not expect any substantial pension payments and tries to support the own future by own investments (which is pretty hard when you pay +400€/mo into the mandatory public pension)
The situation is even worse for people with lower incomes.
This is not projection. Admittedly, this is my experience. But I know many many people who had similar experiences when they first entered the workforce.
Do you have an above average salary for the region you're looking for the apartment in? If so, then who's getting those apartments, if the majority of people cannot afford them? Is this a special case like SF where there's just not enough apartments being built for the size of population?
> “People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.”
But you are doing just the same thing by dismissing peoples perspectives and opinions as irrelevant….
Nope, he is not doing the same.
He basically says "people shouldn't project their own (older age) concerns as universal".
He doesn't say there are no universal social issues.
So dismissing "peoples perspectives and opinions as irrelevant" is perfectly fine, if they are irrelevant to the group they're projected to.
- they must pay 20-30% of their income, over their entire life, for other people's pension,
- they do not get a pension themself,
- the people whose pension they must pay have screwed them on multiple "quality of life" issues
Same for most of my peers.
Social security is very popular among the working classes (especially retired ofc) and deeply unpopular among the upper classes who see it as a tax burden on them that makes their workers lazy.
they should be. Perhaps not worry or be anxious about it, but definitely should know about the financial implications of having to retire one day, and how they could fund that retirement. May be even work on how one might fund an early retirement, etc.
Not thinking about long term financial planning is a failing of the education system (or parents, as it falls onto them when the state fails on policy grounds).
A lot of them will be doing that, yes. They're teenagers until their 20th birthday, and a lot of people start to work between 16 and 20. In Germany, all of them will be paying a lot of their paycheck for the current pensioners.
It's called a generational contract here, and it boils down to current workers paying the current pensions - so when theyre ready for theirs, it will be the responsibility of that workforce to shoulder that burden.
This will fail within the next 20-30 years, realistically speaking and arguably already failed, as current pensioners are often extremely poor.
The parent comment was spot on with their comment wrt Germany, which was the context they explicitly set
If you're worried about that in your youth you're setting yourself up for a boring and depressing life. Youth should be about exploration, taking on challenges and risks, figuring out what you want to do in life - not thinking about what you're going to do past your productive years.
I was actually just talking with a teacher friend about this very thing (he lives in Germany btw). He was essentially expressing his surprise that the high-school students (well Gymnasium technically), were at the age of ~17-19 already planning their whole live in terms of career, money etc.. That is definitely very different to how it was back when I was a teenager, where one essentially started studying what one was interested in, with career paths being somewhat secondary.
So in short, anecdotal evidence is that yes teenagers are already thinking about their pensions now.
> People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
While this is correct, we should also not project our memory of what it was to be a teenager > 10 years ago, onto todays teenagers.
Being expected to go to a good college, and that being seen as a gateway to decent standard of living is having an effect on kids for sure.
German here. Yes we absolutely fucking did, especially as our parents pushed us from early on to obtain as much education as we could because unlike even in the 80s, manual labor would not be enough to sustain a family or to have a comfortable retirement.
It's a rather big jump from being concerned about one's future (and the society's future) to having mental issues just from that. It's also not very constructive to perpetuate the idea that being careless about the future right way to live one's teenage years.
Young people are definitely extremely aware that they sacrificed a lot over the last two years to protect the elderly and now the elderly are not being asked to contribute back.
This is before you consider climate change, about which young people are generally much more informed and concerned.
Boomers don’t care because it won’t affect them. I know that sounds hyperbolic but I genuinely think it’s true. Those who are aware of the problems focus on helping their immediate descendants.
