There will be an entire branch of psychology opened up for kids who were born between 2006-2021. War, climate change, Trump, COVID, more war, more war? On its own, the fact that they’re not spending every waking hour in ceaseless screaming is worth writing a few papers on.
I mean…lots of kids have had to deal with worse…my main frustration is that we could have given them so much better with relative ease.
My grandparents were born in the 30s, growing up in the Great Depression (all but one, who had the awful luck to be born in the Philippines, and instead of the depression, got to experience brutal Japanese occupation). That’s far worse than what American kids as a demographic are growing up with now, but that was entirely out of the hands of their parents to avoid.
I feel like for today’s teens, it’s not that bad, but it’s bad because of selfishness and greed rather than huge national or global tragedy.
I don’t know that the two events are particularly comparable. The misery level might be higher for people like your grandparents, but the fact that some of what’s going on now is happening inside the house during Thanksgiving dinner and another good chunk of it is being shown and talked about on YouTube as it happens, and a lot of people who are supposed to be protecting them aren’t… The circumstances, access, and response is worse, even if the misery itself isn’t as bad.
Still, I guess that illuminates how the “suffering Olympics” isn’t super helpful to these discussions. Every generation has something, and just because another generation also suffered doesn’t mean that this generation’s suffering is invalid.
maybe your worldview is a liiiitle bit too US-centric, or at least too 1st-world centric? Ah, don’t worry your mediocre little head about it!
