Ken Larsen's web site - Millennial Stress
The Millennial generation has way more stress on it than the Baby Boomer generation ever had. In 2019 a 25 year old female friend was a border at my house for four months. Conversations with her motivated me to write this web page.
| Item | 1960s - Baby Boomer (me) | 2019 - Millennial (e.g. my female friend) |
| College funding | I emerged from college with no debt. My parents even gave me a brand new car as a graduation gift. | Has a mountain of college debt. State governments dramatically cut back their funding of state universities. This resulted in huge increases in the cost of tuition. |
| Job hunting | Got a job with IBM almost immediately. | Companies are far more reluctant to hire. Many jobs have been shifted to Mexico and Asia. |
| Job retention | Layoffs were rare | Layoffs are common place |
| Pensions | Routine | rare |
| Health insurance | Routine | Reluctantly given; doesn't adequately cover needs |
| World population | World population in 1965 was 3 billion. |
World population in 2019 is 7.7 billion ... more than double what it
was in 1965. More people => more stress (e.g. heavier
traffic and longer commute times) + more pollution +
higher probability of war. Exploding world population growth is our number 1 problem (It is the cause of global warming.) |
| Family | Mom stayed at home, fewer divorces, extended families lived close together | Both parents worked, lots of divorces, extended families are often widely dispersed |
| Housing | My first job (at IBM) paid enough to permit me to afford an apartment by myself. | Many millennials have to share housing, because housing takes a bigger chunk of their salary. This is particularly true in the area where I live (Chapel Hill, NC). |
| Social media | No internet, no social media to roil passions | Internet + social media roil passions |
| Social skills | Texting and video games did not exist. Human interaction was face-to-face, so social skills are much more refined than those of millennials. Communication is 55-38-7 meaning that 55% is body language, 38% is tone-of-voice, but only 7% is words spoken. Text communication is only 7%. |
Spend hours texting each other and playing video games. Social
skills are much lower than those of baby boomers. My female
friend told me that her guy friends are all into video games;
females are not. MRIs show screen time linked to lower brain development in preschoolers (CNN Nov 4, 2019) |
| Gun violence |
School shootings, cop killings were rare. Gun technology was significantly less in the 1960s, and the general public rarely owned military-style weapons. |
School shootings, cop killings are commonplace. Gun technology has significantly risen, and ownership of military weapons is no longer restricted to the military. |
| Television | In the 1960s there were three major TV networks and no cable TV. You bought a TV and affixed an antenna to your roof. There was no monthly cable bill. | A dizzying number of cable TV channels exist, and costs vary substantially. |
| Phone | Communication was via dial-up phone. There were no cellphones. | Cellphones are ubiquitous, and the options and costs are bewildering and potentially very expensive. |
| Technology | There was no internet. If you wanted to research a subject, you had to walk to the nearest library. Research took a lot of time, but it was the same for everyone regardless of whether you were rich or poor. | The internet makes research fast, but to keep abreast of technology, you have to upgrade your phones and computers every few years. This widens the gap between the rich and the poor. The poor can't keep up and fall further behind the rich. |
| Religion | I've been an atheist my whole life. I kept quiet about it, because it was bad etiquette to discuss religion. | My friend tells me that all her guy friends are all atheists. Her female friends are not. Religion is openly discussed on the internet. |
In my opinion, all this "millennial stress" explains the rise in gun violence, divorces, suicides, and other negative behavior.
If this disproportionate amount of stress were not enough, all generations are being bombarded by brainwashing. [details]
Ken Larsen's advice to the millennial generation
Generational Differences chart (found online on November 6, 2019)