Stress and Gen-Y

Arianna Huffington recently released an article about Millennials being the most stressed generation. If you haven’t read it click here.

This article made a lot of excellent points on why GEN-Y’s are stressed, listing student debt and the workforce as some of the main reasons.

One thing I have a problem doing is reading the comments below articles, and this does nothing but infuriate me. It was no different for this article. Comments consisted of a bunch of Baby-Boomers putting the blame on Millenials for being this way. Now I usually take blame for something that I did wrong, but the fact is I did nothing wrong. To have a generation that had everything handed to them in the prime years of the United States economy try to put me down even further shows a clear sight of ageism in the United States that isn’t being addressed whatsoever. Ageism is typically thought of as discriminating against older people, but as the general population ages, and a majority of individuals in the work force are between the ages of 40-60, there is a clear discrimination of young people entering the workforce. Baby-boomers will deny it. The same way they can deny that racism doesn’t exist when whites have been “overprivleged” for years. The same way they deny sexism when “women” can’t even make near the salary of a man in the workforce. I don’t think that the intensity of this is as bad as other “-ism’s”, but I do feel like there is  some discrimination going on here. The same way they discriminate against all minorities; they are now discriminating against their own children.

Now I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but some of the comments related to the article are so self-centered and have no regard to even try to think about what GEN-Y is going through.

Here’s a few examples:

“Stress is our internal reaction to these outside stimuli. Therefore, we all create our own stress by the reaction we choose. That’s why age and perspective make older generations progressively less stressed.”

Trying to relate to us, as if you have had to go through the same thing we’re going through. Look at how booming the US economy was when you started to work.

“Put down the video games and Red Bull, pick-up a Help Wanted section. If you’re not less stressed, at least your parents will be.”

Yes, because we are young, all of us must be irresponsible. None of us are looking for jobs. We just want a “free ride”.

My favorite is the multiple people who blame the president for us being stressed, because he hasn’t added more jobs.

The truth is we know that the job market is uneasy. We have been told for the past 6 years it will be tough to find a job, so we have come to learn to live with it. While it does cause some stress it is not the main reason.

The reason for stress is the mentality that it is virtually impossible for us to “fit-in” at work. We are overworked and underpaid. We try so hard to prove that we can make it, and that we are just as qualified as everyone else, but we are young, so we can’t be smart. We are forced to conform to the idea of working under the terms of the company we work for, because we can’t quit as finding another job could be next to impossible. The corporations win again, as there are thousands of people waiting to fill our job.

When I read articles like this, I feel empowered to voice my opinion. There will be no changes until other generations will allow changes to be made. This cannot be done by only our generation. We need help from the older generations, which it doesn’t seem like we will be getting anytime soon.

I hope GEN-Y fights for these changes. There are many things that need to be changed in society today. It is ridiculous that the Baby Boomers want us to be like them and act like them, because this is the only way to behave in the world. I refuse to conform to this idea that society is screwed up and we have to live with it like GEN-X. Let’s make a difference! Let’s improve the world for the better. We are the generation of change, so lets make change happen.