Why Are American Millennials So Darn Unhappy?

The oldest Millennials will turn 40 years old this year. Yes, the kids are all grown up but they’re terribly unhappy. Many millennials are lonely, burned out and depressed. But, why? This is the most educated, upwardly mobile generation in American history. Yet, the Millennials struggled more than any other age group during the pandemic.

Let’s dig into this and see if we can learn something together.

First, Millennials get a bad wrap. We still think of them as kids, but they aren’t kids anymore. They are labeled as tough to manage, narcissistic, unfocused and lazy.  But, I think that’s more conjecture. Millennials simply want to feel a purpose and have an impact on the world. Who doesn’t? And, they don’t wanna sell their soul to the devil for a paycheck. Fair enough. 

To their credit, the millennials have dramatically changed the workplace.  Employers are more accommodating than ever before, allowing for more flexibility and mobility. Their efforts led to a step-down from business attire to all-jeans, all the time. And, for the first time ever, employees took the upper hand in creating true work/life balance. It was a nice change for everyone.  And, that was before the pandemic created the ultimate employee benefit: working from home in your day-jammies.

Parenting the Millennials

As a parent, we all want our children to do better than we did at their age. But since the first Millennials entered the workforce fifteen years ago, Millennials have experienced slower economic output than any other generation. According to Scott Galloway, for the first time in history, the millennial generation is worse off than their parents were at the same age. That’s troubling considering that the Millennials now make up the largest demographic in our workforce. Perhaps that is reason number one why this generation is so darn unhappy.

Who is to Blame?

I recently listened to a talk by Simon Sinek, a British author and inspirational speaker.  He blames “failed parenting strategies” for the millennial unhappiness. It’s pretty harsh, but he makes some valid points. See, many millennials grew up hearing that they are “special and talented”, that “they can have anything in life”. Those seem like inspirational parenting messages, but they just aren’t true. Particularly when some of those kids found themselves where they didn’t belong. In Honors classes and on sports teams cause the teachers and coaches were afraid of their parents. Those same coaches handed out participation medals and trophies. Trophies that the kids themselves knew they didn’t deserve.  

All those participation trophies were handed out in the vacuum. But, out in the real world, kids find out quickly they aren’t “special”. And, they learn that they simply cannot “have anything in life”. Mom can’t call the boss when the promotion gets delayed. And, in Realville, few of us really get to “make an impact” with our work. Over time they learn that the promotions don’t ever come as quickly as we want. And, they aren’t as special as they once believed. That can feel like failure to them.  

Over the longer term, the kids find themselves falling short of their parent’s (and their own) lofty expectations. According to Lori Gottlieb, author of the book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, their struggles fall into three categories:

1. Difficulty choosing or committing to a satisfactory career path: some of this is a result of choosing careers for which the millennials had no passion. That’s a another function of trying to please Mom and Dad by choosing the high-stress, investment banking gig over teaching high school history and coaching JV Lacrosse.

2. Struggling with relationships: the millennials are putting off marriage until much later in life. Many of those who are in a committed relationship are simply living together outside the bonds of matrimony. There is little permanence in these relationships and certainly no spiritual foundation for the relationship. This impermanence avoids the possibility of divorce, but leads to anxiety over the future since the relationship can be terminated with ease. And, that impermanence is causing them to delay having children.

3. Feeling a sense of emptiness or lack of purpose: the millennials have migrated away from traditional faith in something bigger than themselves. Now that they’re reaching their 40’s, they feel a lack of meaning or purpose in life. Basically “life’s a bitch and then you die”. There is no higher power or larger point to their earthly existence. That lack of faith in a higher power or an after-life can lead to a feeling of emptiness and a host of other problems.

The simple truth is that all that mollycoddling set unrealistic expectations.  And, by limiting our children’s disappointments we created a generation that is simply less resilient. Because kids need to occasionally fail in order to learn resiliency.  And, the result is an entire generation with lower self-esteem than others.  

Once the kids got to college they were mollycoddled even further. Well meaning colleges and universities set about designing “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” to limit the millennial’s exposure to opposing pints of view. Even the most gifted millennials were conditioned to believe they couldn’t handle opposing viewpoints at places like Berkeley and Yale. Places where free speech blossomed in the 60’s. College Professors now routinely must provide “trigger warnings” if class material might possibly cause someone momentary discomfort.

Avoidance Isn’t Immunity

Deep down, we are all trying to out-parent our parents. We will do anything to keep our kids from feeling discomfort or disappointment. But, what if by taking this approach we fail our children? What if we are simply creating adults that are ill-prepared for the ordinary frustrations of adult life? Because avoidance of disappointment doesn’t result in immunity from disappointment. It results in a generation of empty, anxious and confused adults.

Lab Rats

We also can’t forget that this generation is the first to grow up with technology. That alone is a lot to handle. But, it wasn’t just the tech. They were the pioneers of Social Media. The lab rats for Silicon Valley.

It’s  in the longest running, highest stakes sociological experiment in history. That experiment is like Pavlov’s mutt, who was trained to salivate at the sound of a bell.  Only the bell is a series of likes and follows in a meaningless, virtual world.  Constant feedback on life.  And they have a hard time developing deep and meaningful relationships because they grew up watching people get cancelled and unfollowed

But Realville doesn’t work that way. We don’t go through life with constant attaboys over what we cooked for dinner or the memo we drafted for the boss. I imagine that it feels cold after a lifetime of affirmations. And, that lifetime in the social media laboratory is taking it’s toll. A recent research study reports  that certain behaviors on social media were linked to higher likelihood of major depressive disorder (MDD) in millennials.

The millennials also grew up with a sense of impatience. When you were a kid things were different. You had to go to the movie theater, the mall and the record store. You waited for the radio station to play your favorite song-or you called and asked them to play it. That created a sense of patience with the world that served you well. But the millennials grew up in a different world. Imagine growing up with immediate gratification and a total lack of patience. That’s our millennials. They subscribed to Napster and Apple Music and had access to the latest and greatest music available (often free) with the click of a button. No saving up your allowance and no trips to the record store. They introduced us to TiVo, which allowed them to watch television shows whenever they wanted. Later they were the missionaries for movies on-demand and Netflix. They were the first generation to adopt Amazon instead of a trip to the mall. Now we order lightbulbs on-line and are incensed when they don’t show up in 24 hours. And, they were the first generation to experience “go-anywhere” internet service through the magic of wi-fi.

In his book, Stolen Focus, Johann Hari opines that social media exacerbates short-term, immediate reward behavior. It’s not surprising that the “lab rats” are suffering from record-levels of anxiety and depression. It’s not surprising that they are feeling adrift in their careers and relationships. It’s not surprising that they feel a lack of purpose and an overall sense of emptiness. They’ve grown up with unreasonable expectations about the speed at which life’s successes should happen. And, they’ve grown up with a lack of patience in every other aspect of their lives. And, as they ease into their forties, these two forces are crashing into each other with nuclear force. We may well have an entire generation on our hands who will go through life feeling like they got handed a raw-deal.

And, lastly, many of the millennials first learned of a higher power during their first visit to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Going through life is challenging enough. It’s a lot more challenging without some degree of confidence in a higher power than your parents.

So, what do you think about my opinion? Did I get this right? I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment below, especially if you’re a millennial or a parent of a millennial. I promise you’ll hear back from me.

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