If you believe the headlines of respected publications, the world is flying into the abyss, and the main engine of this apocalypse is modern youth, who have gone crazy en masse, Ukr.Media reports.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic — they've all been competing for the last few years to write the most dramatic obituary for the mental health of twenty-somethings. Anxiety is skyrocketing, depression is the norm, and kids themselves are supposedly fragile creatures with screens for eyes, incapable of surviving without a therapist.
You read this and involuntarily start looking for the bunker.
But here I see another statistic. And it seems we've all been fooled a little.
Recently, Scientific American, followed by several other institutions, hinted: listen, kids are actually doing pretty well. Even better than we were at their age.
Scientists have pulled together decades of data and found something surprising. It turns out that empathy among young people is now at its highest level in 40 years. The narcissism that the TikTok generation is so fond of criticizing has been steadily declining since its peak in 2009. They get into fights less often, get drunk in garages less often, and, surprisingly, they score better on emotional intelligence tests.
I remember myself and my peers in the late 90s. We were wild. Our main emotional regulation skill was the ability to give in or pretend we didn't care. When I look at today's teenagers, who discuss personal boundaries and know what toxicity is, I feel a slight twinge of envy. They are smarter than us. They are kinder than us.
So why are we so obsessed with hiding them?
First, panic sells well. The news item “Teenagers are suffering en masse” will get a million views. The news item “Most young people are quite satisfied with their lives” (and studies from 2024-2025 say exactly that) will get lost on the second page.
Secondly, the problem is in our own memory. Harvard psychologists once did a brilliant thing: they compared interviews with students recorded half a century ago with how these same people remember their youth now. Do you know what these venerable pensioners said? How confidently they went towards the goal, how bravely they overcame obstacles, how strong their friendships were. Real titans of the spirit. And then the researchers played them old tapes. And it turned out that then, in their twenties, these “titans” were just as scared, lonely and confused as anyone else.
Our memory works like a cunning filter on Instagram — smoothing out the wrinkles of the past. The bad is quickly forgotten. A D on an exam or a broken heart at eighteen seemed like the end of the world, and now we remember it with a condescending smile over a glass of wine. And through these rose-colored glasses of our own invented coolness, we look at the new generation and shake our heads: “We weren't like that.”
There were! There were even worse ones
Of course, the world is not a safer place today. Pandemics, wars, economic uncertainty, dopamine-burning smartphones are all real challenges. But somehow, these kids have learned to live with them. Perhaps the same conscious parenting that we sometimes laugh at has worked. Yes, dealing with every tear a child sheds can be funny at times, but it seems to work better than a belt and a “because I said so” line.
Maybe growing up is always a little painful. But these kids will be fine. They'll figure it out. The main thing is that we, with our anxieties and unsolicited expert opinions, simply don't interfere with their lives.
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