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I'm not American but I can sense the feeling is the same here in Europe. I wouldn't want to be a younger man right now. I feel like on top of every possible str

I'm not American but I can sense the feeling is the same here in Europe. I wouldn't want to be a younger man right now. I feel like on top of every possible struggles they're facing: low wages, low sense of meaning, social media addiction, scarce opportunities for true connections... we're treating them with very little empathy and consideration, they're just "whining", wish I knew how to help beyond my modest occasional contributions.

pif 1y ago
> they're just "whining" Many of them, indeed, are just whining. And they keep whining without realizing how spoiled they are. But (at least) a few of them are having good ideas and, especially, implementing them with professionalism and passion.
- mindwok 1y ago
  Society is failing these people. In some ways, they’re given the most advanced amenities humanity has ever been able to offer: fastest internet, the nicest cars, affordable global travel. In other areas, society is completely failing them. Connection, meaning, career prospects. They’re spoiled in some ways, completely lost in others. It’s important we don’t ignore that.
  - exitb 1y ago
    I can't wrap my head around "society failing people" - society is people. Average person has no influence, not even a little bit, on any of those things. Meanwhile, a small subset of the people have all the influence and they mostly operate in their own self-interest.
    - mindwok 1y ago
      I don’t mean to discharge responsibility. We are society, and the onus is on us to push for a better way of doing things.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > I can't wrap my head around "society failing people" - society is people. Effectively, societies are Boomers and older generations. These form the majority of the population that is of voting age and they hold most of the financial (in stocks and real estate ownership) and executive power. So yes, it can be said that society fails the younger generation.
    - imtringued 1y ago
      I disagree, everyone operates in their own short term self-interest, leading to a massive scale prisoners dilemma and crab bucket mentality. The vast majority on this planet believe in a perverse expected value calculation: probability of becoming a billionaire * billion dollars > assets in fair society where "assets in fair society" is higher than it currently is, maybe 2x or 3x, but it pales in comparison to the chance at 10000x and the optimism that distorts the "probability of becoming a billionaire" to be higher than it really is. There is a perceived equilibrium between the remote possibility of undoing all the bad things that happened during the course of your life instantly and a more just society that merely gives you a little bit more money, but otherwise keeps most things the same, but with less stress and conflict.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
    Advanced amenities honestly is a very bad excuse for lack of empathy towards the younger generations. I was born in 82 so I had the experience of life without mobile phones, cheap travel, Netflix, etc. Life wasn't harder in practice, because you don't miss things that aren't basic needs and that no one has or don't even exist. We had plenty of fun with what we had, we weren't thinking "oh, my life is so hard because I can't choose what I see on the TV or book a plane ticket from a tiny device in my pocket". If I went back in time and had all those things, I don't think my life would have been happier or easier. (As an aside, the exception to this is medicine. For example, many cancers that could kill you easily back then have now a much better survival rate. That of course does make life much better for people who have such problems. But for those of us that are/were healthy, life wasn't worse back then). You know what you do miss if you don't have it, and can make your life more miserable? Not being able to afford a home, raise a family, etc. Basic needs, and things that your parents and other people that you know had. That's a real problem. Not having Netflix or a smartphone when it wasn't even a thing is just not a real problem, it was a non-issue, and using it as an argument to minimize young people's complaints is dishonest.
- Sir_Twist 1y ago
  > And they keep whining without realizing how spoiled they are. I think two things can be true at once: that there are many good things to appreciate about the modern world, and that the concerns they are raising are legitimate. There is room to have a bit of empathy here.
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
  Alice, 29 years old, magistrate, 3,400 euros per month: "I'll never be able to buy an apartment in Paris even though I'm among the best-paid people in France" (https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-ans-magistrate-3-400-euros-par-mois-je-ne-pourrai-jamais-acheter-un-appart-a-paris-alors-que-je-suis-parmi-les-gens-les-mieux-payes-en-france_6624770_4401467.html https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-an...) They aren't whining. They have it objectively and measurably worse than previous generations, by a huge margin.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    That ~€41k is "among the best paid people in France" is a stunning illustration of just how incredibly low pay in Europe is. Of course, even increasing salaries ten-fold wouldn't help if they don't actually build enough homes.
    - jansan 1y ago
      There is something off with that number. I am not from France (but from a neighboring country), but with 3.400 euros per month you are not among the best paid people in France.
      - psini 1y ago
        [dead]
      - Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
        I suppose she's talking about net salary. Here is a histogram for France: https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-salaires-mensuels-nets-en-equivalent-temps-plein-en-france/#:~:text=On%20constate%20qu'environ%209,et%202%20000%20€%20nets. https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-s... According to that, she's definitely in the top 20%. Of course "among the best paid people" is ambiguous depending on how much "top" you consider, but I think being in the top 20% it makes sense to say that. PS: and I suppose (although it's hard to find data) that if we look at people in her age bracket, she will be in a higher percentile.
- atoav 1y ago
  Happiness is more complex than your comment would make it seem. There is no absolute bar you can pass after which you habe to be happy. Happieness is fundamentally relative, since happiness is the gap between where you want to be and where you are. So one part of this generation being unhappy is thst their life on average got objectively harder than those of their parents. Who hasn't heard the story of a boomer who as a 20-something bought a house from the money made in a job that wouldn't even pay rent these days. But that isn't all, since happiness is relative the youth today sees a fictional image of what they are supposed to live like every day in the internet and most of them are nowhere close to that. So it both became objectibely harder and the bar moved up at the same time, so if more people whine, it is because they have reason to. I don't say life wasn't hard in the past decades, but people had the sense that if they worked hard, they could potentially reach a state that felt good to them. This is less true today. Even in my generation (Millenials) many have given up even considering the image of retirement, because our retirement is a value that we know will be sacrificed to the capitalist gods, like the whole damn planet.
  - pif 1y ago
    > Who hasn't heard the story of a boomer who as a 20-something bought a house ... Too bad today's 20-something people would just scoff at the house the boomer grew his family in!
    - harimau777 1y ago
      I don't think that's actually the case. People are more than happy to pack into tiny urban studio apartments and live in "bad neighborhoods".
    - atoav 1y ago
      > Too bad today's 20-something people would just scoff at the house the boomer grew his family in! Care to explain why stating that this generation had it easier would constitute "scoffing" at the house? If anything I'd love it if any generation would get the same chance. Society isn't a zero sum game where you have to make it worse for others to have it better for yourself.
hypertele-Xii 1y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I think God is kind of a deadbeat unfortunately.
  - hypertele-Xii 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - saagarjha 1y ago
      Most people are.
- Juliate 1y ago
  Who would, in their decent mind, worship a (all powerful and knowing?) god that satisfies itself with the very concept of losers? That's not a god you're after, it's a (very telling) flag.
- monsieurgaufre 1y ago
  God does not exist.
Tadpole9181 1y ago
I'm not sure this is true. I feel like I am constantly reading about the problems facing young men. Every article about loneliness - young men. Every article about political swings - young men. Every article about economic anxiety or wages - young men. Every article about declining birth rates - young men. It'd make a dangerous drinking game at this point to take a shot any time the top comment on any piece of news is "young men". Moreso if we take another on claims said "young men" aren't being talked about / cared for. And this bleeds into life. Nearly every discussion on politics or social ideas or religion somehow hones it's focus on young men. > we're treating them with very little empathy and consideration, they're just "whining" And to specifically bring up this part, young men are choosing at an alarming rate to follow people like Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk. They are becoming less compatible with equitable society and, notably, the women in their age bracket. The complaint often isn't that they're "whining", it's that they push against ideas like equality with women and those are non-negotiable. And, as a result, they're exacerbating the problem, as those women would rather not date anyone than date someone who actively campaigns against their interests. This, in turn, makes it harder to be empathetic. "Dating is hard" is true in the modern world. But it's even more true when you just posted a joke on social media that blue haired women have mental illness or a "western vs Asian woman" meme or retweeted some hyper-masculinity influencer. When this gets talked about and women directly state "I don't like how men my age talk to/about me", people often act like the women are being unreasonable and unempathetic - as if the men are owed relationships and women just need to compromise and see things from the other person's shoes. But rarely is the answer that young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. And they simply aren't willing to change that. What is anyone supposed to do about that, exactly?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. You're confusing the symptoms for the cause. The question people are asking is what about our society is driving these behaviors. What is making someone like Andrew Tate appealing to a young men? These are young people, why are you blaming them for not knowing better instead asking why they aren't being taught better?
o_nate 1y ago
If you click through to the breakdowns by gender, you'll see the despair numbers are actually higher in young women than in young men. So this isn't a male-only issue.
- busterarm 1y ago
  My niece just graduated two years ago summa cum laude with both a BA and a BS. Her entire peer group is entirely unemployed, in NY and CA, and basically living off of seasonal part time gigs where they can even get them. _ONE_ of her friends managed to snag a job as a NYC Sanitation worker. In fact, she's flying across the country and staying with a friend for the next four months just to do an internship at a state park after being ghosted by all of the several hundred other opportunities she's applied for...
  - giardini 1y ago
    busterarms says <"My niece just graduated two years ago summa cum laude with both a BA and a BS" - in what fields?
    - busterarm 1y ago
      ooh i also have to correct myself, BFA & BS. I'm not going to give too much more detail here. Obviously not STEM but nothing fluffy.
      - assword 1y ago
        > I'm not going to give too much more detail here. Obviously not STEM but nothing fluffy. Which letter? From my (probably mistaken) perspective S usually requires a PhD to get into the field and if you get that far, it’s a battle for a handful of poorly paid positions waiting for you T doesn’t need too much explanation here. Not great right now E alright, but seems to be pretty sparse. A lot of actual engineering positions seem to have been outsourced long ago. Might also be hard to compete with just an undergrad. M probably the most valuable right now IMO. Wide range of jobs you could have available, often decent if not high paying, but outside of those (if you can get them) you might as well be a philosopher. The STEM push seemed to be a grift through and through.

pif 1y ago

> they're just "whining" Many of them, indeed, are just whining. And they keep whining without realizing how spoiled they are. But (at least) a few of them are having good ideas and, especially, implementing them with professionalism and passion.

mindwok 1y ago
Society is failing these people. In some ways, they’re given the most advanced amenities humanity has ever been able to offer: fastest internet, the nicest cars, affordable global travel. In other areas, society is completely failing them. Connection, meaning, career prospects. They’re spoiled in some ways, completely lost in others. It’s important we don’t ignore that.
- exitb 1y ago
  I can't wrap my head around "society failing people" - society is people. Average person has no influence, not even a little bit, on any of those things. Meanwhile, a small subset of the people have all the influence and they mostly operate in their own self-interest.
  - mindwok 1y ago
    I don’t mean to discharge responsibility. We are society, and the onus is on us to push for a better way of doing things.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > I can't wrap my head around "society failing people" - society is people. Effectively, societies are Boomers and older generations. These form the majority of the population that is of voting age and they hold most of the financial (in stocks and real estate ownership) and executive power. So yes, it can be said that society fails the younger generation.
  - imtringued 1y ago
    I disagree, everyone operates in their own short term self-interest, leading to a massive scale prisoners dilemma and crab bucket mentality. The vast majority on this planet believe in a perverse expected value calculation: probability of becoming a billionaire * billion dollars > assets in fair society where "assets in fair society" is higher than it currently is, maybe 2x or 3x, but it pales in comparison to the chance at 10000x and the optimism that distorts the "probability of becoming a billionaire" to be higher than it really is. There is a perceived equilibrium between the remote possibility of undoing all the bad things that happened during the course of your life instantly and a more just society that merely gives you a little bit more money, but otherwise keeps most things the same, but with less stress and conflict.
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
  Advanced amenities honestly is a very bad excuse for lack of empathy towards the younger generations. I was born in 82 so I had the experience of life without mobile phones, cheap travel, Netflix, etc. Life wasn't harder in practice, because you don't miss things that aren't basic needs and that no one has or don't even exist. We had plenty of fun with what we had, we weren't thinking "oh, my life is so hard because I can't choose what I see on the TV or book a plane ticket from a tiny device in my pocket". If I went back in time and had all those things, I don't think my life would have been happier or easier. (As an aside, the exception to this is medicine. For example, many cancers that could kill you easily back then have now a much better survival rate. That of course does make life much better for people who have such problems. But for those of us that are/were healthy, life wasn't worse back then). You know what you do miss if you don't have it, and can make your life more miserable? Not being able to afford a home, raise a family, etc. Basic needs, and things that your parents and other people that you know had. That's a real problem. Not having Netflix or a smartphone when it wasn't even a thing is just not a real problem, it was a non-issue, and using it as an argument to minimize young people's complaints is dishonest.
Sir_Twist 1y ago
> And they keep whining without realizing how spoiled they are. I think two things can be true at once: that there are many good things to appreciate about the modern world, and that the concerns they are raising are legitimate. There is room to have a bit of empathy here.
Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
Alice, 29 years old, magistrate, 3,400 euros per month: "I'll never be able to buy an apartment in Paris even though I'm among the best-paid people in France" (https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-ans-magistrate-3-400-euros-par-mois-je-ne-pourrai-jamais-acheter-un-appart-a-paris-alors-que-je-suis-parmi-les-gens-les-mieux-payes-en-france_6624770_4401467.html https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2025/07/28/alice-29-an...) They aren't whining. They have it objectively and measurably worse than previous generations, by a huge margin.
- CalRobert 1y ago
  That ~€41k is "among the best paid people in France" is a stunning illustration of just how incredibly low pay in Europe is. Of course, even increasing salaries ten-fold wouldn't help if they don't actually build enough homes.
  - jansan 1y ago
    There is something off with that number. I am not from France (but from a neighboring country), but with 3.400 euros per month you are not among the best paid people in France.
    - psini 1y ago
      [dead]
    - Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
      I suppose she's talking about net salary. Here is a histogram for France: https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-salaires-mensuels-nets-en-equivalent-temps-plein-en-france/#:~:text=On%20constate%20qu'environ%209,et%202%20000%20€%20nets. https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-s... According to that, she's definitely in the top 20%. Of course "among the best paid people" is ambiguous depending on how much "top" you consider, but I think being in the top 20% it makes sense to say that. PS: and I suppose (although it's hard to find data) that if we look at people in her age bracket, she will be in a higher percentile.
atoav 1y ago
Happiness is more complex than your comment would make it seem. There is no absolute bar you can pass after which you habe to be happy. Happieness is fundamentally relative, since happiness is the gap between where you want to be and where you are. So one part of this generation being unhappy is thst their life on average got objectively harder than those of their parents. Who hasn't heard the story of a boomer who as a 20-something bought a house from the money made in a job that wouldn't even pay rent these days. But that isn't all, since happiness is relative the youth today sees a fictional image of what they are supposed to live like every day in the internet and most of them are nowhere close to that. So it both became objectibely harder and the bar moved up at the same time, so if more people whine, it is because they have reason to. I don't say life wasn't hard in the past decades, but people had the sense that if they worked hard, they could potentially reach a state that felt good to them. This is less true today. Even in my generation (Millenials) many have given up even considering the image of retirement, because our retirement is a value that we know will be sacrificed to the capitalist gods, like the whole damn planet.
- pif 1y ago
  > Who hasn't heard the story of a boomer who as a 20-something bought a house ... Too bad today's 20-something people would just scoff at the house the boomer grew his family in!
  - harimau777 1y ago
    I don't think that's actually the case. People are more than happy to pack into tiny urban studio apartments and live in "bad neighborhoods".
  - atoav 1y ago
    > Too bad today's 20-something people would just scoff at the house the boomer grew his family in! Care to explain why stating that this generation had it easier would constitute "scoffing" at the house? If anything I'd love it if any generation would get the same chance. Society isn't a zero sum game where you have to make it worse for others to have it better for yourself.

hypertele-Xii 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
saagarjha 1y ago
I think God is kind of a deadbeat unfortunately.
- hypertele-Xii 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    Most people are.
Juliate 1y ago
Who would, in their decent mind, worship a (all powerful and knowing?) god that satisfies itself with the very concept of losers? That's not a god you're after, it's a (very telling) flag.
monsieurgaufre 1y ago
God does not exist.

Tadpole9181 1y ago

I'm not sure this is true. I feel like I am constantly reading about the problems facing young men. Every article about loneliness - young men. Every article about political swings - young men. Every article about economic anxiety or wages - young men. Every article about declining birth rates - young men. It'd make a dangerous drinking game at this point to take a shot any time the top comment on any piece of news is "young men". Moreso if we take another on claims said "young men" aren't being talked about / cared for. And this bleeds into life. Nearly every discussion on politics or social ideas or religion somehow hones it's focus on young men. > we're treating them with very little empathy and consideration, they're just "whining" And to specifically bring up this part, young men are choosing at an alarming rate to follow people like Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk. They are becoming less compatible with equitable society and, notably, the women in their age bracket. The complaint often isn't that they're "whining", it's that they push against ideas like equality with women and those are non-negotiable. And, as a result, they're exacerbating the problem, as those women would rather not date anyone than date someone who actively campaigns against their interests. This, in turn, makes it harder to be empathetic. "Dating is hard" is true in the modern world. But it's even more true when you just posted a joke on social media that blue haired women have mental illness or a "western vs Asian woman" meme or retweeted some hyper-masculinity influencer. When this gets talked about and women directly state "I don't like how men my age talk to/about me", people often act like the women are being unreasonable and unempathetic - as if the men are owed relationships and women just need to compromise and see things from the other person's shoes. But rarely is the answer that young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. And they simply aren't willing to change that. What is anyone supposed to do about that, exactly?

Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> young men have a crisis of self-selecting bad role models, putting less (or no) effort into their appearance and education, holding gross sociopolitical beliefs, and not developing the emotional and household maturity an adult woman expects. You're confusing the symptoms for the cause. The question people are asking is what about our society is driving these behaviors. What is making someone like Andrew Tate appealing to a young men? These are young people, why are you blaming them for not knowing better instead asking why they aren't being taught better?

o_nate 1y ago

If you click through to the breakdowns by gender, you'll see the despair numbers are actually higher in young women than in young men. So this isn't a male-only issue.

busterarm 1y ago
My niece just graduated two years ago summa cum laude with both a BA and a BS. Her entire peer group is entirely unemployed, in NY and CA, and basically living off of seasonal part time gigs where they can even get them. _ONE_ of her friends managed to snag a job as a NYC Sanitation worker. In fact, she's flying across the country and staying with a friend for the next four months just to do an internship at a state park after being ghosted by all of the several hundred other opportunities she's applied for...
- giardini 1y ago
  busterarms says <"My niece just graduated two years ago summa cum laude with both a BA and a BS" - in what fields?
  - busterarm 1y ago
    ooh i also have to correct myself, BFA & BS. I'm not going to give too much more detail here. Obviously not STEM but nothing fluffy.
    - assword 1y ago
      > I'm not going to give too much more detail here. Obviously not STEM but nothing fluffy. Which letter? From my (probably mistaken) perspective S usually requires a PhD to get into the field and if you get that far, it’s a battle for a handful of poorly paid positions waiting for you T doesn’t need too much explanation here. Not great right now E alright, but seems to be pretty sparse. A lot of actual engineering positions seem to have been outsourced long ago. Might also be hard to compete with just an undergrad. M probably the most valuable right now IMO. Wide range of jobs you could have available, often decent if not high paying, but outside of those (if you can get them) you might as well be a philosopher. The STEM push seemed to be a grift through and through.