As someone who is in his 20s (for another year!) and dating of the same age, my belief is because the current generation has a real lack of motivation. I think

As someone who is in his 20s (for another year!) and dating of the same age, my belief is because the current generation has a real lack of motivation. I think it is something those of us on sites like this one, and in our field in general do not notice, we tend to surround ourselves with highly driven and motivated people, but we really are the exception to the rule. Roughly 60% of the young women I have dated (generally aged 22 and up, college graduates) had no real future focus. They weren't looking forward to or striving for any sort of goal. They were just sort of existing. Switching tracks a bit, I remember having a conversation with a man about my age, he had an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters in a related field. He was talking about how poorly developed the social skills of many young adults in this area is (true, Puget Sound is a tech haven and a lack of social skills go along with that) and how much he would love to start up a program to teach social skills to engineers. And hey, I agreed, that is a great idea, there is a large market for that in the area, he would have customers lining up around the block! So I asked him why he hadn't done it yet. "Because the government has cut funding to social programs and there is no way I could get money for it." He then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes complaining about how it was the governments fault that he couldn't achieve his dream. When I recommended a small business loan, or even writing up a business proposal and seeking private funding, he brushed my suggestions aside and went back to complaining about how he needed government help to get his idea up off the ground. Everyone on this site knows that if he really had aspirations, he would find a way to make them happen. He's living in an area surrounded by people with 6 figure income and plenty of 7 figure incomes a few miles away, private fund raising alone would easily pay for his minimal expenses to get started. But he wasn't passionate enough to actually do anything, and he is one of the few people I have encountered who have any passion at all. I have had friends (my age group) tell me that I need to stop being so aggressive, stop being so perfectionist, stop working so hard. "Why do you try to do such a good job at everything you do? There is no need for that." Then I walk over to my friends who are in the tech sector. We strive for the best, we talk about what we want to happen in the future, what our dreams our, what we are working towards, what house we want to buy (if any), what projects we want to work on. And we are the lazy ones who don't have enough initiative to found our own start up! (And we all feel guilty about it, we damn well know we should) Then of course there is the Y Combinator crowd, who are fueled by nothing but drive and passion. So, going back to the beginning. A lot of the young adults who have "given up hope" never had any hope to begin with. They sort of wanted a job somewhere, but they didn't want it more than anything else. They didn't desire it, they didn't need it, and they sure as heck didn't make a plan of how exactly to get it.