It’s hard for young people these days. Whether it’s harder than it was for young people of past generations is an unhelpful discussion; they live now, and comparisons do little to address the problems they face now. But when I saw that 25% of people aged 18 to 24 had seriously contemplated suicide in the past 30 days, I was shocked.
Sure, dumping COVID-19 atop a future where the promises made of a decent future was understandably depressing, but suicidal ideation is a huge step past “the blues” into mental illness. The reasons for this are no doubt complex, and there are a great many factors that produced this situation. This made me wonder why The Atlantic published lawyer cum social activist Jill Filipovic’s identification of what’s to blame for such a bleak outlook on life.
Millennials, born from 1980 to 1996, are the best-educated generation in American history, and the most indebted for it. They are the largest adult generation, at 22 percent of the U.S. population, and yet hold only 3 percent of the country’s wealth (when Boomers were young adults, they held 21 percent). From 2009 to 2016, Millennial homeownership rates actually fell by 18 percent. A 2015 Census report found that 20 percent of Millennials live in poverty.
It’s quite curious why Millennial home ownership rates are so low, given that most generational wealth was accumulated through home ownership. But then, it’s likely due to the pervasive “expert” opinions pushed at Millennials that home ownership is a bad investment, even though they get a durable asset that either holds or increases in value, plus they get to live there. Instead, they get to rent, which means they pay money out to live in a place until they walk away from it without a dime for having lived there.
So what’s to blame? Jill has a theory.
The list of answers to “How did Millennials get here?” is long, but one reason stands out: Millennials are the incarceration generation. From cradle through childhood to parenthood and near middle age, Millennial lives have been shaped and stymied by policing and prisons.
In the single decade from 1980 to 1990, thanks in no small part to the War on Drugs, the number of people in U.S. prisons more than doubled. It peaked in 2009, having exploded by 700 percent since 1972. Although incarceration rates are now declining, they are not going down nearly as quickly as they went up. Indeed, if the pace of decline continues, it will take close to a century for the number of people in prison to reach what it was in 1980. Even a more modest goal, such as halving the number of current prisoners, wouldn’t be achieved until nearly all Millennials are in their graves.
If this seems like a non-sequitur, that’s only because it is. What does the crack epidemic* of the ’80s and ’90s have to do with Millennials? And what does the percentage increase since 1972 mean anyway?
No living generation has made it through the incarceration explosion unscathed. In 2009, nearly one in five prisoners was a Baby Boomer. Millennial timing, however, was spectacularly bad. Born as imprisonment rates were on their meteoric rise, they grew up in a country that was locking up their parents, then were locked up themselves as the number of children behind bars hit a record high, and entered adulthood in an age of still-high incarceration rates and punishments that last long after a person steps out of the cage.
On the one hand, mass incarceration is a fact, and a fact that is not only worthy of note but worthy of serious reform for a great many reasons, one of which is the impact on children who lose a parent to prison. But mass incarceration doesn’t mean it touched every Millennial’s life. As serious a problem as mass incarceration is, it only touched 2.3% of children’s lives. This is hardly negligible, but it hardly explains the other 97.7% of Millennials.
Millennials were left with the scars that come when you’re small and a loved one is ripped from your household. Kids with an incarcerated parent—and the overwhelming majority of incarcerated parents are dads—suffer from higher rates of depression and aggression, and are more likely to act out than kids whose parents are free. They are more likely to grow up poor, more likely to go to jail, and more likely to experience other adverse childhood events, including exposure to substance abuse, family violence, a parent’s death, mental illness, and suicide.
While reading Filipovic’s inane effort to conflate the experience of tiny minority of Millennials with widespread generational mental illness, it became increasingly clear why so many young people are nihilists rather than fighters, why challenges seem impossible to surmount rather than opportunities to overcome.
They look up to activists like Filipovic as their “thought leaders,” who provide easily hated targets to blame for their misery, so no young person ever has to engage in any “soul searching” about what role they and their choices play in their shitty lives, but at the same time tell them there is nothing they can do but fail. Life is awful, worse than it’s ever been, and there is nothing they can do about it. There’s no reason to try, no reason to care, as they’re just going to fail and inevitably end in misery and suffering.
Either Filipovic is a dangerous fool or a brilliant strategist, using logical fallacies to make the point that one can either succumb to the trendy idiots and liar or reject their facially absurd defeatism and fight back. Is there a silver lining behind her dark cloud?
Incarceration is far from the only obstacle Millennials have confronted, and it’s not the one and only driver of Millennial despair. Millennials have also faced spiraling costs in education, health care, housing, and child care, even as real wages have stagnated, good job opportunities have constricted, and the social safety net has frayed. But undoubtedly, policing and imprisonment made an already-precarious generation less healthy, less able to remain gainfully employed, less stable, and more vulnerable in economic downturns.
But as much as Filipovic offers no hope to Millennials, she has a “bright” spot for Zoomers.
As Gen Z comes of age, incarceration rates are dropping, having declined 7 percent from 2009 to 2017. But the United States still locks up a higher proportion of its people than any other nation in the world. And we still rely on punitive measures that shadow people long after they’ve served their time, making incarceration not just a temporary loss of liberty, but a lifelong albatross. One way to help the most vulnerable Gen Zers do better than their Millennial predecessors? Look to the millions of young people protesting in the streets, and the millions more showing their support by critiquing America’s racist and deadly systems of policing and incarceration. Listen to what the kids are saying, and reform the system to put justice ahead of criminalization.
Of course, the 18 to 24-year-old cohort that seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days are these Gen Z young people, some of whom are protesting in the streets, some critiquing “America’s racist and deadly systems of policing.” Voices like Filipovic might not be the cure to destroying the grit and will of young people, but the cause. And it’s working, as they are so miserable they would rather wallow in misery, even die, than do what they can to enjoy life. And yet, these are the voices they rally around, to do her woke bidding at the cost of their lives.
*In the midst of the darkest days of the drug war, Bobby McFerrin produced a huge hit song that recognized tough times, and yet wasn’t ready to call it quits.
Ain’t got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don’t worry, be happy
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don’t worry, be happy
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Claims of “mental illness” often get badly overblown in the States. In the current climate, some depression is *normal* because *rational*, godammit, and should be accepted as such. The answer is not to wibble on how the state should intervene, because whatever the state does right now, it’ll be too late. The state does have a role to play in all this, but right *now* that’s not the answer, and anyone who pretends it is is lying, advancing some other agenda.
Suicidal ideation is far from rare in the age-group 18~27 *at any time in history*. The answer is not more wibbling or protests, the answer is to build up resilience for oneself, & to help others do the same.
Talk with people like @amyalkon, @clairlemon or @PamelaParesky. In the current times, worry FAR more about suicidal ideation in the elderly. They’re the ones the sociopaths want to see killed off.
Generally: In the time of the pandemic: do better, accept you’ll feel worse for a while. As far as you can, look after those *really* in need: the poor, the elderly, those with severe chronic illnesses, the extremely lonely.
Don’t whine too much in public. We’re all in this together.
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Unemployment will be huge soon, so too poverty. It will pass over by say around March next year, but you need to be prepared. Network to look after those most factually vulnerable.
Whether it’s Louis Armstrong or Joey Ramone, the world is filled with either endless possibilities or endless misery. I choose the former because no one has ever accomplished anything by wallowing in misery.
At the risk of coming across like a PSA bot:
The national crisis hotline phone number is 1-800-273-8255. If you or someone close to you is contemplating suicide, resources are available to help.
Aren’t you a paragon of virtue?
SHG,
I have said before that I see connections that others do not. It is likely because I fit various categories in the DSM. In any event, it struck me that your twin posts today–“Filipovic’s Bleak House” and “Best Shampooing Ever”–are closely related. Indeed, they seem seamlessly intertwined.
Perhaps, if Ms. Filiopic had a soothing shampoo provided by a millenial with 500 hours of training she could pull herself out her funk and serve as an example for other millenials. If the Salon & Spa Professionals of New York State decided to offer the course in prison I am also sure Ms. Filopic would be thrilled. I bet Governor Andrew M. Cuomo would be happy to pay the price of training, particularly if it was discounted, say to $10,000 an inmate.
The foregoing is worth an in depth article in the Atlantic cross-published on the National Salon Resources Blog (and there is one). If you can get the gig, perhaps you and I could co-write it with Ms Fillopic.
You might be thinking of title, particularly with your talent for alliteration. I was thinking about “Bad Bair and Bad People–Shampoo is the Savior.” But, I leave that to you.
Ok, time to take my pills. All the best.
RGK
I wonder if Filipovic considers how depressing it must be for that young person who dreams of growing up to be a certified shampoo assistant, or is she more concerned with the poor victim of an uncertified one? In either event, I suspect she would demand they be paid a living wage which wouldn’t be passed through to women at salons who pay a “woman tax” for their cut and color.
Interesting tidbit from Wikipedia. Supposedly it made the 14 year old writer a million dollars.
“ The song was written specifically for Ken Prymus, the actor playing Private Seidman, who sang it during the faux-suicide of Walter “Painless Pole” Waldowski (John Schuck) in the film’s “Last Supper” scene. Director Robert Altman had two stipulations about the song for Mandel: it had to be called “Suicide Is Painless” and it had to be the “stupidest song ever written”. Altman attempted to write the lyrics himself, but upon finding it too difficult for his 45-year-old brain to write “stupid enough,”he gave the task to his 14-year-old-son Michael, who wrote the lyrics in five minutes.
Altman later decided that the song worked so well, he would use it as the film’s main theme, despite Mandel’s initial objections. This version was sung by uncredited session singers John Bahler, Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin, and Ian Freebairn-Smith and the single was attributed to “The Mash”. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1980s, Robert Altman said that while he only made $70,000 for having directed the movie, his son had earned more than $1 million for having co-written the song.“
You’re killing me.
Oh good it’s that time when Greenfield tells younger generations to do something about the rampant problems his narcissistic generation created instead of one of the posts where he says “no not like that”.
Fuck off old man
I can feel your joie de vivre from here.
I think they make a shampoo for that.
Jay just hasn’t figured out that the jump from 30 to 70 takes place in the blink of an eye and that the transition from youthful savior to the old bastard who screwed everything up goes hand-in-hand with it.
He’ll learn that we all did our best with what was happening at the time when some kid blames him for fucking up the world.
You insisted on giving everyone a trophy whether they tried or not.
Now, sports are cancelled, so there are no trophies.
Personally, I’m shocked that people that never learned to try, haven’t amassed enough capital wealth to venture outside their parents basement. Simply shocked.
This was a hugely controversial problem when I was raising my children. I was not of the “everybody gets a trophy” view, but that you get what you earn. This was one of the reasons my son fenced, where he learned to work hard and win or lose.
Mine was the minority view among my generation. It was done out of love, and like passionate people today, it was blindly believed, but it was foolish and misguided, and it’s gone continually downhill from my day.
In retrospect, encouraging a sport which mandates social distancing also put you ahead of your time.
Keith, you woundn’t be shocked if the Pope disrobed in public, get reel.
Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the Pontiff.
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison…
The global economy needed $185 trillion of debt to produce about $46 trillion of GDP growth over the last twenty years. Maybe the kids just see something you’re generation doesn’t. Or maybe they fought in two wars only to come home to the biggest economic upheaval since the great depression, followed by over a decade of almost unparalleled growth in economic inequality. Either way, as your generation starts downsizing and passing on, the market for McMansions should get interesting.
Even for you, this is incoherent.
Not incoherent at all. Jake is insightful and and correct, IMO. The market for McMansions is enabled by none other than certain federal agency policies combined with Federal Reserve Bank miscalculations and general economic ineptitude. Can U say, Alan GREENspan? The counterpart to WARren BUFFet, the so-called “Ah shucks” Oracle of Oh My God Omaha?
A trend in place continues until such time it becomes top-heavy and cumbersome. When all the buyers of McMansions have bought in, and there is no new blood, the market collapses. With global warming and East Coast flooding and West Coast wild fires, this could be fast, dramatic and catastrophic.
Jake is not as dumb as he looks. Today, you are the dunce.
Well there ya go, Jake. Bill understands and agrees with you.
I was just going to point out that just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s incoherent but I like Bill’s response much better.
I can fix the two of you up.
It took a while, but Jake finally found his SJ soul mate.
Did you pay all your child support, Miles? Well I did. Put that in your smoke and pipe it! “Miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep.” Robert Frost. Good Nite and goodbye.