
How Baby Boomers screwed their kids - nsavant
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/04/how_baby_boomers_screwed_their_kids_%e2%80%94_and_created_millennial_impatience/
======
tokenadult
The Baby Boom was a birth cohort that spanned a lot of years, characterized
only by high birth rates. (The Baby Boom is the only time in United States
history when the long-term trend of ever higher ages of first marriage and
ever lower rates of fertility was reversed.) A lot of thoughtful analysts
distinguish the earlier part of the Baby Boom (parents who were part of the
"Greatest Generation," which participated as adults in World War II) from the
later part of the Baby Boom (parents in the "Silent Generation," whose
earliest memories are of the Great Depression, and who didn't reach adulthood
until after the war was over). I think that makes sense. Greatest Generation
parents were about looking out for other people, as a group central tendency,
and Silent Generation parents were about looking out for number one. (Silent
Generation persons politically did well, gaining the greatest net surplus over
the actuarial value of their Social Security benefits through taxation of
younger working people, for example.)

In each generation, there are parents of differing core values. There are also
children who either accept their parents' values, or react against them. That
goes on throughout history. The one sure thing that demographers discovered is
that during the Baby Boom there was a lower ratio of care-giving adults to
minor children in the whole society than at almost any time before or since.
Large family sizes spread parenting thin. So the Baby Boomers had less
parental face time to receive parental influence one way or another than the
preceding generations, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear (as we do in the
opinion essay submitted here) that Baby Boomers, as a group central tendency,
are less practiced in traditional parenting approaches than earlier
generations, for better or for worse.

(Can you guess where I fit among the generations by what I write here?)

~~~
5555624
It's not just the parents, but the "boomers," as well. Some analysts see two
groups in the "Baby Boom": 1946-1955 and 1956-1964. I don't know where the
break should be, but one of my sisters was born in 1963 and has never struck
me as a "Baby Boomer." She doesn't remember very much of the 1960s, the draft,
Vietnam, etc. An article in USA Today, a few years back, on these "Shadow
Boomers" mentioned a woman born in 1964 and both her parents were born in 1946
-- all three are Baby Boomers.

------
droidist2
> An impatience driven by two things: First is a gross misunderstanding that
> things like success, money or happiness come instantly.

This doesn't jive with my experience. College grads these days very often
start their careers working for free in unpaid internships. If that doesn't
demonstrate delayed gratification or an understanding that success doesn't
come instantly, I don't know what would.

~~~
grecy
Younger people should learn this long, long before they graduate college. By
then they're already functioning adults.

------
pcurve
I know this article sounds a bit "spray and pray"-ish, using soundbites we've
grown tired of. However, it might be because the article is reprinted from the
author's book that covers an entirely different topic altogether. (Why Leaders
Eat Last)

Incidentally, you can probably get a good summary of the book just by watching
this author's talk. It also covers the OP's posted article.

[http://vimeo.com/79899786](http://vimeo.com/79899786)

------
NAFV_P
Born in 1981, I would be classified as a Gen Y person. Some sentences that
caught my eye:

> _Many employers complain of the demands their entry-level employees often
> make._

I asked my previous employer that I didn't approve of having a senior employer
shout "Ah, fuck off" at me several times a day, or being called "thick", or
having to put up with threatening behaviour. That was considered a hefty
demand.

> _We would prefer that that air traffic controller check his e-mail or send
> his text messages during his breaks. I think we would all feel much better
> if access to the Internet and a personal cell phone were completely
> forbidden (which they are)._

I usually don't have enough money to debit my cell phone (The other day I had
my first go on a Samsung Galaxy). I rarely have access to these distractions
because I lack the capital.

> _Generation Y thinks that, because they have grown up with all these
> technologies, they are better at multitasking. I would venture to argue they
> are not better at multitasking. What they are better at is being
> distracted._

I didn't grow up in constant contact with these technologies. I've grown up
being expected by Gen Xers and other Gen Yers to be able to multitask and be a
tech whizz with said technologies. I would agree that I am better at being
distracted than Gen Xers - having to endure abuse and threats is very
distracting, as is being expected to know everything about how a computer
works.

> _They seem flummoxed when told that things take time. They are happy to give
> lots of short bursts of energy and effort to things, but commitment and grit
> come harder._

I started practising programming in my spare time about eighteen months ago,
and I'm still practising. I'll probably get proficient at it when I'm say, 36.
I'm never told by my peers or Gen Xers that it will take time. I'm often told
"you're wasting your time" or "stick to what you are capable of" (then I get
turned down for minimum wage jobs). I was wondering how flummoxed a person
from any generation would be if you told them that even dead simple programs
often require at least 100 lines of code. One of the main reasons that I am
able to do this is due to a small band Gen Xers (and some Gen Yers) who had
the determination and patience to write free software, so many cheers for
them.

------
cmrivers
If I ever read another long, rambling screed about the failings of
millennials, it will be too soon.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Man, I know! Look at this stuff. How many tendentious assumptions can we bake
into one sentence?

"The economic systems in which they have grown up, ones that prioritize
numbers over people, are blindly accepted, as if that’s the way it has always
been."

Right. For instance, when OWS, coherent or otherwise, camped out in half a
dozen cities demanding radical change, that was the Millennial Generation's
generational cry of Blind Acceptance of Status Quo. Likewise when they
campaigned (naively or otherwise) for Hope and Change and spread-the-wealth-
around.

And think! Just a couple generations back, our systems had a paradise of
prioritizing People over Numbers. For instance: when the FDR administration
took over the nation's agriculture sector and burned crops in the midst of a
famine, then standardized the sector into a series of big-agribusiness
factory-farm monocultures in the name of efficiency. And yet somehow when the
author implies economic systems should be questioned, I don't think the
Agricultural Adjustment Act - still on the books - was the sort of thing he
had in mind.

~~~
rmc
Sssssh. Stop using facts. "Everyone knows" that things were great in the past.

------
weland
I tried to read this all the way to the end but I wasn't quite able to do it
in a single round.

There are a lot of interesting points in the article, but you'd have more
chance to drown in the Sahara desert than to find a single proof of any of the
aforementioned points. _Best_ thing you get is a combination of weasel words
and anecdotal evidence. Let's see a few of these brilliant examples:

> it’s easy to see how the Boomers earned their reputation as the Me
> Generation. Me before We. Putting the protection of ideas and wealth before
> the sharing of them is now standard.

Fair enough. _How_ does the author know this?

> A New Jersey-based accountant told me that he sees a clear difference
> between his older clients and his younger ones. “My older clients want to
> work within the confines of the tax code to do what is fair,” he explained.
> “They are willing to simply pay the tax they owe. The next generation spends
> lots of time looking to exploit every loophole and nuance in the tax code to
> reduce their responsibility to as little as possible.”

What a rock-solid argument!

But wait, there's more!

> Generation Y is said to have a sense of entitlement.

Ok... let's see some evidence of that?

> Many employers complain of the demands their entry-level employees often
> make.

Could it _possibly_ be the same many employers who try to offer unpaid
interships that last basically forever, or who are cutting up expenses by
outsourcing work to India so that the board members can buy bigger boats?
Obviously, not every employer who claims that the demands of _some_ entry-
level employees are too harsh, but without any evidence of whether or not
those demands are justified, the number of employers claiming that is no
argument, for either side.

The apex of arrogance is, in my opinion, this one:

> According to a study at Northwestern University, the number of children and
> young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
> shot up 66 percent between 2000 and 2010. Why the sudden and huge spike in a
> frontal lobe dysfunction over the course of a decade?

An interesting point, why?

At this point, you would obviously expect the author to quote one or several
serious medical studies which show certain degrees of correlation between the
development of ADHD and various factors that have been prevalent during the
2000-2010 decade to a greater degree than before. But no!

> I would submit that this huge spike is not simply because more people have
> ADHD than previous generations, though this could be true. Nor is it due to
> an increase in the number of parents having their children tested, though
> this could also be true. Though there are, of course, many genuine cases of
> ADHD, the sudden spike may be the result of something as simple as
> misdiagnosis.

Ok, ok, I'm still reading. _Maybe_ there's a yet-unknown study, or at least
one that is in development because someone who's an expert on brain stuff has
a hypothesis?

> We know that sometimes our wires can get crossed and the wrong behaviors can
> be incentivized. Someone who finds the dopamine- and serotonin-releasing
> effects of alcohol as a teenager can become conditioned to look to alcohol
> to suppress emotional pain instead of learning to look to people for
> support. This can show up later in life as alcoholism. In this same way, the
> dopamine-releasing effects of the bing, buzz or flash of a cell phone feel
> good and create the desire and drive to repeat the behavior that produces
> that feeling.

Nope. What the author is proposing is, in fact, a personal hypothesis, based
on a fairly superficial understanding of a complicated process ("our wires get
crossed").

This wouldn't even be a problem, _if_ the author would at least bother to
provide some test -- the hell with that, at least _some_ way to test this
hypothesis. Who knows, maybe he got it right, in spite of an incorrect
reasoning process (there was a time when reasoning by analogy was the dominant
form of hypothesizing, but it wasn't exactly a period renowned for its
intellectual achievements). But no.

I don't want to label the article as a load of useless rubbish. It's not wrong
per se, I think it's just incorrectly titled, because it doesn't try to give a
meaningful answer to the question in its title, just to present some of the
author's prejudices. They _are_ prejudices only by virtue of their lack of
arguments, not their value of truth. Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after
reading the article, you are no closer to understanding _why_ he thinks he's
right than you were before.

~~~
onebaddude
> _Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the article, you are no
> closer to understanding why he thinks he 's right than you were before._

What do you know, the top comment is a pseudo-intellectual tear down of an
article, asking for evidence and proof, admitting that the original article
wasn't even read to completion, but offering plenty of criticism.

> _Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the article, you are no
> closer to understanding why he thinks he 's right than you were before._

Guess what? This is a _book excerpt_. Maybe if you want some answers and notes
you can buy and read the book? Of course, that would require you to read and
synthesize something for longer than 5 minutes, fighting the urge to show how
smart you are by instantly going to an internet message board to ask for line-
by-line bibliographical references.

The fact that this community holds itself in such esteem is hilarious. Reddit
redux.

~~~
benched
Have an upvote. HN comments have long been a ghetto of a different kind.
They're as constructive as YouTube comments, only instead of "ur a fagot",
it's all "Not peer-reviewed, replicated, statistically rigorous science!"

~~~
weland
I don't have a problem with opinions that are not based on peer-reviewed,
replicated, statistically-rigorous science (not that there's any other kind of
it). What I do have a problem with are opinions expressed _as if_ they were
scientific opinions, but are in fact thinly-veiled prejudices.

If someone claimed Jews are formed as thieves by their culture because he
knows a guy from San Diego whose Jewish clients are always behind on their
payment, he'd rightfully be labeled not only as racist, but also as stupid,
and with good reason. I see no reason to treat someone who claims, as a proof
that people born in a certain period of time are more egotistic than others,
the fact that an accountant told him so, any differently. That's not only as
insulting as racist pseudo-science, it's as idiotic as racist pseudoscience.

There is probably sufficient truth to find among those as well, perhaps, but
in my opinion, it's intellectually lazy.

------
john939
And here you are writing this, you dopamine fueled junkie.

This is kind of sad because I use facebook more than anyone and I'm not
depressed. Also humans evolve for a reason, if our primeval selves saw us
today they would say the same thing.

ADHD isn't real, not everyone in the world can have identical brains, the CT
scans and brain scans you use as evidence to prove people have ADHD is nothing
more than propaganda fueled by the pharmaceutical industry, to push more pill
sales.

What you suffer from is the lack of ability to understand youth, I know, I
feel the same way about teens now. Except you took this to a whole new level
of hatred and misunderstanding, as to almost call to put them all in camps,
take away their phones and get off on them all being distracted while you show
them how to live your 'ideal' lifestyle, and preach about what's wrong with
them.

Times change, you're getting old and now you're filled with contempt and anger
at the fact that humans will adapt to their environments.

This isn't because cell phones and technology. I fail to see any corellation
with technology and school shootings.

Maybe we should ban guns, yeah, ban guns, and apples too, I think the shooter
had an apple for breakfast.

------
wonderzombie
Regarding distraction, may I posit that the author has the causality reversed?
What if many people are seeking dopamine, et al, because they're _already_
unhappy? There was a piece on procrastination which suggested that some
procrastination is an attempt to treat one's unhappy mood, and it seems to me
there are plenty of reasons why Gen Yers might be unhappy.

The economic outlook for many Gen Yers is quite bleak. Despite having attended
college, many people end up working retail or otherwise low-wage jobs. After
hearing that you're supposed to "follow your dreams" and that all you really
need to do is "believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything," it's not
unreasonable to imagine why this generation feels left behind or alienated. I
know people who blame themselves even though, in one case, their job
(environmental ecology) was vaporized by the housing bust.

So they're[0] "entitled" because they want what the consumer-driven economy
tells them they deserve, what they've been told to demand from life, and what
their parents had. But they ought to be happy with less than the previous
generation had because, well, them's the breaks.

I'm sure I'm not the first, I predict Gen Y will become something akin to a
lost generation. Sometimes you need to take a shit job to survive, but if
you're interested in upward mobility, nobody wants to see shit jobs on your
resume, esp not among the professional class.

It's ironic because retail jobs, for instance, _are_ often hard work! However
there's little prospect for long-term gain. What's the point in thinking long-
term when you're working a job deliberately engineered to make workers
replaceable? There's nothing inherently wrong with such a job, but maybe it's
not so mysterious wonder why kids seem more mercenary or prefer to live in the
moment.

If I had to guess, I'd say this offers some explanation both for popularity of
tech and finance. If you can afford a degree & can hack it in those
industries, you'll probably do well. If you can't, your prospects (depending
on where you live) are considerably more variable.

\---

[0]: I say "they" because I'm somewhere between X and Y. I remember a time
before the Internet, ubiquitous digital media, and cellphones, but not before
home computers.

------
staticelf
I am a "generation Y" and I can explain why I am a bit unhappy.

Honestly, I don't believe this shit that much. Sure there may be a lot of
people that have a hard time to concentrate and big thoughts about themselves.
But nevertheless I think there are more people today than ever before that
works hard and still have trouble to pay for themselves.

But that's not me. I have good job security, I have a well paid job for my age
group. But my unhappiness doesn't come from the economy or too large thoughts
about my self. My unhappiness stems from the human society having a very dark
future. Wherever I go and try to preach, no one seems to care. I see no action
taken from any political leaders on this very pressing issue of climate
change.

Looking at the recent typhoon in the Philippines and knowing that it was
pretty much a baby of what is coming if we do not stop our lifestyle is what
is making me unhappy. Because in my heart I do not believe that we're going to
do anything to stop it from happening.

Knowing all these stuff, and looking at the society just walk it off makes me
quite unhappy and I see no reason why I would be the only one.

------
drdeadringer
I am still expecting there to be an "Awareness Awareness" month. Are YOU
aware? Buy your see-through anklet now.

------
ot
Similar arguments, but with more playful tone and drawings:

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-
are-u...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-
unhappy.html)

~~~
michaelochurch
Equally terrible.

The fact that most people, all else being equal, will prefer maximal reward
for minimal sacrifice is hardly news. It's nature. When my cats hear a can
open at 7:00 am, they rush out and start demanding food. They also sleep 14
hours per day. Is it because they're Generation Z cats (born in early 2013)
and the rising generation of felines has a massive sense of entitlement (the
kitty world's going to hell / get off my litterbox) or because they have an
evolved tendency to maximize reward and minimize caloric expenditure?

I really fucking hate this shit. I hate that the 90% of us who just expect
fairness and decency are being lumped together with a few overprivileged
assholes (who exist in every society and generation) who harbor unreasonable
expectations.

Church's Law: people who complain about a sense of entitlement in others
possess it themselves. Boomers who complain about us are really saying, "Why
won't these kids slave away for peanuts, just to bask in our awesomeness?" I'm
sorry, but if you think a job title means you _deserve_ reverence and
sacrifice, well... isn't that the _literal_ definition of entitlement?

------
allochthon
Gen X'er here. Not so sure about many of the points of the article, but this
one was interesting:

 _The problem is that in twenty to thirty years, when our youngest generation
grows up and takes charge of government and business, its members will have
grown up using Facebook, prescription drugs or online support groups as their
primary coping mechanisms rather than relying on real support groups:
biological bonds of friendship and loving relationships._

This dovetails with my recent fascination/great unease at learning that
Twitter uses Mechanical Turk (an Amazon service I didn't know much about) to
program what appears to be a disposable, no-strings-attached human workforce,
using an API, to do some categorization for it (a very clever idea I should
say); and with my great unease with companies like IBM wanting to track
metrics of every kind about their workforce. As the younger kids begin to
assume decisionmaking responsibility, is their acclimation to living in this
human/computer ecosystem going to open the floodgates to full-on human
"programming" (to give the dystopian edge-case a name)? Are computers and the
developers and statisticians programming them going to invade every corner of
our lives?

Consider OkCupid (a fine Web site). Their algorithms are important for
selecting possible matches. How much trust are we putting in those algorithms
and in the implementation? These map-reduce jobs (or whatever they use) are
now programming to some extent the reproduction of a portion of society. Are
we going to see this trend go off the charts?

~~~
Balgair
Lets take the Okcupid anecdote out for a ride. I'd say, from personal
experience of myself, friends, and Okcupid's old blog posts, that these algo's
do a piss poor job [1]. Not because the algo is bad, but because the person at
the top is a capitalist. Their job is to maximize profits, not to get people
together. Additionally, people are not honest in their profiles. So you get a
case of 'shit in, shit out' for the algos. Also, men in particular, are blind
to anything but the face[2]. Still, more and more people are meeting online
and staying together. In fact, the divorce rates seem to be lower for online
meetings[3], 6% vs. 8% for traditional meetings.

Ok, stats and anecdotes aside, this is straight creepy to me. I agree with
you, it seems that the programmer is becoming the only real job left. If some
dating algo can do a better job than yourself ever could, the only logical
choice is to use that algo. But, dammit, its so freaking sterile to me! Yeah,
I am old fashioned here, but having a computer say that I am a better match
and will have, statistically, a better life with $person is terrible. I have
no control of my life then! This person that I might have children with was
not chosen by me. Rather, I chose to reject the algo or roll the dice again.

A recent video produced by "A studio on Fuxing Road" contrasts the Brittish,
US, and Chinese election systems[4]. The piece is very pro communist. It
glorifies the system of paperwork that insures good governance of China and
says this is cheaper and better than the way the US does it. To me, it's
bullshit. Even if the 'algo' they used worked and was not corrupt, hell, even
if it worked better than democracy, it's still Bullshit. I have a right to say
to whom I give my consent to govern me. Everyone has that right. Even if the
'algo' get better than I can ever be, I have to give consent explicitly. I
have to know and be informed. I can't stand just rolling over to have the
'algos' determine my fate for me. I can see where it is better for society and
for the planet that the algos get the control and we just ride along. But I
really don't want that.

Sorry, that derailed there. But I hope you see where I was going. I, too, fear
that the programmer, in their data driven wisdom, will step too far.

[1]Unfortunately, offline now:
[http://contently.com/strategist/2013/08/19/whatever-
happened...](http://contently.com/strategist/2013/08/19/whatever-happened-to-
okcupids-oktrends-spoiler-alert-its-coming-back/#!r1LMZ)
[2][http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-
on...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-online-
dating-profile-ever/)
[3][http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222447110](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222447110)
[4][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M734o_17H_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M734o_17H_A)

------
tzakrajs
Is this fiction?

------
runawaybottle
Don't we need dopamine to just about anything? What is this belief amongst
people that whatever they feel in their body is anything other than just
chemicals?

------
whyme
Dopamine my ass. They are simply spending more time doing what makes them
happy over doing what others perceive is good for them.

------
colund
This article is utter rubbish :)

------
michaelochurch
This is terrible analysis.

 _“Don’t let people get things from you if they aren’t willing to compensate
you for it,” goes the thinking._

What the fuck is wrong with that? Why should anyone give their all (in the
workplace) to someone who doesn't value them? Yes, for practical reasons, you
should probably obey laws and basic courtesy without expecting compensation--
not littering is just what you're supposed to do, a part of the implicit
social contract is using public spaces. But if someone's asking for you to
commit serious energy or favor, you better make sure you're doing it for
someone who values you. Otherwise, you're wasting your energy, and that's
quite finite.

 _Gen X, growing up before the Internet, interpreted that lesson as putting
your head down and getting to work._

Really? 20 years ago, the reputation (undeserved) of Gen X was that it was a
lazy, shiftless, loser generation. Now that they're older and have proven
themselves, their reputation has improved somewhat. Oh, and every generation
for the past 50 years (maybe longer?) has been called a "Me, Me, Me
Generation" when it was young.

 _First is a gross misunderstanding that things like success, money or
happiness come instantly._

I blame that on the age discrimination culture in most careers (if you're not
at level X by age Y, you're a perma-loser) and, in tech, we see that the get-
big-or-die insanity comes from the VCs, not founders. Most Gen-Y's/Millennials
would be happy to tread water and _thrilled_ to get rich slowly by, say,
starting from a solid base, working hard, and improving their pay at 10-20%
per year.

The impatience comes from the shitty time pressure imposed by age
discrimination, volatile housing costs, and the fact that it's almost
irresponsible to have children given the increasing importance of connections
and the (directly related) obscene expense and competitiveness in educational
positioning-- that now begins before grad school.

 _So if we take the life and death part away, why would we think that we can
do our work, check our phones, write a paragraph, send a text, write another
paragraph, send another text, without the same damage to our ability to
concentrate? Generation Y thinks that, because they have grown up with all
these technologies, they are better at multitasking. I would venture to argue
they are not better at multitasking._

First of all, I know that I (and most people) am generally terrible at
multitasking. There are specific kinds of multitasking at which people can
perform (coming up with creative ideas while walking and listening to music)
but, in general, context switches are damaging. I think this issue is
environmental: open-plan offices, constant interruptions, and a social climate
that just expects high availability. It's not one generation's fault; it's
just the way people are becoming.

 _Cigarettes are out. Social media is in. It’s the drug of the twenty-first
century. (At least people who smoke stand outside together.)_

Silly. When smoking was at its peak it was socially acceptable to do it
indoors. What, you think fucking Don Draper is going to stand out in the
fucking cold of a Manhattan wind-tunnel January?

 _Where alcohol replaced trusting relationships as a coping mechanism for
teenagers who grew up to be alcoholics, so too are the positive affirmations
we get from social media and the virtual relationships we maintain replacing
real trusting relationships as coping mechanisms._

Alcohol was (and is) used as a low-grade anxiolytic, which it is in low doses
for people without a tolerance, that helps people overcome the social anxiety
produced cognitive dissonance of a hypercompetitive culture. (Modern medicine
offers superior anxiolytics, but those don't target social anxiety nearly as
well, and physicians frown, for good reason, on recreational use of them. The
most powerful non-Rx anxiolytic is probably kava, which makes you sleepy more
than sociable. Anyway...)

 _I kept meeting amazing, wonderful, smart, driven and optimistic Gen Yers who
were either disillusioned with their entry-level jobs or quitting to find a
new job that will “allow me to make an impact in the world,” discounting the
time and energy that is required to do it._

Or they were getting fired/laid-off for reasons that weren't their fault and
(well taught by their Boomer parents) spinning it to sound like it was by
their choice, since young people are better to appear flighty (it's expected
of them) than to suffer the status hit of an involuntary termination. There's
more than meets the eye in this sort of thing.

 _What they seem to fail to notice, however, is the mountain._

Alternative theory: there are plenty of Gen-Yers scaling that mountain.
However, since the eldest in that generation are only in their early 30s, none
of those have had any prominence because they're still working their way up.
Instead, it's the lifted pieces of shit like Evan Spiegel and Lucas Duplan
getting the attention. Generations always put an unrepresentative foot forward
first, because the "successes" are (with very few exceptions) manufactured by
their elders.

 _According to a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates
among Baby Boomers rose nearly 30 percent during the past decade, making
suicide one of the leading causes of death in that age group, behind only
cancer and heart disease. The biggest jump in suicides was among men in their
fifties — this age group experienced a whopping 50 percent increase. With the
increase of suicides among Boomers, more people now die of suicide than from
car accidents._

Cars and roads are becoming safer (so the "car accident" comparison is not all
bad news). Age discrimination is hitting single-income older (50-65) men the
hardest right now, so that explains a bit of it. That and health problems
explain most of the suicides, I'd bet. Also, while teenage girls may have the
highest suicide attempt rate, men over 50 have always had the highest suicide
completion rate.

 _The problem is that in twenty to thirty years, when our youngest generation
grows up and takes charge of government and business, its members will have
grown up using Facebook, prescription drugs or online support groups as their
primary coping mechanisms rather than relying on real support groups:
biological bonds of friendship and loving relationships._

Give me a break. This is ludicrous junk science. Most people using
"prescription drugs" need them, and people get tired of Facebook fake
friendship after, I don't know, two or three years. (And there are people for
whom Facebook provides a real benefit; by age 60, most of your friends live
far away from you, and online contact is better than what was common before
the Internet-- dropping off completely.)

 _In 1960, the number of notable school shootings was one. In the 1980s there
were 27. The 1990s saw 58 school shootings, and from 2000 until 2012 there
were 102 school shootings._

First, those events are getting more coverage now. It's worldwide. If
something fucked-up happens in Colorado or Connecticut or Norway or Japan, the
world will know about it. It seems like violence is becoming more common, but
all evidence suggests the reverse. (Also, the worst school massacres aren't
perpetrated by school students-- see: Bath, Beslan, Newtown-- but by older
people.) School shootings are horrible, but in the late 1960s, Americans
started worrying about _the fucking draft_ as the Vietnam War ramped up. Does
anyone really think that _Facebook_ is going to cause more "antisocial
behavior" than an illegal and demoralizing war in Vietnam, into which people
were sent involuntarily? I really doubt that.

------
fuckpig
It's no surprise that Baby Boomers are a disaster in every way possible; after
all, they were the spoiled children of the victors in a devastating war.

However, look to their parents and you may have some sympathy for the boomers.
The Boomers were born in the 1940s to people born in the 1910-1920s period
when social mores evaporated, the "Jazz Age" took over, and people basically
became vainglorious self-important drama queens.

"I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the
few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited — they went
there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and
somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were introduced by
somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according
to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came
and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a
simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission."

That's a fairly brutal and accurate condemnation of that generation and its
social mores. It's worth noting that many of them, especially the East Coast
elites, went on to become Communists.

------
supersystem
Generation X dropped the ball, which is too painful to admit, so now they
blame Generation Y instead.

~~~
michaelochurch
No one dropped any fucking ball. The failings of society are deliberate.
Housing bubble? Consumer credit replacing Fordist/Keynesian wage increases?
Tuition catastrophe? Those "incompetents" who make health insurance
innavigable? The increasing social and economic distance between rich and
poor? All intentional. It's the Haves becoming Have-it-Alls at the expense of
the Have-Littles and the Have-Nots.

~~~
supersystem
I'm not claiming it wasn't intentional. I'm saying that generation X either
played along or didn't do anything about it.

