I’m a millennial and think I got the perfect moment in history, school was only school no computers and MSN etc until highschool. There was no mobile phones until then too. (I mean for kids)
Consoles were still multilayer locally and there was no social media.
But we still had all the conveniences of modern life now apart from instant food delivery and streaming
For most life as a child evolves around basic needs so they are unaware of complex probleem like politics, sociale conflict etc. A pretty simple life so to speak. The classical romans had the same complaints
I think people who had easy childhoods with support well-off parents think their time growing up was great, because objectively it was.
Not everyone has that. My childhood was way harder than my adulthood. I think that’s also why I’m not all bitter about how my parents had it ‘better’ than I did, like so many of my peers are.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, it would blow my mind how good their lives would have be. But they might not see it that way.
I’m a millennial but must be a couple years older. Cell phones were in high school and a small handful in middle school. '08 and '14 impacted my early career years.
Larger picture than that, I am in the same field as my father. I have a “higher” level job with more responsibilities than he did at my age. I have more education. He and spouse owned a home and supported 7 kids on his salary alone. They had medical insurance that mostly covered the needs of the one kid with serious medical issues for the few years of life. I wouldn’t even consider having one kid let alone seven without a partner working and bringing in around the same amount of money as me. Any major medical issue would destroy our plans. A house as large as my parents’ would require moving to some small town where there are no jobs in my field.
Im older than you but one thing is I did 5 years of college and one year in a PhD and ended up changing careers. So my work progress was a bit stunted. I have a similar experience. My dad worked as a janitor and owned a 5 bedroom house and raised 7 kids. I often point to the family the main character from caddy shack for younger folks who may disbelieve or not understand what im talking about. Yeah with a masters and bachelors and certs and massive experience I am almost two years unemployed and so glad I did not have kids that would be in college now if I had had them.
To be honest, every decade has its share of ‘greatness’ and ‘terribleness’. Every generation has its heroes and villains. Sure, there weren’t kids on cellphones back in the 80’s but your kid would most likely be murdered if they came out as gay in high school. Yes, people weren’t digital shut-ins back in the 70’s, but cops were beating the living shit out of black people on the streets.
It’s all relative. There never was a ‘golden age’. That’s not to say we shouldn’t fight to make things better wherever and whenever we can, though.
This take is US centric, because that’s where I’m from.
I’m a millennial. I feel like I got on the last boat boat out of 'Nam. I graduated college and got my first job just before that mini recession in 2014.
I do feel like if you were mid 20s around 9/11 you got to ride the crest of the last surge of “greatness” in the US; old enough to get your bag while the world changed everything for the people coming after.
In reality, there’s almost always been a 2-4 year period every 10-15 years where it’s actually pretty great to enter into adulthood compared to surrounding age demographics. I feel like I was in the last one, and the next one hasn’t hit yet.
Seemingly great times to be a 24 year old college graduate (comparative to other years):
2011-13 - you narrowly avoided 08 and 14 recessions
1997-99 - you got job experience before the dot com bubble popped
1988 - you’re starting your career with a straight decade of prosperity
1967-73 - you went to college and avoided the draft; you got career experience before inflation and the gas crisis hit in the next few years
1948-50 - too young to go to war, early enough to participate in the largest economic boom in human history
Not US, but I was 24 in 2008. It was definitely an interesting time in many aspects. My dad was 24 in 1978 and that was also not great. And my grandfather was 24 in 1944. (also he was in Germany)
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Growing up, things were pretty shitty but you thought things were going to get better. You had hope. Then when it didn’t get better, that’s when you look back and you’re like, well, it was bad, but now it’s so much worse. So it was definitely the best compared to what came later.
I think this is a relatively new phenomenon. I think previously, folks mostly did their best to make sure their kids had it better than they did, and had a belief the future would be better than the past, so they believed their generation had it worse than everyone younger.
So the silent generation is mostly passed away. I don’t think they or the greatest generation looked back at their childhood as the best time. Certainly I knew many silent genertion that experienced enough of the depression to not see it as better. Since then honestly you have had good times that keep on getting less so. So each generation after has seen the best times as kids. I mean I love the internet and computers to some degree but outside of free/libre its gotten very dystopian. I grew up at the time digital was just becoming a thing and mark my time period by that thing. I see a time when pretty much all the conveniences of life were around and sure there are a lot of neat things that came after but none of them are particularly important. All the convenienced were managed with little to no plastic. glass aluminum and paper were able to handle a lot of things. There was massive environment cleanup between the early 60’s and late 70’s. One thing I worry about is each generation not even realizing what good times are like at this point. As some like to throw out we are living in a particularly good time for mankind but its also falling way from it and has been for almost 50 years and has no indication that fall will stop. So I worry that people will die off and the people left won’t even realize what is possible for a general standard of living.
Nostalgia is a great “whitewasher”. I don’t know what generation I am in, I am think I am Gen X and I think that being in highschool 2000-2010 would have been amazing.
Ignore all the fools who pine away about leaving home in the morning and not coming back until the street lights came on. The late 70s and early 80s were a time to be endured.
No. When I was growing up the crime rate was high, schools were much worse, downtown here was abandoned on weekends, gay people were targeted with more violence, there was more racial violence, more domestic violence, it was really rough.
My kids grew up in a better time, but now it is sliding again, the last one did not get education as good as the older ones.
I am not even a little bit nostalgic, you could not pay me to go back to the time I grew up.
No.
That assumes that everyone in every generation thinks the same way.
usually the people that ‘speak’ for a generation… are the ones who are rich.
when people stereotype, it’s always always upper middle class families, or richer.
nobody stereotypes the kid with a single parent living in a 70 year old falling apart house, driving 15 year old car that’s dented, and eating dollar store food, for whom the idea of college and a professional career simple does not exist, for whom getting graduating with a 2.7 GPA and an apprentice in HVAC seems like a huge accomplishment
It seems to be a trend for every generation, excepting some big traumatic events.
For example I grew up in the Balkans in 1990s and I couldn’t say it was the best time.But long as you grew up in a safe environment, without struggle, it seems you will see the period of your youth as something ideal.
No.
People growing up in the Depression knew that there’d been plenty of money a few years back.
People who grew in the 1980s knew that folks in the 1960s and 1970s weren’t in fear of dying from AIDS.
Kids today hear legends of a time when the President was cool and articulate.
Certainly not, at least for younger ages. I was in the TV generation. Not enough freedom to go out like the previous generations, not enough technology to have interactive content or communicate with friends like the next generations. We spent all day in front of the TV and talking through a shared landline (if lucky).
nope… at least i don’t like mine. for context i’m probably younger than most people here.
