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Yup there are all sorts of reasons for them to feel less happy than their older counterparts.

Many of those reasons are legitimate.

Some, not so much.

Our system of education is failing us. We all know this.

To a certain extent, sure.  But some of them just have completely unrealistic expectations, that seem to come from social media sources, and/or their insistence on living within their own echo-chambers.

I have one nephew, he's now 30. He can't bother himself to wake up in the morning to get to a job, so he's usually out of work.  He likes to have long, philosophical discussions about how "creatives" are tremendously under-appreciated in society, there's no place for them to earn a living.  He's always been on the artsy side, was in theater and choir in high school, but he doesn't currently do anything "creative" so I have no idea what he really means or what his expectations are.  He's not an artist or a writer or an actor or a singer, has never tried to be any of those things.

He waves me off when I point out that our current society has all kinds of paying outlets for "creatives."  Graphic design, for example, is absolutely booming compared to where it was 20 or even 10 years ago.  And then of course there are the standard jobs for artsy folks, those I mentioned above, like actors/writers/artists. 

But what I really think he honestly believes, is that he should be compensated for thinking.  For philosophizing.  That society should place such high value on his thoughts that he is paid for thinking them and talking about them.

But even THEN, there ARE potential outlets where he might be traded something of value-- cash, lodging, food, whatever-- if he actually bothered to try and spread his "creative visions" through some consumable medium. It's possible, if he wrote a book about his ideas, that it might be published. It's possible, that if he started a Youtube channel or a podcast about his ideas, that he might get monetized.  There are now more opportunities than EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY, for people to be compensated for non-traditional work.  More opportunities than ever before, for the widespread distribution and potential monetization of "content" that is of value only to a select few, because it's easier to reach people now, than ever before.

And yet, he does none of those things.  He seems to think that just his existence and enthusiasm for talking about his philosophies, should be enough for society to be willing to support him.

I know he's unhappy with our current society, as are his many similar friends I've encountered.  I have no doubt they're among the ones expressing their unhappiness with current American society.

And it's all complete bullshit.

And don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my nephew and love talking with him.  He's bright and genuine in his thoughts.

He's just completely out of touch with reality when it comes to... well... Life.

He's a sometimes home-brewer so one time when he was out of work, I hooked him up with my friend who owns the very successful Live Oak Brewery.  I got him a 1:1 sit-down, which isn't all that easy to do.  After the sit-down, I asked him how it went, and he said he didn't really want to start at the bottom of the ladder.  He has absolutely zero experience in an actual brewery, but felt like starting out with cleaning tanks and lines and transporting materials, was beneath him.  Nevermind that the current head brewer who's now doing quite well for himself, started out exactly that way.

Maybe he's just lazy, I don't know, but blaming society for your own laziness is pretty crappy.

I think they are being taught to not be happy.

To get back to this (work distracted me).

Much has to do with the school districts. There are so many, and so many differences.

My brother's kids had/have a largely positive experience in high school. The teaching of history and social studies is balanced, but largely based on the positive things Western societies have accomplished around the world. They also include the negatives - and they should.

(My experience in HS was all about the positives, but that's a long time ago.)

Regardless, my brother's kids are generally happy and have a positive outlook about our country and values.

To the contrary, my best friend's son had a more CRT-based HS curriculum. He was taught about the bad, and not much of the good at all. 

He is a bit like UTee's nephew. His outlook is terrible against our society, and he is also down on himself. He struggles with his identity. He struggles socially. Struggles to hold a job. He feels like he is owed.

His father says a lot of this is due to his HS education (I think he should own up too, but he was working 60+ hours/week in his ambition to be at the top. A lot of good that has done for his kid, right?).

Anecdotal of course, but I felt it important to bring up these two very different scenarios.

I don't know that much about the current HS landscape... Obviously south Orange County isn't representative of a lot of the rest of CA schools or attitudes. I certainly don't get the sense that my kids are being "taught to be unhappy".

However it does remind me that I need to be more proactive about making sure they understand how manipulative things like social media and conventional media can be, and that they need to build a suit of emotional armor in this modern world to handle it.

We did not have that to contend with. Makes it all that much harder to be a parent these days.

We talk about this with our kids all the time.

The irony is that, while we currently have more access to more information and more news than ever before, it's easy to look at only the things you're being fed by the algorithms, or only the things you've chosen to surround yourself with in your own echo chambers, and get a VERY distorted view of the world around you.

Yeah, I've highlighted to them many times the dangers of confirmation bias, and how you need to think about things from multiple sides and you can't do that if you surround yourself with an echo chamber of info...

But I haven't gotten as much into the emotional side of it. The good news is that my oldest (16) doesn't do any social media, or want to, so he's at least on a good track there. My youngest (11) doesn't have a phone, so she's not doing any of that stuff, but I'm sure it's worse for girls on many fronts including that one when they get up to high school age...