Now This Is Just Too Frightful

Boy, I have been wrong about you millennials. All this time, I thought you must be the happiest, most carefree generation in our history. Apps give you information and power like never before, marijuana’s been decriminalized and you needn’t go off to war. Unemployment is very low (4.9 percent in Los Angeles), and I know employers are eagerly recruiting you, even transforming their workplaces to please you. But my jaundiced eyes were opened by a survey out a couple of weeks ago. It said you are highly stressed. The survey of 2,000 American millennials said you feel beset by an accumulation of daily micro-stressors. What are they? Well, there’s the overwhelming prospect of being stuck in traffic or losing your phone. And the fear of encountering slow Wi-Fi or forgetting passwords or, God forbid, your phone charger. Nearly 1 in 5 said that getting zero “likes” on a social media post is a profound stress-inducing experience.  Put it all together, and a majority of millennials – 58 percent – said life is more stressful right now than ever before. More than ever before? Gee, I guess the stresses of the generations before yours don’t quite measure up. Perhaps, dear millennials, we could do a little comparison. Start by asking your parents or older siblings or someone who lived through the Great Recession. Just 10 years ago – 2009 – the unemployment rate got over 13 percent in Los Angeles and the national economy shrank 2.5 percent. I remember a suddenly jobless friend who assumed he’d get by on his savings for a year if need be, but he was dealt a second blow as the stock market tanked and his 401(k) became a 101(k). (That was a sardonic joke back then.) It was a pretty stressful time for the 7 million folks who lost their jobs, their retirement money and maybe their homes and marriages. Surely, on the Great Stress-o-Meter of Life, it must at least be equivalent to losing your smartphone. No? Well, let’s go back further in time and see if any of the stresses back then rank up there with yours. I recall folks were pretty tense about the two Gulf Wars we had, one in the 2000s and the first one in the ’90s. People going off to uncertain fates and families arguing whether we should even go there. And in the early 1980s we had back-to-back recessions. Interest rates got frightfully high; mortgage rates hit 18.5 percent at one point in 1981. Homebuying was next to impossible but even simple car loans could be wallet killers. Yes, there were lots of fingernails bitten back then, but boy, if we only understood the truly stressful times that awaited. Like having your smartphone screen broken, which one in five millennials said would be the most stressful event in their lives. Back to historic stresses. There was stagflation in the ’70s, which meant that prices were higher every time you went to the store but your wages didn’t go up nearly as fast. At the same time, employers were laying off and one of our embassies was overrun and we seemed incapable of responding. There was a growing sense that the world wasn’t functioning normally anymore. Something called worry stones became popular gift items. Oh, and there were two oil embargoes in the ’70s. Gasoline was rationed and long lines formed at the few filling stations that were open. You could wait an hour only to have the station close suddenly. Arguments sometimes ensued and fisticuffs occasionally erupted. That era was pretty stressful. Nothing like yours, of course. Earlier still, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, young men had to sit and stew, waiting to be told if they’d been drafted to go fight in Vietnam. Young women back then entered an often-wild workplace. What we now call unacceptable sexual harassment was then considered that which you must tolerate to keep your job. Millennials, you could ask your grandparents if they or their parents were forced to migrate to California because of the stresses caused by the Dust Bowl or the Great Depression. Oh, and speaking of stressful, there was a big event called World War II. I hope it’s still taught in school. Anyway, it involved everyone back then. My step father, for example, fought in the Battle of Bulge when he was 19 years old. In one gunfight, the sergeant next to him was shot and killed but my step father was uninjured because a bullet ricocheted off the ammunition magazine clipped to his belt. That whole World War thing must have been pretty stressful for young people like him, no? I suppose these ancient stresses seem quaint and just don’t measure up to the ones of today. I mean, if you know – you just know – you’re going to get stuck in traffic or you may have to deal with slow Wi-Fi, that can gnaw on your spirit unlike, say, a slow economy and high inflation. But I am mystified by one thing: if you get zero “likes” on your social media post, why don’t you just delete the damn thing?