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Millennials and Gen Z Are Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds (bloomberg.com) 420

Uneasiness and pessimism abound among the majority of the world's population. From a report: Deloitte has released its Global Millennial Survey of 13,416 Millennials (born between 1983 and 1994) spread across 42 countries and 3,009 Gen Z respondents (born between 1995 and 2002) from 10 countries. The firm has conducted the survey for the past eight years. The percentage of respondents who think that businesses are making a positive impact dropped six points from 61% in 2018 to 55%. "I would say that for businesses, the most important takeaway is the continuously diminishing trust of Millennials and Gen Zs," says Deloitte Global Chief Talent Officer Michele Parmelee.

While the two generations have strikingly similar views of the world, Parmelee said survey data shows that their points of view differ in a few significant areas, such as life priorities and their perception of society and work. Generally, only about half of both groups aspire to purchase a home, and even fewer desire to start a family. "Instead, travel and seeing the world was at the top of the list (57%) of aspirations," the report said. Only 52% of the Millennials surveyed responded that earning a high salary was a top priority while 56% of their Gen Z peers did so. And 39% of the Millennials saw starting a family as very important, while 45% of the younger cohort agreed.

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Millennials and Gen Z Are Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:09PM (#58625058)

    Finding meaning in life without religion is hard enough, without the desire to start a family it becomes almost impossible.

    • Fake news.

    • To find meaning you first must find a delusion...Future worm food.

      Heat death of the universe, therefor hookers and blow.

      • Heat death of the universe, therefor hookers and blow.

        Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to, or failing that some pamphlets I might peruse?

    • Eh? Since when has breeding been the qualification for leading a useful life? Correct me if I am wrong but do not many religions require their teachers to dedicate their lives to their work and not to spawning offspring?

      • by malkavian ( 9512 )

        Only a few. It's not a great survival mechanism and goes against human nature.
        In the organisations that mandated chastity, it was frequently not adhered to (apart from the zealots). I guess in that context it would be great if applied to politics! The moderates would go off and reproduce, and the more extreme elements would simply remove themselves from the gene pool!

        Breeding sates a natural instinct, and gives the chance for strong focus on something other than the self (though I suspect that's gone ove

        • Only a few. It's not a great survival mechanism and goes against human nature.

          True, that. But there are a lot of social and legal system pressures that are working against that today.

          A lot of males have simply dropped out of the reproduction/romance game.

          In a society where there is precious little romance, and single mothers are hailed as modern day heros, it was bound to happen.

          If you lose half your assets you aren't attractive to other women, unless you are really wealthy and seeing your children grow up in freeze frame is horrifying.

      • I think that was unfair to GP. He said having a family and/or religion makes it easier to find meaning in life. That's probably true.

        That's totally different from saying that people succeed in finding meaning in that situation find a worse meaning.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by couchslug ( 175151 )

      For you. Nice asserted conclusion. If you're so weak you need superstition and to personally breed while knowing the desire to do so is purely instinctive, you are the problem.

    • The only *meaning* of life is having a mechanism to spread gene nothing more. The rest is what people make out of it. As such hedonism is as meaningful as any other proposal. Living playing game and programming your own , childless , religionless, may not be YOUR taste, but that does not mean your way of life is meaningfuller than this one. It just mean you have a difference of opinion and taste.
    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Meh, I think trying to claim that my primary reason to live should be to exist for somebody else and that someone else's primary reason to exist should be me just had a really good sales pitch. The inverse of that is that if said person died on me - or simply stopped loving me back - I should lose my main will to live. That we need to latch on to someone else to make our lives meaningful. I could enjoy a delicious meal by myself. I could also enjoy it with someone, but it's not like their absence means I wo

    • by swell ( 195815 )

      "Finding meaning in life without religion is hard enough,
      without the desire to start a family it becomes almost impossible."

      Fortunately there are always a few individuals who overcome their programming.

      The programming for a family, of course, comes from our DNA. It's darn hard to overcome that, but in modern society there are incentives to being single.

      The programming for religion comes from our parents, community and various social pressures. Humans are approaching an evolutionary state in which intelligen

  • Of course (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Monoman ( 8745 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:12PM (#58625082) Homepage

    They're growing up

  • by Pfhorrest ( 545131 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:18PM (#58625124) Homepage Journal

    These "two generations" have such similar mindsets because this isn't two generations, this is one generation. Generations are around 20 years long; roughly people born in the 80s and 90s are Millennials. 1982-2004 was the original definition of "Millennial" by those who coined the term, and this study just splits more-or-less that range up into two half-generations. "Generation Z" are the kids born roughly between 2000 and now.

    • by jmccue ( 834797 )

      These "two generations" have such similar mindsets because this isn't two generations, this is one generation. Generations are around 20 years long; roughly people born in the 80s and 90s are Millennials.......

      And this is when I wish I had mod points, you would get them all. How can you believe even one word in an article when the author cannot count to 20

  • An easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:19PM (#58625138) Homepage Journal

    Join a fraternal organization and do some work with people worse off than you are.

    Nothing makes you more optimistic about your future with no shoes, than meeting the guy with no feet.

  • by lionchild ( 581331 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:32PM (#58625250) Journal

    I suspect that the answers would be similar for Gen-X. However, they may well be more focused on 'getting out' of the world of work and business, and getting into that fabled, mythic dream state of 'retirement.' Something that I suspect many in Generation-X believe is becoming farther and farther away, because of their lack of faith in business giving them the ability to make retirement into golden years.

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I guess that it doesn't help that the Gen Z folks will need to retire to Alaska, considering that most of the southern US will be unlivable thanks to the projected global warming by 2050.

    • Why would anyone care enough about what GenX thinks to ask?

      • Why would anyone care enough about what GenX thinks to ask?

        I can tell you that people in GenX don't care enough about what GenX thinks.

    • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I'm a young Xer. We got lucky as we were able to mostly establish ourselves before things really took a shit.

      The boomers have been in control for far too long and are taking us down an unsustainable path. While I love my parents, their generation needs to gtfo of politics. They still live in a pre-global world and have such a poor understanding on how the world has changed. They worked hard and are semi-retired now.. time to let the next generation lead.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As a Gen-Xer I can vouch for this. I'm in my late 30's and just bought my first house and this was an achievement I didn't think was going to be possible in my lifetime. Being saddled with student loan debt to get my seemingly worthless Bachelor's of Computer Science degree has put me in such a financial hole I'll probably be paying on it the rest of my dying days.

      Retirement you say? What's that? Pensions? I thought those died when MTV stopped playing music videos. Like most others in my generation I have t

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @05:41PM (#58626080) Journal

      I suspect that the answers would be similar for Gen-X.

      Gen-Xers start with the idea that life sucks, and the system is broken and unfixable, so anything good that happens is bonus.

  • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @03:51PM (#58625410)

    - Environmentalism is all doomsday all the time.
    - Politics has always been bad, but it's worse lately and jerks push it on them everywhere.
    - Fun is not allow because someone will be offended or arrested.
    - They don't look forward to technology improvements because of robot doomsday or some other apocalyptic story.
    - They've seen a generation with limited economic progress due to globalization and 2 economic crashes.
    - They have college debts.
    - They can look forward to lots of hardship from government debt and paying for others' retirement with little hope the government will pay for theirs.
    - People who have faith are mocked by jerks who have nothing to offer anyone.

    • Mod parent up.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      - People who have faith are mocked by jerks who have nothing to offer anyone.

      People who have no faith are also mocked by jerks who have nothing to offer anyone.

      To summarize - people are jerks.

    • Environmentalism is all doomsday all the time

      Well, yeah, it's for a pretty good reason that way. The planet is fucked for the next few centuries, would you rather folks sugar coat it and tell them it's going to be okay if they put a brown paper bag over their head and lie down?

      Politics has always been bad, but it's worse lately and jerks push it on them everywhere

      Politics are worse because people enjoy being entertained. Are you not entertained?

      Fun is not allow because someone will be offended or arrested

      Clearly, you're visiting that other Internet that I don't frequent.

      They can look forward to lots of hardship from government debt and paying for others' retirement with little hope the government will pay for theirs

      Well actually, having little hope would indicate that there's a chance to actually live that long, which seems to be a bit out

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Who exactly is running the "sell you out" companies? oh, ya. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg born May 14, 1984 - oops.
    Maybe the "gig economy", "tiny houses", and "working my way" isn't exactly as good a deal as yo think it is.
  • 13,416 Millennials (born between 1983 and 1994) spread across 42 countries and 3,009 Gen Z respondents (born between 1995 and 2002)

    They inverted the terms and their definitions, right?

  • Let me guess, this clickbait was written by millenials? Sorry, I'm going to need to characterize these concerns as a first world problem. Millennial International: Sponsor a Millennial Today [youtube.com]

  • by presearch ( 214913 ) on Monday May 20, 2019 @07:55PM (#58626806)

    Millennials would be much happier if our corporations had snappier names:
    Genl Motrs, XXon, LokHede, wMart, BerkWay, aTeeTee and uh, Apple.

  • This is called reaching adult-hood. It's brutal, eye-opening and rarely pleasant.

    Where all your dreams and fantasies about how you THINK life is supposed to be collides with reality.

    ( Don't tell me how amazing the previous generations had it either. When Millennials and Gen Z get drafted to go die in some foreign war, we can talk about it. )

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