• Aidinthel@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    The most common cause of their anxiety — the future.

    Completely reasonable. I’m a Millenial and I also have a lot of anxiety about the future. Previous generations screwed us all really hard.

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      GenXer here. What drives me nuts is that climate change was taught to me as scientific fact in year 9, back in the early 80s.

      The science was clear but collectively every government said “well, I’ll be dead by then so why should we care now”.

      • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Back then I remember it being all about the ozone layer. Then all the governments got together, did some stuff, and seemed to fix the problem there. Then people kind of stopped talking about it. There was Captain Planet and various things like that, but after the ozone layer panic passed, people stopped caring.

        • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Governments got off their collective assess and did something about the ozone layer and acid rain to the point that the problem has largely been corrected. Unfortunately, although climate change and now micro plastics get a lot of media attention, governments have since stopped trying to actually do something about it.

          • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            There is a big difference between the ozone layer, acid rain and climate change.

            Ozone: Required the move to different refrigerant gasses and implement measures to stop old cfc’s being accidentally released.

            acid rain: Required the use of low sulfur fuels.

            While both were costly they were minor in comparison to climate change emissions.

            The problems were incidental to the industries involved and not a something that had to happen for the industry to function.

            And the big one, they industries that were required to change could profit from the change.

            The complete opposite for co2 emissions.

            There is no way to burn coal or oil without producing co2. So there was zero incentive from the companies and countries that profit from these industries to even look at solutions . Let alone implement them.

            • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The difference was that Ronald Reagan had had skin cancer so he actually took it seriously and listened to the scientists.

              Conservatives never believe anything until it effects them. Sonder is a foreign concept to them, along with empathy. Out of sight; out of mind.

          • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I recently read a study about micro plastics that fairly well substantiates tires as their most of prolific source.

            Think the media is gonna run with that? What would be seen as an attack on car culture itself, fuck the science or concerns of health effects. Micro plastics in the clouds, in the Arctic, in the placenta…

            I’m not holding my breath.

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Millennial checking in. School system pivoted to Acid Rain and deforestation as the main environmental we would face. Oh, and El Nino, seems like that was happening every year of my life as a kid.

      • flicker@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I can tell you (professionally) that the people who saw less anxiety during the pandemic were people with severe anxiety. Statistically.

        I can tell you personally it was because we could say, “Something catastrophic finally happened and I’ve been preparing for this my whole life.”

    • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Kind of a weird statement from the article. Isn’t anxiety always about the future, be it climate change or something as basic as what someone might say about your shirt when going to the store? It’s hard to worry about something from the past, since the outcome is already known… that’s what regret and depression is for.

      • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I have serious anxiety about getting up, leaving the house, and other ‘now’ things.

        • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Is the anxiety about the act of getting up and leaving the house, or what’s going to happen when you get up and leave the house?

          I have anxiety about getting a package left on my porch, but it’s still a future thing, as the package is on the porch and I haven’t opened the door to get it yet. It’s the “what if” that’s generating my anxiety, and that’s a future thing, even if that future might be 30 seconds from now.

    • weedazz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Anxiety about the future is not an anxiety disorder. If almost 2 out of 3 Gen z has anxious intrusive thoughts so bad that they cannot go to school, work, have any kind of healthy interpersonal relationships, etc then the article would have a point, but I don’t think that’s the case. I have more faith in the next generation than that.

      I know things are bad and folks are rightly apprehensive about the future, but that is not an anxiety disorder. Anxious thoughts doesn’t mean you have a disorder, it means you are alive and aware of your surroundings.

      Some of this next generation will turn their distress about the future into eustress that motivates them to fix it (as long as they don’t give in to defeatest takes like in this article).

    • bobman@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      Rejoice in the fact that you’re living a higher quality of life than the vast majority of people ever to walk the earth.