New 'Stress In America' Study: The Nation Is Suffering, With Gen Z Taking The Hardest Hit

[appalachiablue]

Source: Forbes

By Prudy Gourguechon, 2:38 PM.

The American Psychological Association just released its annual Stress in America study, confirming what we already sense—the violence and political dissension in our country is taking a significant toll, increasing stress levels especially among younger adults.

Prolonged stress is known to have long-term health consequences, so these troubled times are likely to have significant economic and public health impact down the road. Here are some highlights from the study:

Among members of Gen Z (15-21-year-olds) 75 percent report mass shootings as a significant source of stress, and 56 percent are stressed by the direct possibility of a shooting at their own school. Two-thirds of Gen Z members feel very or significantly stressed about the nation's future and do not believe the country is moving towards “being stronger than ever.”

Well over half of Gen Z respondents reported significant stress over other issues in the news: the rise in suicide rates, climate change and global warming, separation and deportation of immigrants and migrant families and widespread sexual harassment and assault reports.- More...

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/prudygourguechon/2018/10/30/new-stress-in-america-study-the-nation-is-suffering-with-younger-adults-taking-the-worst-hit/#1f6c35334cb4

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Despite high levels of concern about current social and political issues found in the study, Gen Z members are the least likely to vote: 7 in 10 adults overall intend to vote in the Midterm elections, but only 54 % of Gen Z members say they are going to vote.

The data indicates that there is a growing sense of helplessness among new voters. Gen Z members have not experienced any political environment other than the divisive, angry, frightening one we are in today and that outlook is reflected in the voting record.

The study focusses on Gen Z, but also reports that Millennials (22 to 39-year-olds) have the highest level of stress overall, many from challenges with work and family. They also feel responsible for changing the nation's downward slide.

[deurbano]

1. I have two Gen Zers! Didn't know that's what they are called now.

"Only 54 % of Gen Z members say they are going to vote."

Of course, we would like the number to be higher, but if they actually turn out in that percentage, it would be even higher than the highest turnout for the 18-21 age group (52%), in 1972, when the voting age was first lowered to 18. That was also a presidential election year, when turnout is always higher than in the midterms. If they really turn out in those numbers, Gen Zers will be doing a lot better than Millennials (when they were 18-24) and Baby Boomers (when they were 18-24) did in the midterms:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/14/younger-generations-make-up-a-majority-of-the-electorate-but-may-not-be-a-majority-of-voters-this-november/

Millennials have had the opportunity to vote in four midterm elections (2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014). Among Millennials who were between the ages of 18 and 24 during these elections, 20% turned out to vote, on average. By comparison, 26% of Boomers in that same age range turned out to vote in midterm elections between 1978 and 1986.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-history-of-the-youth-vote/
In the 1972 presidential election between incumbent president Richard Nixon and Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., a record 52 percent of individuals between 18 and 21 cast ballots, but voting among young people would soon drop significantly.

[GWC58]

26. What of those born 2005-present.

My son was born November 2005. 🤔

[DRoseDARs]

2. Millennial here (37), can confirm. My gen and the Zs that follow are not happy campers.

Zs have it worse as it is correctly pointed out they've only known nastiness in the US political climate and an economy that has gotten wildly unbalanced between the haves and have-nots. My gen saw the early stirrings of the political decline in the 90s and early 00s when we were just forming our political selves. I was just a child but even I knew Speaker of the House Gingrinch was a nasty putz. Zs haven't seen the trappings of decorum that used to adorn Congress and the White House that Newt helped start to strip away.

Blaming my gen and the Zs for being apathetic is so grossly unfair and dismissive of older generations' culpability in the current climate. Who wants to participate in a system one views as irredeemably broken? Younger generations aren't stupid, they smell change coming and it smells of charred rotten flesh. Febreezing over it and chiding the youngers for not voting doesn't fix that.

This administration is the make-or-break moment for US democracy. Obama, Bernie and Hillary. They didn't dismiss us, dismiss our pain and our uncertainty. They fought for us. They recognized the danger viewed from different angles, both to our collective way of life and to the pain of the younger generations watching and being molded by the events of the past 20-30 years.

[ancianita]

5. Well, then. If they didn't turn out for those who DIDN'T dismiss them, and they won't turn out NOW,

what are they going to do, wait for rotten flesh stench so they can say they were right?

Or might they dare to err on the side of giving the ballot one more try.

Pain IS democracy. When it runs well, we can get on with other things. But ignore or play along with stealth fascist capitalists for too long, and we get tossed back to the pain zone.

Every generation has a pain zone. But no generation has yet to just give up and watch their world get ruined.

Not to decide is to decide. Pick your pain.

[DRoseDARs]

7. *whoosh* Right on cue, someone parachutes in with the Febreeze.

Perfect example of the dismissiveness.

I'm tired of explaining it. I've been explaining it for more than 20 years after I had my political awakening. Older generations don't want to hear it because what do children know? They have nothing to contribute, no valid perspective to offer. Shut up and vote, and then just let the adults handle things. Go play Pokemon or whatever, right?

[ancianita]

10. No Febreeze here. Just trying to connect in the DU context. Maybe I should use another angle.

But I gotta say, your putting "Older generations don't want to hear it because what do children know? They have nothing to contribute, no valid perspective to offer. Shut up and vote, and then just let the adults handle things. Go play Pokemon or whatever, right?" into my mouth doesn't help us connect.

I think your generation is brilliant. Your pain is real.

Suffering can be non-legitimate -- ego wars on all levels, from education to health to income to governing to actual war and everything above and below that.

Suffering, as I've come to understand it, is optional, and people live life trying or not trying to see options around them, as best they let themselves see them. The only legitimate suffering is dying and death.

In DU, and probably life, democracy is one level of consciousness.
Consciousness is pain.
Pain can be dealt with either by killing one's soul, one's self, OR (and I'm not trying to be binary here) knowing that in life's strivings we make our meaning. We can make it alone or collectively in larger projects. Expanding democracy into the future is a collective project.

This country's democracy has freed millions who've come here (and are still coming) to see other options in their pursuit of happiness.

With this election we might be looking at the end of something dark that no generation has seen before, or we might be looking at the beginning of something dark that mostly your generation will see.

I'm not you. I don't lecture here. You raise problems about pain and your future that I'm just trying to address. And you yourself could trust your ability to expand your capacity for consciousness that involve painful lessons that lessen suffering for everyone. I don't even look for it, but I see it all the time among the Z generation. It's all over the news, for one thing.

In my own life, my millennial son, (age 31 and an active voter in another state) just got some encouragement he said he really needed when he was moving his business from one end of a business block to a larger space at the other end.

His friend quoted R. Hunt Greene: Everything is always impossible before it works.

[DRoseDARs]

11. Thank you so much for this post, a much better approach.

[appalachiablue]

12. From the article, impt. info. for all,

There are two keys to dealing with stress and the states of helplessness it can evoke. The first is to take action. Any action. Vote, engage, protest, write. From a psychological perspective, it doesn’t matter what you do, it matters that you do something. Humans are meant to feel effective, meaning that we need to feel our actions make a difference, have an impact.
The second is to join or form communities. It’s coded deep in our DNA—we will survive best if we live and fight, when necessary, in packs. The kinds of stress related to troubling social issues that this report uncovers cannot be ultimately dealt with on the individual level.

[BigmanPigman]

3. That seems to be an accurate assessment.

The only thing that makes me less stressed lately is knowing that I don't have to worry about my kid's future since I don't have any (by choice).

[Jedi Guy]

19. Same here, with regard to kids.

My wife and I are unable to conceive. It never bothered me all that much, and much less so now. One less thing to stress over.

Plus, we don't have to send our cats to university.

[ck4829]

24. Indeed

[defacto7]

4. a little ambiguity here but maybe I should take it for granted.

"Only 54% of gen Z members say they are going to vote"

Only 56% of gen Z are eligible to vote. Looking at it one way 98% of eligible gen Z will vote.

I don't like to take it for granted but I suppose they could mean that 100% is equal to all gen Z eligible voters but in context they are discussing ages 15 - 21. I'd like to think 98% are voting.

[ancianita]

8. I like the way you think. My Z son, age 31, owns a business and makes time for his employees and

Last edited Tue Oct 30, 2018, 05:41 PM - Edit history (1)

everyone else he knows to GOTV.

He's got a dark vision of the future, too, and will not have children, but he's not going down without making sure his community and "family" there are self-sustainable, both in resources, skills, and tools for self defense.

The way I see this news is, we all have to care about future generations' lives, even if they don't see how their actions today can impact them.

I think my son and his people in his end of New Mexico are like that 98% that you speak of.

[Marthe48]

6. If you vote, you are acting

People who might not vote: you know what kind of people are in office, because too many people believed outright lies about Dems and not enough people voted to cancel out the russian interference and other dirty tricks. Please go vote. We need to overwhelm the right with people voting.

Next: I am 66. I grew up surrounded by people who fought in WWII and were proud to serve their country. I grew up in the boom times following WWII, but I was never allowed to forget that my parents and grandparents faced hard times because of The Great Depression. When I was a teen, I saw people just a little older than I was either go to Vietnam or protest our involvement there. I created and led a clean-up crew for the first Earth Day and I plant trees or flowers every year to remember that I am here to help, not harm, this planet. I watched the Watergate hearings. I saw Agnew, then Nixon leave office in disgrace. I am imbued with the sense that this is my country and I can take an active role in how things play out now and in the future. I think that younger generations are getting cut off from reality, like a tree branch cut off from the trunk and withering. In the matter of military service, we slowly but surely forget who is serving and why. We remember the Vets, but how often do we think about active service members? How do we view public service and military service and see how both are honorable and necessary for the health of our nation? Since fewer and fewer Vets run for office, and more and more private citizens attain office, I think we are seeing public office as a short cut to personal gain, rather than a way to serve our country and keep it functioning. And rather than serving our nation, too many of the elected officials are serving themselves, both for financial gain, and personal satisfaction of their own worldview.

We really need a Renaissance of altruism and public spirit. So going back to the start: Please vote. You matter. Your vote matters.

[DRoseDARs]

9. Thank you, this post recognizes circumstances shape generations.

Last edited Tue Oct 30, 2018, 05:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Both mine and the Zs lacked the circumstances you generation had, instead we've been exposed to and molded by the obscenity of the far right mind disease that's spread for 30+ years. 9/11 was a critical moment and had it been played correctly, much good could have come out of that tragedy. Instead, we got Il Dunce sitting with a blank stare on his face as a class of children read My Pet Goat. The rest is conservative ratfuckery. We live on the dark timeline.

Edit: The other poster tried rewording their point and it came out much better.

[Marthe48]

13. There are generations after me

people from ages 50 down to 9. I care about them and what they have to say.

[Rizen]

14. I'm a millenial

and have never been more stressed out politically than ever since Trump got elected. I've been voting since I was 18 and don't understand why younger people don't vote. It's aggravating trying to talk to people my age; they don't like gun violence or global warming but still don't vote. But I have hope for 2018. This is how people are: you can tell them to move a candle off a box of oily rags and they won't do it. But when the house starts burning down THEN they'll take action. And the house is burning now.

[appalachiablue]

15. Good for you! and thanks for the post. I can't understand why people

don't vote, it's much easier than getting your car inspected once a year, as required by some states, going to the dentist for an annual cleaning or registering for classes.

The US has undergone a long stretch of extreme pro-business and vicious anti- government sentiment, largely fostered by RW propaganda in hate radio and Fox news for 35 years, but the decline in participation in civics and the role of govt. is still shocking and unhealthy for democracy.

Was there anything that contributed most to your political awareness and voting habits? Upbringing, community, etc.

[Rizen]

18. IDK

I never really fit in with people my own age.

[ck4829]

25. +1

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

16. Gen Z is least likely to vote because most of them aren't old enough to vote yet

Gen Z would be my kids I think. They are in high school and elementary school still. I wish the supposed adults running this country would pay attention to how their behavior affects children. They don't care about that though. This article calls me a Millennial too. LOL. I always thought I was Gen X. I'm 39.

[appalachiablue]

17. You're on the cusp, Gen X, Mill. The Pew Research chart is fairly standard

but I think it leans off by about 2 years, mainly for Gen X, Millennial and Gen. Z. (?)

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

22. Yeah, being on the cusp is weird

I can definitely relate to both generations.

[truthisfreedom]

20. We're running out of letters.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

21. Maybe they'll wrap around and use A next. n/t

[ck4829]

23. K&R