Even though I'm the same age DeBoer (2000 grad), I actually don't know if things were better in the 90s or not--not because I had a different lived experience, but because I have so little connection to what it's like to be a kid now. I have a 3 and 5 year old, so they're not yet in a mode where they're discovering friendships and culture for themselves. My guess is that some things will be much better than they were for me and some things will be much worse, but most things will be similar.

My millenial cred is high. I failed out of high school while trying to drink myself to death on two separate occasions and doing as much LSD as I could get my hands on. But outside of movies and record stores, which were objectively better than what we have today (and I'll fuckin' go to the mat on both accounts, though maybe not with you!), I don't remember it nearly as fondly as DeBoer. That's probably because I took my flunkie ass to community college, then to a third tier state university that wouldn't rank in US News' top 1000 schools and got an education that was productive and useful.

One superpower I have is the ability to see what's useful in the long run, and I think that separated me from many contemporaries. The late 90s were when first tier state schools started really preferring students with high test scores and high GPAs (though nothing like today's rat race), and everyone was focused on getting to the good school rather than what comes next. For me, what comes next has always been paramount, and probably insulated me from the broader anxieties experienced by many peers. You'd hear all the time, "You can't do that," but followed by an empty stare when you asked why not?

I think where a lot of the millenial bitterness comes from is that we were all banned from biking more than a half mile from the house, but everyone thought the covenant was that we'd always be protected. The forced tradeoff of security for freedom only turned out to be a one way street. But I never bought into that bullshit, and just kind of went my own way. And I find myself at 40 with a high-paying job that doesn't really stress me out too much, but I'm still thinking about what comes next. The whole security for freedom trade still isn't working in my mind, and I hope it never does.

But enough with the navel gazing. I think that the one thing that is inarguably horrible about being a kid these days (and again, I'm not too adjacent, just trying to synthesize what I see around me) is social media. I am not being hyperbolic when I say I think there is nothing redeeming about it. (Hubski isn't social media, so no, I'm not being hypocritical.) In fact, I think given the permanence of anything posted on the internet, we should treat it more like a tattoo than an ephemeral moment in time. I would argue that social media should be illegal for anyone under 18, and I actually don't think that's an unreasonable position. I don't know at what age kids start using it, but I am certain that it will spark fights and outrage in my house. But other than that, I would imagine being a kid these days isn't so bad. I think parents are more interested in their kids than my parents' generation was (I literally think my mom has no idea what I do for a living and I see her about once per week), and most people seem happier and less apathetic to me (surveys of self-reported mental health notwithstanding...I think there's a lot of reason to doubt many of those) than they were in the 90s. Being interested in anything in any serious way in the 90s was enough to get you bullied. Apathy was the coin of the realm, and that is not something to be nostalgic about.

Having kids is an optimistic act, and I definitely wouldn't have had them if I didn't feel good about the future. I guess that's against the grain of a lot of millenials, but to me the world, shitty as the news cycle can be, is in a really good place.