I’m going to put on my old man hat for a minute (I actually own several). And I’m going to be curmudgeonly verbose, in line with the title of this blog.
In quite a few of my client conversations, the discussion often turns to problems with the world at large. I mean, really, aren’t most of our problems due to the way the world is?? Troubling problems readily manifest within culture and society.
More specifically, the problem with kids these days.
Not the historically high rates of depression and anxiety, but that they just don’t ‘get it.’
Now, my client demographic skews adult, most likely 40+ years old (and for reference, I’m 50). The youth ‘not getting it’ seems to center around a noticeable lack of attention span and general lack of care. Back in my day, there was always a certain amount of not-giving-a-shit toward society at large from myself and my cohorts. But there was also a transition out of that to giving-a-shit, if not empathetically about society and the world, at least selfishly about your own lot in life.
But anecdotally, ambition and accountability, two aspects which indicate the ‘shit-transition’ has taken place, seem lean in today’s 20-somethings and 30-somethings. The workplace is an easy environment to point out what I refer to as a lack of ‘buy-in’. Buy-in is hard to specifically define, but it seems to encompass the very predictive personality trait of conscientiousness, along with a long-term giving-a-shit about the work being done and the place in which it’s being done. It’s easy to spot. The opposite is also easy to spot because that person is nowhere to be found at five minutes after 5:00 p.m.
So what’s behind this troubled, directionless youth? Lack of reality and worldly understanding? Perhaps.
Obviously there is a lack of experience by very definition. But what if the problem is not too little but too much? An overly accessible over-abundance. Let me explain…
The other day, I was reading that our national debt is $39 trillion at this point. While that is a pretty big number, what struck me more is that each day the debt increases by $7 billion per day. In thinking about these numbers, I was faced with the reality that I couldn’t really understand them. I can understand the words, but there is no context from which I can draw an experiential understanding. Perhaps if I continued trying by breaking the numbers down to how many dollars per second; $83,000. Better.
I then thought about how this affects my life, my general perspective, and the decisions I make. At a minimum, I manage my budget, knowing what comes in and what goes out. From there, I can plan for the future because I have a lived experience of what $83,000 “means” in my life.
Let’s take another example: 38 million used cars sold in 2025 (so close to 39, I know!). We bought a used car in 2025, so I have that experience, but I certainly can’t relate to 38 million cars exchanging ownership that same year.
And while all these statistics are all easily accessible—they are actually force-fed to us, thrown at us constantly through current media—we don’t even have to seek them out. At a certain point, what do these numbers fucking mean?
They, for all practical daily-life purposes, become meaningless, because while we continue to have actual worldly experiences, we are subjected to a mind-numbing context in which to try to understand that experience. It just doesn’t compute. And I can’t possibly leave out social media specifically and the ever-present likes, follows, comments, shares, etc. It’s constantly in your face, it’s ridiculous, and there is no sense to be made of it.
So when we look at the younger generation, we have to think, how are they processing this? When these numbers continue to increase (they don’t ever seem to go down), things become meaningless, because we can’t properly contextualize our actual experiences. And when things become meaningless, what happens is a sense of loss of control. What can I possibly do about the national debt? When and whether I buy my next car, my purchase will not affect the yearly sold numbers, so things don’t really matter, do they?
Following a sense of lack of control, there is a sense of futility. The progression starts with the intellectual monster of the numbers that cannot be comprehended, leading to the emotional fallout of futility. The outcome of this futility easily follows in the behavior of the younger generation that us old people bitch about.
When there is a sense of futility traced to lack of control, I think a natural tendency is to seek out control. This is a basic therapeutic technique when someone comes in and says their whole world is spinning out of control; ok, let’s take a breath and consider what is under your control and what is not. From there, we’ll explore what can be done with the controllable factors and learn how to deal with those we can’t control.
But what happens when we’re shown it’s ALL out of control?
The mentality then may be to forgo long-term external consideration and turn inward. If I can’t understand or impact the future, what about the immediate? Going to work so there is a paycheck at the end of the week (who cares about next year and my longevity, let alone the longevity of this company). What matters now? Enjoyment (screw putting extra effort into those nebulous long-term things which cannot be related to). Short-sighted and selfish? Maybe. But understandable.
Further understandable when there are rewards for this immediate behavior. When we get the dopamine hits from those follows, likes, comments, shares, we’re encouraged to do more of that behavior (Skinner wasn’t wrong). And while there are still rewards for longer-term efforts, perhaps they are being short-circuited by the abundance of short-term ones. Because there is ‘too much’ inundating us, there isn’t the time and space to allow long-term strategies to play out, so they’re neglected.
A whole genre exists with ‘cures’ to this problem. None will be offered here, as I have no idea what works and don’t want to propagate the problem of lack of context with generalized solutions. But dagnabbit, the effort needs to be made on an individual basis to:
1. Have awareness there is a problem; the pieces aren’t creating a great picture.
2. Allow for the time for effective work to deconstruct the problem (stop. think.)
3. Put the pieces back together in a way that better aligns with reality (do something constructive; give-a-shit).