You might imagine that angst and youth have always gone hand in hand, but that’s not the full picture. Until a decade or so ago, happiness followed a predictable U-shaped trajectory. Over the average life, our forebears could expect to feel footloose and fancy free in early adulthood, less content in middle age as the demands of work and family peaked, before sliding blissfully into the low-pressure lagoon of later life.
square EMILY WATKINS
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Read MoreIt’s easy to theorise about the factors behind young people’s discontent – they are, after all, entering adulthood just as the planet really begins to sizzle. Thanks to runaway housing markets and economic crashes, many will never get to enjoy the markers of maturity that our parents took for granted.
It’s a heady cocktail, even before you remember that young people are having less sex, drinking less alcohol, and generally having less fun than any generation in living memory. No blowing off steam, no future to look forward to – having done away with every time-honoured coping mechanism for sublimating the grinding pointlessness of life, is it any wonder that we’re miserable?
What has changed, as far as I can tell, is not how bad things are, but the degree to which we’re immersed in them. Life is stupid and scary, yet while we used to have to no choice but to embrace it, today it’s all too tempting to bury one’s young, untethered head in a smartphone or childhood pillow; temporary relief, but ultimately unfulfilling. Luckily, as life goes on, it forces you to participate in increasingly hands-on ways.
Historically, we’ve used tradition and religion to frame life’s biggest moments –but even if those structures feel as irrelevant to you as they do to me, the actual content remains as compelling as ever (a baby is still amazing without a christening; love is still beautiful without a church wedding).
Living with parents long into adulthood and shoring up their skin with endless treatments, this generation seems almost pathologically resistant to ageing — ironically, that perpetual youth is what’s making them unhappy. As such, even if the solution sounds counterintuitive, it’s gloriously simple: grow up!
The world might feel unpredictable, but the one thing anyone alive can count on is getting older. While society in 2025 might seem to be conspiring to keep young people in a protracted state of adolescence, time acts on us all, whether we like it or not. Sooner or later, life interrupts inertia and pulls you in.
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