Ashley Lutz, with Business Insider, reports that Millennials are the most stressed generation, surpassing that of generation x, the baby boomers and all that came before. In addition to the high unemployment rates experienced by the earlier generations, the millennials also have to worry about high student debt on top of other daily stressors. She also reports that millennials are more likely than earlier generations to stress over their dating and social lives.
What is the reason that millenials are more stressed than earlier generations? According to Ms. Lutz, this stress can be attributed to the immaturity of the youngest generation. She does not develop this idea further, but instead she reports that millennials have poorer stress relief techniques, and have less developed problem solving skills. I do not think this is that radical of a report because earlier generations have had much more time to learn these skills and techniques, meanwhile the millennials are still in the process of learning them.
Included with the article is a chart showing the percent of each generation that reported being more stressed than they were five year prior. Millennials were the highest with 52%, where boomers were the lowest with 39%. What other reasons could there be for this shockingly large stress gap between generations?
http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-have-the-highest-stress-2012-4
Higher levels of stress, trouble dealing with that stress and less developed problem-solving skills could possibly be linked to technological advances? Millennials have grown up in a world where technology is everywhere, it connects you to your peers through email, Facebook, and Twitter, and most teenagers have cell phones so texting is the primary form of communication. This can cause a lot of stress because news (good and bad) travels faster than ever across many forms of technology. It puts more pressure on social interactions and status and can contribute to poor problem-solving skill development (as teens and young adults use social networking and texting to solve problems without addressing problems face-to-face).