Better for you now or in the past?

Your life in reverse, has been my life - until very recently.

Much, much better now. I didn't do 'being young' very well. I felt social and societal pressures very keenly, I wanted to 'fit in' desperately. Plus I had a huge fear of failure and fear of embarrassing myself. I think I recognised that I 'wasn't singing from the same hymn sheet' as every one else. I started to feel more comfortable in my own skin by my mid 30s, around the time I got married. After I hit 50, I was much more relaxed about myself, my oddities became just that, not an enormous burden that might squash me flat at any moment of inattention.

NAS83342 said:

but you have to see the funny side or you go crazy 

I think this is correct, but I cannot shake the overwhelming undercurrent of doom-laden portent oozing out of everybody's "little black mirrors" and other tech devices - with ever increasing ferocity of flow.  I feel that a mass awakening to the risks at play is required PDQ.

Luftmentsch said:

It's scary to think about. The secondary school I attended has had three student suicides in the last five years or so, which terrifies me.

I think you are right to feel somewhat terrified - me too.

Well now..1.no education 2.no jobs..blimey need I go on..I absolutely feel sorry for the younger generation..in the 80's you could do any degree for free and I had 2 jobs on go at one point..if I wanted to do something I pressed 1 button yes 1 LOL now if I accidently touch my phone I've ordered a pizza.im being sold double glazing and I've accidently emailed an embarrassing photo to the whole company that I pay my bills too..and oh yes the police are knocking at the door because I may have said something somewhere on the Internet and that's before I've dealt with spam telling me I'm being blackmailed because I like to do inappropriate things to pigs LOL  which I don't ofcourse but you have to see the funny side or you go crazy 

As someone a bit younger (I think) than other commenters here, I'm finding this interesting.

I was born in the early eighties, so not born online, but computers, and then the internet, slowly crept into my life in my teens.

Things are mostly better for me now, certainly in my personal life, but partly because of technological change. I wouldn't have met my wife without the internet, or managed a long-distance relationship without Skype or Zoom. And, while I've never really felt I "found my tribe," I have made good friends online and am a lot less isolated than I would be without it. Blogging has been good for me to process and understand my emotions, but private journaling never worked for me; it's the interactions with readers that help me to write. Plus, like Shardovan said, I was probably "born old" and wouldn't have fitted in whenever I was born (most of the music and TV I like are from the 60s and 70s, and the books I read tend to be even older!).

Also, although it came to late for me, it's good that high-functioning autism is picked up now whereas there was really no awareness of it when I was at school (hence I didn't get diagnosed until years later).

The downsides are the total sensory overload from omnipresent "devices" nowadays not to mention video adverts in shop windows and on the streets and even more noise. I find this makes me very uncomfortable, more so as I get older, and I'm not sure how much is my resistance to it declining and how much is that there are just more noises and moving pictures now. Sometimes I would like to live in a quieter era. As an Orthodox Jew, I don't use computers, TV, phones etc. on the Sabbath and it's very calming, but I still end up back on them straight afterwards (the downside of having most of my social life online, and of my wife being stuck in the US until her visa arrives).

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like being a teenager in the era of social media. Would I have made friends online more easily than I managed at school? Or would the kids who bullied me at school just bully me at home via Facebook? It's scary to think about. The secondary school I attended has had three student suicides in the last five years or so, which terrifies me.

Degrees can be good too - if they love their subject it would be a shame for them not to be able to study it in depth. They can get jobs afterwards - hopefully! 
I think our generation (I’m in my fifties) have made a bit of a hash of things - hopefully the following generations will do better. Looking after the climate and the natural world  would be a good start. 

I’m sorry you’re not enjoying life much at the moment - I’m struggling too. Hopefully things will improve soon. It’s nice to remember lovely things from the past - it can be very cheering. Hopefully we have good stuff ahead too though! 

When I was growing up, I genuinely believed that my Generation would 'Make a Difference'. Now, I realise that I was hoodwinked; along with so many others. TV became my substitute Father.

Now, I can say that I escaped the worst; and it was because my family worked so hard. If I ever have kids, I would insist that they get Jobs; rather than Degrees.

Hang in there, Lad! We've all had struggles!

My life was definitely better a few years ago. The pandemic has had a terrible impact on my life and the lives of other people in my family. Because of this I look back to the 80s and 90s with huge affection and nostalgia. I agree that there are advantages to technology but I miss living in a simpler time. When I see people on a bus all staring at their phones it makes me feel quite sad. I used to love just daydreaming and looking out the window, and hearing other people chatting to each other. 

I agree with the statements of life being less complicated as far as technology. I can see the damage that social media is having on the young. The highlight of my week would have been’Top of the pops’, Trying to fit in, especially in my teen years were really hard. Everyone else seemed to have known the rules. I would go to parties in my late teens but would be the one standing in the kitchen, trying not to get in the way, that seemed impossible. I realised in the end that I was only included because I had a car. How do girls know that autistic boys are different, I tried so hard to be like the other boys, but they just thought I was weird.

I would watch tv in the seventies, it seemed to portray London as just being Carnaby Street with everyone dressed in the latest fashion. Obviously reality was a lot different. My children think because my teen years were in the 80’s that we all walked around dressed as ‘Young romantics’.or Adam Ant. I often think of The Shawshank Redemption when ‘Red’ is telling the probation board as an old man how he wishes he could go back and talk to the young boy he once was. That’s exactly how I feel, I would have so much to explain to him. I still morn that lost child. Sorry I’m feeling very low at the moment and not really enjoying life.

Worse.

Kids, these days, are basically wrapped in Cotton Wool. While I barely went out, as a child, I was eager to learn new things. Though, I believe that the rug was pulled under from me after my Dad was killed in the Troubles.

A lot of that stems from the Mothers; trying to appear Trendy. Plus, the names they give kids. No wonder they're so codependent.

Shardovan said:

people of my age can be grateful that we got a pretty decent trade-off - maybe even the best one?

I think this is correct.

I was at school in the 80s so life is definitely better for me now.  Also my home life at that time was very unpleasant, and I always felt completely alone.

Also I'm Queer (biromantic and non-binary) so that aspect has definitely improved since then. 

I'm also "out" about being autistic at work and have given up worrying what other people think of me.  I've found someone to share my life with and we have two weird and wonderful kids.

Life is effort. This year in particular has been hard for Reasons, but I know that I will get through it and that I have people to support me. I have learned a lot about myself from the internet, and that has given me more strategies to cope.

I changed my name about 4 years ago to my Mums name as my Dad left but I never really had his name, anyway I imagine myself as a reborn reincarnated in the body of an adult with a new life as if I had died and come back as a man - I think I was lucky because most people don’t get a second chance as they can’t afford it or change their name by marriage so now that I’m trying to let go of the past, I’m hoping for the life in which I were intended and the one I actually deserve!

There are two dimensions (at least) of that for me. One is more a 'me' thing, the other is society's evolution.

On the me front, I feel I was born old - you know how people in their 70s often say they still feel 21? I think that in my teens/20s/30s I was kind of always around 40, looking forward to a time when the stuff you're supposed to find fun (partying, hardcore drinking and socialising, being on-trend and into cool- as defined by that years specific fads, stuff like that) would give way to the moment when it was OK to do what I'd always done instead - someone who'd prefer a trip to the library than a night at the pub, or a quiet walk to a rowdy get-togther. I remember getting to 40, thinking 'I've arrived, I can just get on with being me' - and then at 41 I had a nervous breakdown having realised I'd maybe been too safe and become uncomfirtably anomalous. This was pre-diagnosis, but began the path to that of course. Now, as I watch 40 rapidly disappear in the rear-view mirror, I realise just how transitory and illusory was that one year of imagined relative comfort.

On the technology front, I agree with much of what you say - there are many benefits, including finding one's tribe without having to rely on geographical blind chance to get that 'thank god it's not just me' reassurance. On the other hand, I think my/your/Sparkly's generation (I think we're broadly in the same age range) was the last to be born into the analogue age (we still have sensory memories of using rotary phones!), and we've therefore had the most exhausting adaptive battle to fight. Too young to opt out of the newfangled (like my aunt's partner did - retired a few years ago and has never touched a keyboard in his life, and never will), too old to have gotten the nice intuitive user interfaces and early-age immersion that makes it all so smooth and effortless for Generation Z or whoever. Instead, we got the clunky learning curve of going from limited exposure to BBC Micros, to maybe an Amstrad in the home, to the early rough edges of the nascent internet, to Office programs that were fiddly rather than easy to navigate, and prone to crashing, and vulnerable to viruses etc. In other words, navigating all the difficult birth pains of digital tech becoming a necessary but unwieldy presence in all areas of life. And finally, we go to the age of the smart phone, where things started to feel a little more like they were meeting our non-digital-native mindsets more than halfway to compensate for all that discomfort of being put in front of devices that made the very air around them nervous with their brittle auras of 'get it right for god's sake or you'll lose your night's work' and all the attendant stress of that. 

All very necessary of course. Is anyone ever entirely born at the 'right' time? In the far future, the first immortals will be. Until then, people of my age can be grateful that we got a pretty decent trade-off - maybe even the best one? A childhood with some gentle modernity - raised on the soothing tones of Oliver Postgate and Blue Peter instead of the frenetic relentlessness of the Cartoon Network, and TikTok and whatever else. But still able to selectively opt in to YouTube videos, and podcasts, and Twitter and other things that amuse, divert, and entertain in ways that let us be in control of our own 'schedules' while still finding time for the reduced ambient complexity that any middle-aged person needs to go back to to stay healthy (or at least I do anyway). I could say a lot more, but I'm aware this is a bit of a stream of consciousness now, so will make myself stop. And return when more cohesive thinking on the subject has had time to percolate a bit.

I think I'm undecided. I am in agreement that back in 1980, it did seem that there was a slower and quieter pace of life. Whether perceived or genuine, life seems more pressured now, and I think people are less patient as a result.

On the one hand, I like how technology has evolved. On the other hand, I worry that it's now evolving at too fast a pace. Instead of making life easier, it's now starting to cause problems and make life more complicated.

There is more I could probably add, but as I'm currently feeling rather tired, I think this is my cue to get my head down and get some sleep.