A very notable exception to this is the rich/well off kids Ive been with. They very much do not show the same empathy as even the middle class type kids (or upper middle class) that I work with. There is definitely a massive divide there.
The location of the school also has a significant impact on this too.
I would say generally the big differentiator is that the kids who are meaner/less empathetic are the ones with less anxiety, regardless of wealth status.
Overall though, anxiety is definitely just a massive problem among youth.
"They’re handling it admirably, but we really did them dirty."
Despite what we may think about our children (or "the youth of today"), they are basically the same as they've always been, behaving well for adults--mainly I suspect to keep the adults attention away from them.
I think that, as long as we keep the above in mind when we deal with the younger generation we'll be able to help to them rise above our mistakes.
Even our mental space is occupied by a handful of billion$ companies (and their billion$ owners).
Then AI is changing the outlook for 100s of millions ‘knowledge workers’ and artists as they see what they were educated for or educated themselves with, rapidly become obsolete. Of course many here say that it will make more jobs as it always did; are those better? Will they pay more and have a better work/life balance, or, more likely when looking at the past, will they pay, generally far less and will the companies rich enough to run the AI be the only ones that benefit from that particular revolution, as they do now?
You can deny climate change and pollution as many do, but that is a problem as well which the coming generations can look forward to reap the pain from through disasters and famine. Not you or your kids or friends, but the masses ‘elsewhere’ who are already suffering now from these things.
So when you are young you look forward to having no possessions (everything shall be rented), a burning planet and no or crappy jobs. Throw in a war here and there and the bleak future arrived already for many. Except for a few, like now and many of those are in the HN echo chamber.
And all of this and more is causing a clearly visible mental health crisis all around the globe.
Which parts are distorted?
actually very wrong, the real median household income is much higher
https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/US_Gini_...
You can't say "oh that's false" whilst giving no examples when it's extremely well known that life is getting extremely expensive, all the iPhones in the world don't actually make it better.
Here's a well known metric: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/11/politics/millennials-income-s...
And it's getting worse... Homes less affordable, entering recession, less socialeconomic mobility, etc...
People keep asking why is X group struggling? And there's been enough articles about different groups that X is basically nearly everyone. Things are not getting better for anyone except the extremely wealthy.