The invention of "anxiety" as a condition afflicting everyone under 40 means it's a faux pas to knock on a door, call a phone, or otherwise interact with anybody unless you warn them ahead of time.

I agree in principle, but I'm pretty sure the anxiety pandemic is real, not invented. Ask a middle- or high-schooler what percent of their class is on medication for anxiety, the answer will surprise you. In my grandma's day, that number would have been zero.

Whatever's going on there, it's serious. I bet in 50 years we discover that some chemical in our food/water/air was responsible, analogous to the leaded gasoline issue.

Or maybe doctors are happy prescribing pills to paper over mundane life issues.

It’s also a nasty feedback loop where all of this “mental health awareness” is blasted at kids all day and they start to assume there is a 50/50 chance they have anxiety and start to… get anxious about it.

Kids are suffering from increased anxiety due to social media in less pill happy places than the US.

The weird thing is that nobody seems interested in _not_ being anxious.

I don't know how you would justify such an observation, I suppose you could also quietly observe a bunch of disabled people in wheelchairs and say to yourself "they don't seem interested in not using wheelchairs" but I'm pretty sure they're very interested in not using wheelchairs.

That's fair, my comment wasn't helpful. I have had a few situations where I had to fix my coworkers' mess and they chalked up their inability to help to having anxiety or feeling vulnerable and I was a bit salty about it.

No I don’t think it’s generational. I see it across the age spectrum and I am in Texas too. Lots of neighborhoods just don’t interact. The gems are the neighborhoods where people live there because they really want to live in that house within that neighborhood.