[Sirensong18]

This is from an online posting I saw today…

90’s kids are the generation of nostalgia, because so much technological advancement happened in such a rapid time frame when we were growing up. We can clearly remember having technologies that are now obsolete, like going from a huge corded phone to a small computer in your pocket - just within our formative years. It is a major thing, and it sparks a nostalgia for our seemingly ‘simpler’ childhoods because so much rapid development makes it seem like it was a lot longer ago than it actually was.

Just to add on to that, our childhood wasn’t even technology based. We grew up knowing of chalk, skateboards, jump rope, street hockey, playgrounds, bug and butterfly collecting, etc. Slowly technology took over our lives and now there are hardly kids playing outside in the summer. We can clearly remember our childhood as it was, and now we can see the clear line between it. We were the generation right smack in the middle of it all. Our parents were of non-tech, and our children/young siblings will be all tech.

Not to mention, ours was the last generation that grew up with all those bright promises of ‘work hard, go to college, and you’ll have a successful life’… only to find those hopes abruptly dashed when the housing bubble burst and the economy crashed. Millennials have grown up expecting that disappointment, because for them the problem has been there since day one.

So 90’s kids aren’t just nostalgic… we’re bitter. And we ache for those days when we could still think the world was boundless and full of the opportunities we were promised since the first day of kindergarten.

---Seriously, this post sums up completely for me how it felt to grow up in the 90’s, being raised in this ‘false bubble of reality’ as I now like to call it. We were told if we just work hard and go to college that the world would just open up to us and we could all have the American dream. Now we find ourselves saddled with tons of student loan debt, and there are no good jobs to be had. The typical ‘entry level’ and service type jobs are all taken up by old people who didn’t save for their retirements. You’re lucky to even find a minimum wage job these days, and the minimum wage is not a living wage - it is a starvation wage. Meanwhile the rich and elite of society blame us for all these problems, saying we just don’t “work hard enough”, or call us lazy or moochers when we have to rely on government benefits just to feed ourselves and get by.

This feeling of nostalgia/bitterness is a large part of my depression. I feel like I was raised with a certain perception of reality and how the world worked – and it was all a big fat lie. Or, at the very least, I was raised with a sense of permanence to prosperity, and that is not the case at all.

So now I’m struggling to redefine myself, and figure out how I can fit my life and dreams/aspirations into the way the world REALLY works. I feel like I have no idea what I am doing. Like a literal babe in the woods – just stumbling blindly around, with no one I can turn to for advice or help. It’s terribly lonely and disheartening.

Thanks for listening.

I can understand how you feel. First of all, I always grew up with a natural viewpoint of the world, and that I can't really fit in with this generation because I felt so unique and lonely. Besides, we're also the 90's kids to be the final generation of the 20th century, it's mind-blowing when I think about it, 'cause now we're lost (well, for those who feel). Second, I'm excited yet worried about college. Like you said, you mentioned student loans and it unnerves me. I hate how I have to worry about this when all I want to worry about my quality of my education and how I can control my depression and live my life the way I want to.

[Blues47]

Interesting take. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, graduated college in '90. Nobody told us if we worked hard and went to college the American Dream would be ours. Back then it wasn't so much 'if you do A, B will happen' as it was 'if you want B, you should start with A'.

[Tiamat]

I grew up in the 80's and 90's and I know exactly where you're coming from! I am one of those typical kids who went to college to try and get what was promised, but because of anxiety, I dropped out. Now I have ridiculous debt, a hard time getting/keeping jobs and have to wait on social security.

We just have to hope that one day, soon, people will start to understand as a whole and fix the problem.

[flannel_pajamas]

Yeah, this all resonates with me. I was born in 1982. I feel like the world changed right around the time I started college and, by my mid 20's, it felt like everything I'd grown up believing was a lie. Just work hard, go to college, be good at what you do, be a good and honest person, and you'll go far. Yeah, right. I'm 32 and living with my parents. I've got my degree, I worked hard, I'm good at what I do, I'm kind and honest to a fault, but nobody gives a f***.

Of course the depression doesn't help, and my current situation feeds the depression, so now I'm just stuck in this vicious cycle.