Why are so many people struggling with life?

[Letsgetgoing888]

Not just due to covid, but it’s definitely been highlighted more recently....

But in recent years there seem so many more angry people, stressed people, depressed people, people that can’t control their temper, mental health issues, obese kids, obese adults, people who don’t look after themselves or their kids properly...

I know mental health services are woefully inadequate, but generally as a society we are talking more about mental health, provide benefits, charity support, free healthcare and so much more than in the past.

But more people seem to be really struggling in many different ways, health wise, financially, mentally, emotionally. Suicide rates are higher now than in the past (even pre-covid).

Did they have it right in the old days of stiff upper lip? And if not, why are things so much worse now when there is so much more awareness?

I've had a strange theory on this for a while now; I think life is so 'physically' comfortable that our bodies no longer appreciate comfort. As previous posters have alluded to, previous generations had it a lot harder technically (I mean, my nan used a mangle and had no central heating until she was 80) but seemed to think any small creature comforts were wonderful!
I do think that our relative absence of physical struggle (with clear exceptions, many people in UK have heating, cars, food, painkillers etc) exacerbates the human tendancy towards feeling down, as the 'rewards' such as satisfying hunger/getting warm/shopping for required items are so easily come by, they cease to create a buzz/stimulate our reward centres.
An example I always think of is the cup of tea you have at home after climbing a mountain in the cold and rain is the best cup of tea you will ever have!

@SunshineYello

I've had a strange theory on this for a while now; I think life is so 'physically' comfortable that our bodies no longer appreciate comfort. As previous posters have alluded to, previous generations had it a lot harder technically (I mean, my nan used a mangle and had no central heating until she was 80) but seemed to think any small creature comforts were wonderful! I do think that our relative absence of physical struggle (with clear exceptions, many people in UK have heating, cars, food, painkillers etc) exacerbates the human tendancy towards feeling down, as the 'rewards' such as satisfying hunger/getting warm/shopping for required items are so easily come by, they cease to create a buzz/stimulate our reward centres. An example I always think of is the cup of tea you have at home after climbing a mountain in the cold and rain is the best cup of tea you will ever have!

That's a really good theory; there may well be truth in it.

I agree with this. For most of humanity the focus has been on eating enough and keeping warm

That being said, I’m sure there’s good and bad like everything else. I’m pretty sure a stable single parent family is better than an unhappy, abusive 2 parent family though.

And I would completely agree with you on this.

But what about families that are high friction, but where neither parent is bad or abusive? MN tends to concentrate on the extreme positions, while it is horrible for children to live in circumstances where parents have simply fallen out of love with one another.

DH and I (in our 60s) are going through a rough patch, but in honesty, I would not walk because

(1) we would both face much worse outcomes separately and

(2) neither of us is mad, bad, or abusive.

We are just in different zones right now. We will see how things turn out, but there is still room for us to find a new harmony. I hope.

I think when we refer to struggling in life more these days is due to people talking about it more openly. It all used to be hush hush back in the day.
The graph about suicides is sadly interesting. It is going up after reducing so much from the 80s. And they do say it is increasing in 2020

@SunshineYello

I think you are absolutely right. We look for reward and satisfaction in a new iPhone or yet another glass of wine. Those things are not really satisfying and they leave us hungering for more and better, but we have nothing to look for but more gadgets and ‘stuff’.

@Runningdownthathill interesting that you mention wine. It's reminded me of a book I read ages ago by William Leith (the hungry years; confessions of a food addict) where he detailed 'self-advertising' products, and how they are the holy grail for capitalists. Like paracetamol, junk food, drugs, porn - they create, rather than satisfy, a craving and alcohol probably fits in there nicely! Great book if you're into that kind of thing! And I really want a glass of wine now!

Social media
Weakening community and family connections and support

Just take a walk in the park and notice how many people are glued to their phones, not engaged in the world or people they are with

Younger people are more likely to be scared of making an actual phone call, rather than talking to people

Relationships and meaningful human interaction are the source of most people’s happiness.

I think what we now have is a world that has so many little rules and regulations that you have to adhere to they just add to the stress of everyday living,

When I was growing up there were no parking restrictions, no cctv, no bus lanes, no homework in primary school. If you child didn’t go to university then there were apprenticeships that didn’t require your child to be academic in the first place.
Lots of jobs and careers didn’t require you to run up a huge debt before they would consider you.

I think things have crept up slowly. If you think about what you had to think about years ago to what you have to think about now. It has slowly crept up.
Somethings are for the better but a lot are just aggravation that we have got so used to we don’t see the extra stress they bring.

One of the best threads on here. I have enjoyed reading it all. Thanks OP for starting the thread.

People have a choice now which they probably didn't in the past. Or perhaps it's less resilience. Hence it's v hard to employ eg fish factory workers/ fishermen on boats/ people for jobs in cold, wet conditions. Come to that it's hard to recruit nurses/ anyone in the building trade.
I don't really understand why there are such shortages. The jobs aren't great but I would have thought quite good for a long term career. But people don't want to do them. It was probably cheaper to recruit abroad but that opportunity might be reduced now.
It might be partly having to find suitable accommodation as you are moved from building site to building site as the jobs are completed. Work took much longer in the past so perhaps there was always something locally.

Being a 'respectable' / respected member of the community counted.
Women washed their front steps, shop keepers used to clean the pavement in front of their shops, I suppose shops are in a chain now and it's about profit first. You would put your good coat on to go out, and up until the ?mid1960s a hat if you were a woman, cap if you were a man. People don't even brush their hair nowadays - but to criticise is seen as being petty and it's considered a good thing to not give a sh** what people think of you. In theory that's good but does it erode community spirit, show a contempt for others' opinions? I feel it does but I'm nearly 70 so probably out of date.

People seem to find it harder to deal with things without seeking validation of others, there is much more insecurity and self confidence than there used to be. In the past the general mood has gone through phases, sometimes the collective people seemed kinder, other times more stand on your own two feet, but recent decades it's all seemed like it was judge each other, put yourself first, and don't worry about treading on others to get somewhere.

Social media
Weakening community and family connections and support

Just take a walk in the park and notice how many people are glued to their phones, not engaged in the world or people they are with
Younger people are more likely to be scared of making an actual phone call, rather than talking to people

Relationships and meaningful human interaction are the source of most people’s happiness.

I think this cuts both ways if I'm honest.

I held off getting a smartphone until around 2016. I can't say I feel I've switched off from face-to-face relationships in favour of electronic ones since I finally caved in and got one, but then, I've never cared a jot for social media and extending my circle of acquaintances in any case.

It's never been easier for me to stay in touch with family, yet I find myself increasingly disinclined to bother contacting them. I haven't seen my closest relatives in nearly three years, yet we live in the same town, no more than 10 minutes away from each other.

Conversely, I meet a lot of people through work who, for various reasons, find face-to-face interaction with other human beings extremely difficult, yet for them the advent of smartphone technology and social media has led to an explosion of quantity in their social lives, because it enables them to stay in touch, and interact in a way that was totally impossible for them previously.

I think there's good and bad in SM/screen/electronics culture, it's not entirely one way or the other. I also grew up in the 70's and 80's, well before any of this stuff arrived, and I distinctly remember a total absence of any sense of 'community' or 'togetherness' back then as well. If pushed, I'd say that 2020's UK, for all it's flaws, is still a far more warm, open, and accepting a society than it was 30-40 years ago. Certainly how I experience it anyway.

I sometimes wonder if social media took of because of weak community ties rather than being the cause of it. I don't remember my parents being part of a local community in the 90s. They had both moved away from family for work and I wonder if this becoming more frequent was more likely to be the cause of it.

I think you become more aware of more people struggling if you are online a lot. You could intereact with hundreds of people a day compared to only a handful, if that, in real life, and not at a profound level where someone might tell you their problems.

Also people are struggling financially which leads to all sorts of other problems. The cost of living has gone up massively in the last ten years and wages have stagnated. Poverty has gone up hugely while welfare has been cut.

I think boredom has a lot to do with it.

Back in the 90s I was regularly bored. I had to come up with ways to entertain myself. Now I'm even more bored and things feel utterly tedious a lot of the time. The difference is now I can just go on my phone or watch tv any hour of the day or night. Doesn't ask anything of me unlike having to be creative and actively entertaining myself. But doesn't make me happy, no meaning there, just temporary relief via distraction.

I sometimes think about what might happen if I were able to spend 6h a day on something worthwhile instead of Instagram. (The app shows how much time you spend on it, frankly horrifying)

I'd agree with the boredom thing.

Back in the 90's life certainly felt a lot more certain and structured. No round-the-clock TV, no 24/7 available internet, no 24hr shops, things very definitely shut down around midnight, street were deserted apart from at weekends, you didn't have people to chat to the moment you felt the inclination, you'd have to pre-arrange a time for a phonecall and be on hand to make or receive it.

Nowadays everything is just there, available exactly when you want it, and as soon as you feel the need for it. I believe in the concept of familiarity breeding contempt, so once people become contemptuous of things that literally could not be more convenient and available, where on earth do you go next?

Being stuck to your phone, social media and instant gratification.

I use Twitter and Instagram, but it's not the "perfect lives" of some users that get to me (good for them, doing well for themselves), it's the constant time wasting by endlessly scrolling. I don't suffer from anxiety or anything like that, but time wasting really gets to me.

I've started leaving my phone at home when I go out now and I feel SO much better for it. I love to not be bothered by rings and dings throughout the day. Plus, it's fun to have to think about stuff rather than googling it. "Who wrote that song again??"

In March my DH, DD & I spent a week in a cottage in the middle of nowhere in Wales. There was no WiFi, no phone signal and no data coverage. We loved it.

There is no permanence any more. The poster who says it’s hard to recruit nurses, have you seen the redundancies? Care homes closing daily near me and all those people out of work!
You can no longer get a job as a teenager and expect to retire from the same workplace, because you will be made redundant, the business will close or change hands and the new manager will “shake things ip” by making it unbearable. I’m 30, yet I’ve had no less than 8 jobs so far. Nothing is permanent and that stress is huge!!

@SnuggyBuggy

I sometimes wonder if social media took of because of weak community ties rather than being the cause of it. I don't remember my parents being part of a local community in the 90s. They had both moved away from family for work and I wonder if this becoming more frequent was more likely to be the cause of it.

I WhatsApp my sister occasionally, but never speak to her on the phone and haven't seen her in a year and a half. The interactions i have with her on WhatsApp are very surface. I found some old emails from the time before WhatsApp and was amazed at how much deeper and lengthy our conversations were then. I find it more distancing to be in touch through WhatsApp, and feel more lonely as a result. Other friends I have quite involved conversations with on WhatsApp, but haven't seen them face to face for years either, and rarely phone them. On the other hand, pre smart phones I would probably have fallen out of touch altogether.

I don't remember there being any sense of community when I was growing up - I was born in the sixties. It's a good thing we are less concerned with what the neighbours think now, but instead we now care desperately how we come across on social media.
I heard something recently about how smartphones and screens give us an instant hit of 'reward hormones' or something like that. They act like a drug on our reward receptors. I can't be more specific because I can't remember the details, but it made sense. I try to turn my phone off more, but find I am led back to it by feelings of boredom or disconnection, yet there isn't any real satisfaction in scrolling and googling. In fact it's quite stressful . I also used to read a lot. I find I can't concentrate any longer. This is because the 'hit' from reading is of a completely different kind, and my brain has been trained now to respond in a certain way to gratification. It's really quite scary.

Is this forum not a substitute for real human interaction too? It prompts us to respond in a different way from the way we might with real life friends or acquaintances. We can't see facial expressions or tone, we aren't building true relationships, just forming opinions and sometimes expressing them in a bit of a vacuum.

Come to that it's hard to recruit nurses/ anyone in the building trade.
I don't really understand why there are such shortages

I think this is what I referred to in my previous post
When I left school in the 70s if you didn’t have a single CSE or O level then there were college courses/day release or apprenticeships where you went to learn a trade.
You didn’t have to show you could analyse a poem in order to qualify for a place on a course that taught you how to apply plaster smoothly to a wall. You didn’t have to understand algebra to become a nurse (you might not have been able to progress as far as someone who did understand algebra and could also write about one of Shakespeare’s plays) but you could become a nurse.

At the moment we have children leaving school unable to progress. These children are perfectly capable of progressing up the career ladder but a block is put up because they just can’t write an in-depth report about a book that if it wasn’t on the syllabus no one would buy.
Even Dp was able to do A levels and a law degree without an English O level.
Today he would have left school and been packing parcels at Amazon.

I have friendships with people I met online almost 20 years ago, from the bus and livejournal and bmmb days. Most of our interaction is still online, although there have been letters and phone calls and in person meetings and so on, but all our interaction is very real. These people know so much about me and me about them, they are massively important in my life whether I see them face to face or from behind a screen. But what makes me laugh is we are often to be found furiously typing to one another about the hell that is social media and how crap the internet can be, even though the internet is how we all met and how we mostly retain contact.

The single biggest problem imo is overpopulation / failure of the economy, combined with the greed of the super rich and lack of distribution. Britain has too many people for its economy to support at a time when people’s needs can be supplied without the labour of those people, and there is zero interest in even acknowledging that let alone deciding what to do about it.

The education arms race is a result and symptom of the economic failure. Ever more hoops to jump through for fewer jobs.

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes

The single biggest problem imo is overpopulation / failure of the economy, combined with the greed of the super rich and lack of distribution. Britain has too many people for its economy to support at a time when people’s needs can be supplied without the labour of those people, and there is zero interest in even acknowledging that let alone deciding what to do about it.

Completely agree with you, and the overcrowdedness also leads to more stress and frustration which can turn to anger.

It’s a conversation that needs to be had, but no one wants to have it.