Or are Gen Z more fearful?

[mossylog]

In last few years had a few odd situations talking to adults in their early 20s who are very fearful about going to what I see as very normal parts of towns.

One of them said he'd avoid Reading because he heard it's a bit rough. Another said she would never walk down a local highstreet even in broad daylight. I've lived & worked in these places or places like them and IMO the only thing they're in danger of is someone asking them for some loose change.

Are younger people generally more sheltered/fearful of public places? Or did I just happen upon a few particularly risk averse people?

YANBU: the youth are not alright

YABU: there have always been people this scared in every generation and/or they have a point about the dangers of leaving the house.

I don't think this is typical, but we have created a generation of very anxious people raised on safeytyism.

Children have very limited independent mobility nowadays thanks to anxious parents. Since they don't have an opportunity to develop any skills, they end up overly cautious adults.

You're asking this on Mumsnet where people are frequently too worried to open the front door and any person in the street who isn't recognised needs to be 'logged" with 101? These people are probably the now children of Mumsnetters who are too anxious to say hello to the delivery driver in case he wants to chat.

Ime yes they are more fearful and anxious about normal every day events. In my office we recruit twice as many as we need now, as inevitably half of the graduates will arrive and despite rigorous interview and applications that spout their many skills- they are afraid to answer the phone, or make a phone call or address a client query without heavy supervision. We've had twenty something adults refuse to go to the post office as they "didn't apply for an outside job and don't feel safe going". At least 50% of applications claim the need for reasonable adjustments and the vast majority state anxiety as the reason. It's a worrying trend, and I don't blame the young adults for it- they've been raised in a culture of individualism and hyper safety awareness, and are drowning in social media negativity.

In my first year at uni (1993) there was a Paris Hitch competition. The first pair to hitchhike from Bristol to Paris won. Sounds crazy now.

@catscalledbeanz This is all pretty shocking— it must be so disempowering to live that way, to experience everyday interactions as threatening.

@HobnobsChoice Funnily enough, mumsnet is about the only other place I've seen adults like that, but I always put a lot of that down to true-crime brain. Maybe that's an oversimplification and it's a wider thing.

My partner’s observations as a lecturer working in HE.

a constantly rising number of students who are too anxious to sit an exam in a room with others, others who are too afraid to attend lectures that end at 6pm because it will take them an hour to get home. They have access to reliable public transport in the city but don’t want to take a risk.

Give you a proper mouthful if you were to follow policy and politely email and ask them about why they are not attending or letting staff know that they will be absent. Or just ignoring any contact and only getting in touch once the shit has hit the fan regarding grades/getting kicked out etc.

Some admit they don’t need a lot of the reasonable adjustments and accommodations the staff work hard to set up for them and that their parents have told them to act up just to get more out of the system.

they also get some students that are so mollycoddled because they come from cultures where their parents won’t allow them to work late/ accept a placement in the next town over as it’s too far and not something that “good kids” from their culture do.

I personally think these younger adults are up against it and a lot of this is to do with the current culture of how every single feeling or situation is over analysed/reported/publicised to death. Also not helped with constant access to social media/news on tap- reading all the doom and gloom can get into people’s heads and make them feel like the world is just full of bad.

Too much navel gazing.

Today's young people mostly have no resilience and I do find it extremely worrying. The C4 doc about banning phones in schools suggested that they play a huge part in young people's mental health and general feelings of anxiety. My oldest who is 20 now had panic attacks in secondary school and my youngest who is 15 also struggles with low self esteem and managing stress. I feel both of them are not as bad as they could be because of doing Scouts and DofE which do help develop self reliance and coping skills but so many of their peers are already on mental health medications or seeing therapists. I had a chat with a similarly aged colleague the other day with similarly aged children who recognised the same issues and she said she could imagine the reaction she would have had as a teenager if she'd told her parents she'd had a panic attack. Our lives 40 years ago were much simpler and our parents were more relaxed. I guess helicopter risk-averse parenting played a part and the more complex world they've grown up in but they haven't been given the skills or the confidence to navigate that world and they're completely overloaded with inputs giving them crippling overwhelm.

they're completely overloaded with inputs giving them crippling overwhelm

I think this must be a part of it— young people are coming into a world of greater demands and complexity. One way to deal with that is to retreat from parts of it.

I think with the phones/internet thing, people are able to live so much more of their lives from the comfort of their homes— the outside world is going to seem much scarier if your main way of experiencing it is from news stories of something horrible happening or your own parents' neurotic fears.