An Epidemic of Anxiety, Part 2

I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with me by exploring topics that span leadership, business management, education, and other musings designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement. Today is October 12, 2024.

Last week, I mused about the current epidemic of stress and anxiety that’s wracking individuals of all ages throughout our society—especially members of Gen Z as compared to Boomers. Again, right up front, I want to be clear that I am not a medical doctor and we’re not going to be addressing any of the medical drivers and contributors to anxiety.

Here, I’ll be focusing on some of the main contributors to our collective stress and anxiety levels—some that we can control and others that are long-term solvable issues. I’ll also be pointing out a few generational differences between the stressors I grew up with in the late 70s and early 80s to punch the point that while there are a few challenges that are burdens new generations uniquely face, many challenges get recycled through time.

To bring you up to speed, last week I talked about the benefits of improved financial literacy and financial acumen to reduce stress about money and saving—a perennial stressor in many households.

Another significant generational difference that I believe feeds the anxiety differences we see is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are digital natives. Gen Z and Gen Alpha grew up with devices in their hands. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc., are places where a young adult’s life is on display for all to see, all the time. While peer pressure and the role of influencers weighed heavily on me as a teen, I can’t even fathom what it would be like to have to keep up appearances with friends and total strangers at the scale we see today.

All the sharing, clicking, scrolling, and worry about what others are thinking, is taking up brain space that I could expend on other pursuits. Remember, these social platforms are specifically designed to grab and hold onto your attention with increasingly outlandishly positioned information. The race for clicks means that businesses, influencers, and pundits must test the boundaries of truth and reality. Mis/disinformation is everywhere. To combat this, we must invest in improving the critical thinking and creativity skills of everyone in our society and make it societally acceptable to periodically unplug and allow the brain to wander. My recommendation is for everyone to start a meditation, yoga, and controlled breathing practice today. When’s the last time you unplugged to seek a place of peace and solace from the never-ending onslaught of information that’s bombarding us?

Another stressor that we can, in the long term control, is centered around our educational system—specifically standardized testing. I had to take standardized tests in school when I was a boy, but it’s nothing like we see today. Our modern educational system is focused far too heavily on rigorous structure and testing. All the testing students have to undergo at all levels of the educational system leaves less room for a broader, more well-rounded education that includes the arts, music, literature, etc.

Unfortunately, the race for test scores to secure maximum state educational funding is fueling declining investment in liberal arts and other creative pursuits that can help future workforce participants deal with the unrelenting change they will experience throughout their lives. In my humble opinion, the arts, music, and other extracurriculars help develop more agile, open, growth mindsets as well as the essential creativity and critical thinking skills needed to thrive as a digital native.

Instead, we’re developing generations of future workforce participants who have been trained that checking this box leads to another box that must be checked, and so on. Those of us who are experienced in the world of business know that this isn’t how the world works. The structure students must endure in their formative school-age years sets unrealistic expectations that they’ll be spoon-fed tasks and checklists in the real world. The real world is messy and we’re not setting students up for success in dealing with the mess which is adulthood.

Since education is a key lever we can pull to reduce stress and anxiety, we must bring down the cost of continuing and higher education and develop new pathways into the world of work to increase economic opportunity for more participants in our economy. Some may feel that education and learning are stressors and that more education will increase stress. However, in the long run, more education will bring overall stress and anxiety down because the more educated the population, the less mis/disinformation can send us spinning.

With that said, we must make education more affordable for more of the population, We’ve been telling our children for decades that the only path to a great future and the American dream runs through a college degree, but the supply and demand equation in higher education is way out of whack. The pressure and anxiety to get into the best school possible is unbearable for many who are on this path and a quality post-secondary education is unattainable for a large swath of the population, leaving them stressed and feeling left out. There’s got to be a better way.

Oh, and those that do go to college face an average debt burden that leaves young adults with crushing monthly payments that make wealth accumulation early in one’s career much more difficult than it needs to be. Lastly, we need to make a commitment to lifelong learning cool. The way to get ahead and to improve your position is through education. Everyone wins when there’s more education and training options available. Period.

Next week we’re going to continue the conversation about our current epidemic of stress and anxiety with our third and final episode on the subject, but like last week, I can’t put enough focus on the value of education and good decision-making that’s accompanied by a lifelong learning mindset as ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Too many in our society are on auto-pilot, going through the motions of life. Life is happening to them. Self-reliance developed through learning and education coupled with better decision making skills is the path to making things happen in your life and taking control of your narratives and outcomes.

Until next time…