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Comment by deebosong | Hacker News Reader

I'm not that young, but not old enough to have witnessed generational patterns of young men shifting as a cultural phenom.

That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level? For some reason my gut reaction is to think that it's the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and wages stagnating while prices go up. And then couple that with social media, of the life we're all told we're supposed to live, and now young men have less opportunities, less income with higher prices, and having a false idealization of "the good life" shoved down their throats.

I don't need to insist what I'm thinking is correct, but that's just what I'm kinda seeing in broad strokes. Could be way off. I also don't know if there's a version of this in every generation, or if in fact the current generation is a new/ fringe case that requires very different approaches for how to address it on a macro & interrelated scale.

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> That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level?

It's a natural reaction to the fact that opportunities are shrinking in terms of quality and payoff. There are lots of "jobs" but they don't offer long term stability or growth.

On the flipside, most employees don't feel tied to an employer, even if the employer treats them well. Often many folks are chasing higher pay. I know in the cybersecurity realm quite a few folks are job hoppers, and right now employers are all to anxious to try to pick off talent from competitors. One of my former co-workers is now at their fifth job in five years, and each time they were chasing a higher paycheck. In my field they don't seek a pay raise at their current employer, they get it in writing on an offer from a recruiter at their next employer.

Blaming employers doesn't make sense, both sides are just responding to incentives. The labor regulations and macroeconomic choices our gov't have made are responsible imo, they've optimized for the wrong or incomplete metrics (Three biggest are GDP / unemployment % / stock market returns).

This didn't happen overnight. When I was in my early teens in the 90s I already had a sense, from listening to the news, that employers were out for their own self-interest first and foremost. Massive layoffs, shrinking benefits, and the concept of public companies being primarily responsible to their shareholders all send the same message: "At the end of the day, you are disposable. Loyalty will not be reciprocated."

As an employee, it would be irrational to ignore this and hope that loyalty would be rewarded.

But isn't it doomed to be a self fulfilling prophecy if you approach every new company with these beliefs?

Google is a great example of one that started out very differently, but unfortunately became much like the companies they strived to set themselves apart from. Many startups still foster that culture Google originally had.

I think the gps point is that, in the median, it's the case regardless of how you approach it.

Of course individual situations and be quite different, but you are really bucking the trend in expecting the average company to show loyalty instead of respond to financial incentives.

These young men aren’t getting weekly messages of hope like >80% were 60 years ago. Those that are are more likely flourishing according to all the pew research.

If by weekly messages of hope you mean going to church regularly on Sundays*, that's an interesting point I hadn't considered in this context before.

Can you provide a citation for the pew research on the weekly messages of hope, whether my above inference was correct or not? If it's not Sunday services at church, I'd love to know what else I can do inject some hope into my weeks.

* or whatever is the holy day in a given church congregation.

I think you assumed they meant faith, when it really could just be influences. You are a product of your surroundings, and if your existence is tied to the Internet then those surroundings can include many negative things. The Internet has great power in the right hands, but it can also be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Yes, alluding to attending community focused thanksgiving. Root word of ‘Eucharist’ means to give thanks, for example.

Here is one example: https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2...

It begins:

“A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives.”

I can't definitively say, but I think the Internet and gaming culture has changed much, and it seems to be the only thing some of the people I am educating seem to really care for, or get excited about.

It used to be that you had a limited set of people controlling the messaging that went into your mind, often limiting negative messages for the majority of people. The Internet has made it far too easy to stumble upon, or seek out, negative messaging. I could definitely see where if you have been conditioned to feel that you don't need to try, or shouldn't even try, then you will believe a life without accomplishment is acceptable and sustainable.

They used to say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but now that tree is a forest. If you are a parent, a mentor, or similar, you are competing for airtime with billions of other voices on the Internet. You really have to make sure your voice stands out amongst the rest. I try to offer that in my classroom, but I only get them for a short period, then they're onward to their next training in the pipeline.

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