I think that many Americans state that they feel that life in modern times, with our 24-7 connectivity, our constant multi-tasking, and our overall business, is very stressful (and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that). However, I think there’s another, less-frequently stated but still fairly present, perception that life is MORE stressful now than in the past (really I think any time before, say, 1990, could serve as the past), or that life is more stressful for us than for people in developing countries.
Do you think this is true (Not necessarily that life is more stressful now than in “the past” but that many if not the majority of Americans think that way)?
If so, do you think they are correct?
I get that today everyone has tons of commitments and obligations and life is very fast-paced. BUT I would imagine that things like food security and shelter security must be very comforting indeed. Most Americans are not in imminent threat of starvation, of being conscripted by their government, and the level of violence we are exposed to on a daily basis is a lot less than in other countries (e.g. countries with insurgencies/rebellions actively occurring).
Also, I think many of life’s stressors are relatively mitigated compared to, say, 100 years ago in America. Advances in medical technology mean that an infected cut or pneumonia are not death sentences. Yes, facing a deadline that is going to be hard to meet is stressful. But probably not as stressful as looking over a field of crops that you’ve painstakingly tended for months, realizing they are all probably going to fail and you’ll be left with nothing, and your family will likely go hungry if not starve this winter.
So, I think objectively there is information that during poorer times, either in our own past or in others’ present, there are also sources of stress. I think the reason we think we are more stressed now could come down to the following:
We tend to idealize the past: People who were children during the 60s and 70s (a relatively affluent time in American history) who had food/shelter security could easily be nostalgic about an American of apple pie, kids playing in the woods and mom in the kitchen. They also are looking at that time through a child’s perspective and not seeing the difficulties adults may have had to deal with.
There is more sound/noise around us, constantly distracting us, and we are expected to multitask all the time. I mean, how frequently do you see someone walking down the street, under the age of 40, who is not on his/her smartphone? You are expected to be productive even while walking now. So we probably have less daily time to reflect quietly, which I’m sure is not helpful to stress levels.
Even though we have security in unprecedented ways for the last 100 years (lack of famine, lack of war, mitigation of disease), we don’t really put that into perspective. We just compare ourselves to our neighbors, or what we think we should be achieving. So if we take a paycut at work, we don’t think, “well, at least everyone will still be fed,” we think about the vacation we can no longer afford and that makes us upset.
There used to be a lot of single, simple everyday tasks that took a lot of time and/or effort that can now be accomplished in seconds. Depositing a check at the bank, mailing a letter, and picking out a new pair of shoes would require leaving the house and making three separate stops; that could easily take all afternoon 60 years ago. Now you can do all of them in a few minutes, from your phone, while sitting on the toilet.
A lot of stuff could get packed into a small time frame, so people believe they can accomplish a long list of things, and this creates a lot of stress as people attempt to tackle 20 different things just in a few hours.
Having lived in a developing country for a while, I have to agree that life there is more stressful than life here. And life for a guy who has to work two or three minimum wage jobs to pay the rent for his family is more stressful than for a relatively rich person, no matter how many text messages he gets.
These comparisons are usually between people now and people at a similar social level in the past. Having been there, things are far more stressful now. When my father came home, he was home. When I started work when I came home I was home. Now I have to check mail at night. Back then only big, highly paid execs were in constant contact with work. Now we all are. Even if we’re not highly paid.
We’re more efficient than we were back then, but also more stressed.
Wages have stagnated for years. People have to work multiple dead end jobs. Job security is low. Trust in institutions and the political process has cratered. Health care and college are more expensive than ever.
I don’t know about stress in particular, but in various happiness studies those in less wealthy countries tend to be happier than those in the first world.
We are wealthier with more options than ever before, but we are such greedy SOBs that we want even more - and object to the fact that obtaining more should involve any cost. A great deal of the “stress” Americans complain about is self inflicted.
You can live a pretty darn good life and keep the stress awfully low. Too many people focus on what is available, rather than what they need/truly want/can afford. But if you want to keep getting more in all respects, the main person to blame is yourself (with a major assist from PR successfully manipulating folk with lousy self image and self control.)
The real problem is that stress is perceived. You can’t say that cell phones make life less stressful unless they reduce the perceived stress level in cell phone owners.
When I look at a day at work, a day constantly interrupted by phone calls and e-mails is far, far more stressful than a day in which I work nonstop on a big tax return with a tight deadline. It’s more stressful than representing clients in an audit. For me, interruptions and multi-tasking are stressful in and of themselves. It doesn’t matter that these interruptions have no real threat value, the job of a receptionist is the most stressful thing I’ve ever done.
One thing we can say for sure is that people in the developed world spend a lot more time working, with fewer holidays. I’m hesitant to say that this is automatically a source of stress because it all comes back to perception again.
I don’t know if adulthood is objectively more stressful now than it was, say, fifty years ago. I know a lot of people are nostalgic for the days when a family could call themselves “middle class” with a single bread-earner, when kids were sophisticated enough to occupy themselves so that the grownups could have their own lives, and you could work at the same company for 30 years and retire with a full pension. But I don’t know if those days actually existed for most people. And these benefits were also accompanied by stressful downsides (like having to work for 30 years at a job you hate because that’s what everyone expects you to do).
I do think childhood is more stressful now than it was when I was a kid, though still not as stressful as when kids were working 12 hours picking cotton. When I hear about the high stakes testing that kids are subjected to, I am always amazed that more of them are not jumping out of windows. And the pressure to go to a “good” college and major in the “right” subject is much stronger than it was just 20 years ago. I think if I were trying to figure out what to do as a first-year college student, I’d be paralyzed by fear. Kids today know they are competing against the whole world. That’s always been the case, but intense awareness of it is a fairly recent thing.
Plus cyberbullying and keeping up with gadgetry as a way of life. I was able to get by without a Nintendo for a long time, but it was my dirty little secret. If you don’t have a smart phone you are literally out of the loop!
I’m very fortunate that my wife and I are of the same opinion. We only buy what we can comfortably afford, try to keep “stuff” to a minimum generally and don’t stress about what others have.
If your life is stressful now, then you only have yourself to blame. In many ways, we live in a very secure world. All we have to do is look back a few decades.
In the 1930s there was the Great Depression. It brutalized families and towns with unemployment.
And the the 1940s came along. War on the largest scale ever known. If you lived in an Allied country, you were very aware that what was happening in Europe and Asia could happen in your country.
And war continued in the 1950s with the Korean Conflict that threatened to start another world war with the Communists against us.
And then as the 1950s ended and the 1960s began, the Cold War really got rolling. Talk about a depressing and scary era: we could wipe humanity off the face of the world.
As the 1960s ended and the 1970s started, the Vietnam war attempted to carry on where previous decades had left off.
Finally the Cold War wound down in the late 1980s when the USSR fell apart.
The 1990s were relatively quiet compared to these earlier decades, especially in regards to wars that threatened humanity, or at least civilization.
Since then, there has not really been any worldwide events. Yes, terrorism has reared it’s ugly head, but how much of it is built up by the media, and how much of a threat is it to the average person?
The era from the 1930s to the 1980s was extremely stressful for the average citizen, and not something I would want to experience. I’m quite happy with the world that I live in. No world wars, no Great Depression, no apparent threat of Nuclear War. In a lot of ways, we have it pretty good.
So put your cell phone away and let your kids walk home from school.
The outcome of schizophrenics in undeveloped countries tends to be better than in industrialized countries. We don’t have very many low-stress jobs in our advanced economy. Even menial work tends to be very stressful (e.g., McDonald’s worker.) But in a non-developed place, there are a multitude of low-stress jobs. Carrying water is hard work, but it doesn’t require a lot of heavy-duty thinking. This is great for someone with a mental illness.
Plus, it’s very hard for eccentric people to carve out a social niche for themselves. A guy who talks to voices in a rural village is a shaman deserving of privilege and respect. A guy who talks to voices here is a giant weirdo.
So in this way, I can see how modern society really is more stressful. Back in the day, if you were a poor performing student in high school, whether because of mental or emotional difficulties, no one would try to convince you that you could be an engineer or heart surgeon just by working hard enough. They’d let you finish out school and then point you to a vocational program, the military, or the local factory where you could make good money. Nowadays, though, even special education kids are encouraged to go to college. Even if you have a severe mental illness, you are expected to suck it up and deal so you can live up to your potential–which everyone assumes is super high. How could that NOT make for a more stressful existence?
On one had, I firmly believe that life is primarily about having a strong family, meaningful work, and religion (or whatever fills that role.) Outside of the most abject poverty and oppression, these things are the same just about everywhere.
But I also literally can’t get over the number of things I basically never worry about. WHen my baby gets a fever, I don’t worry that it may be fatal. When I deposit my check, I don’t worry about the bank going under. When I have an empty cupboard (and it’s never actually empty-- it’s just out of stuff I feel like eating), I don’t worry about being able to get enough calories. I marvel every day that we have entire industries devoted to thinking up wacky things to do in our “leisure time,” a concept that is truly novel in post-agricultural humanity. I pick up a magazine now and then, and these things are filled with advice on things to buy. Even things like HGTV are basically a huge stream of suggestions on what to spend your money on. What magic is it that we have so much money we need suggestions on how to spend it? It’s nuts.
I guess I believe it’s all basically relative when you are in the thick of things, but the lack of mortal danger at every turn surely counts for something.
I’m guessing that given enough time, even people who live in mortal danger become habituated to it.
I worked in the Everglades for three years. There was at least one alligator snorting and grunting several yards from me at all times. And then there was the constant threat of lightening strikes and the helicopter crashing or someone literally losing their head in the propeller.
I quickly got used to it all. What doesn’t kill you eventually becomes background noise.
I lived through that period. (Born in 1951.) We did the hide under our desks thing. But with the single exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I don’t recall every being worried or stressed out about it.
Today however if a branch fell near a missile site the 24 hour news stations would probably have a new splash intro about how the end of the world was imminent. And whatever party was out of power would be worse.
The deal back then was that you could work 30 years in the same place, not that you were expected to. Starting at AT&T just before divestiture I knew plenty of people who had worked there forever - and still people left if they wanted to and no one was shocked. When I was a kid my uncle who worked in the defense industry got laid off on a regular basis, which was normal for them, but that was considered an outlier and a side effect of that industry. Look at children’s literature. In the Beezus and Ramona books of the '50s and '60s a secure home life was a give, when we hit the '70s the father got laid off and money was an issue.
Top colleges today have about the same number of slots as when I went, but have 2x the student population to choose from and probably 10x the applications, since it is so much easier to apply today. In my high school, because of its size, we were limited to 3 applications and no one thought this unreasonable.
Even getting jobs is a lot harder. In 1980 we had 3 HR people dedicated to hiring for a place with 500 workers, and every resume mailed in got an answer. Being able to spam your resume means you never get a response unless there is a close match. Not to mention way fewer HR people to save money.
I’m not stressed but I understand the stress.
I think if you were a kid in the 60’s and 70’s and you weren’t stressed, you were being sheltered or not paying attention.
Political assassinations of the president, RFK, Martin Luther King.
Racial violence.
Astronauts burning on the launch pad or lost around the moon.
Stories of kids suddenly deciding to fly off of buildings. (lots of scary drug stories in the 60’s)
Kent State.
Munich Olympics.
Charles Whitman.
Vietnam war footage on television.
Symbionese Liberation Army.
Watergate.
Yes, you CAN walk down the street with your phone, but only if you choose to. You can have a great many commitments, but only if you accept them. Try and take my mother or grandmother’s dishwasher or clothes washer away. Just try it, that’s all.
The ones talking about the simpler times sitting on the porch, sure as hell weren’t the ones in the kitchen boiling sugar and water and lemons and chipping ice and then cleaning it all up.
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I think if you were a kid in the 2000s and 2010s and you weren’t stressed, you were being sheltered or not paying attention.
Great Recession
Police brutality
Prison-industrial complex
Skyrocketing rents
Stagnating wages
High stakes testing
ISIS and militant Islam
Globalized economy
Rising healthcare costs
An ineffective Congress
–quote from a guy living in 2030
If you want to keep your job, that is. For a lot of people, if they don’t answer the phone when their employer calls them, they won’t know that their work schedule has been changed. Or that you’ve got new clients. Or that the server has gone down and you need to come in and fix it ASAP. Not answering the phone when it rings is not an option for a lot of people. People who disagree with this are in serious denial about the world we are living in today.
But making lemonade is not stressful. It is hard work, but it is not taxing on your psychological reserves. We’re talking about stress, not labor.
To wit, if you–a restaurant manager, served people a bad pitcher of lemonade back in 1950, you might be red-faced for about 10 minutes. Nowadays, your mistake can go viral in a matter of seconds. Your boss can fire you for being the cause of bad publicity. By 8:00PM, Anderson Cooper could be narrating footage of you walking out of the restaurant with a dish towel draped over your head.
People are just as stupid now and they were back in 1950 (or 1850). But stupid mistakes didn’t carry the same weight back then as they do now. You can say “well, you have a choice about the stupid Twitters you sent out!” But never before have we had to be careful about the opinions we express in public. This really is a new source of stress. And yes, it is one that people voluntarily subject themselves to. They’d be better off staying silent on everything. But I know I can’t do my job without email. All it takes is one inartful email and one FOIA request, and I’m in serious trouble. There was no one in 1950 who was worried about getting fired over something they said five years ago.
Born in 60, grew up in Chicago - sure didn’t think of my childhood as stressful. Played pickup games rather than organized leagues. Headed out the door in the a.m. with nothing said other than “be back for dinner.” Walked/biked/bussed everywhere - hitchhiked through HS into college.
Did the stupid duck-and-cover shit. Was aware of Viet Nam, MLK and BK’s assassinations, and Watergate - but they sure didn’t cause me any stress. Hell, acne and being uncomfortable around girls were a hell of a lot more stressful than all of those combined.
Still think people put a lot of stress on themselves. Sure, it can be convenient to be instantly in touch with everyone and have access to all info via your cell. But you impose your own stress if you feel you NEED to be.
I think people cause themselves stress nowadys because they feel they ought to be able to live whatever life they want, and have whatever they see on TV and on the net. A lot of people don’t want to acknowledge that they lack the brains/talent/whatever to achieve their dream job/lifestyle.