When I was young there were already ideas about 4 day work weeks, it's now been 20 years later and so many things are automated, where are the shorter work weeks? I thought the point as a society was to not work ourselves off and actually enjoy day to day life while automation handles the boring part.

"""I think the definition of "ruin your life" is different now than it was in the 80s. Stakes are higher for kids now, and one little mistake can put you on the road to the have-nots instead of the haves.

Back when I was in high school, you could make mistakes and still end up successful. You could get a few B's in your grades, you could decide not to do so many sports and extracurriculars, you could get detention, you could even get in light trouble with the police for horsing around--and still make it into a good University and move on to a good career. I know because I made all of those mistakes. Plus, the consequences for being mediocre were not too severe. B students had community college, C and D students had decent jobs at the mill and the factory or could learn a trade, and so on.

Today, the bar for entry into a comfortable, middle class career is so high, that my kid needs to make zero mistakes. She has to get straight As, she has to stay out of any kind of trouble, she has to have the right polished "profile" for all the various career- and life-gatekeepers she will meet and need to pass. And if she doesn't pass the gatekeepers, where is she going to end up? There is no safety net and no real humane jobs left for lower-performers. Life is so much more bifurcated now, the kids know it, and they stress about not making a mis-step.

In the 80s I was competing with my small town. Now, kids are competing with the entire world."""

This nails it, the bar for "normal" life is really high, coupled with social media where every day you're bombarded with what you can achieve if you try really hard or pay enough money for it - traveling, having fun, luxury, having a perfect body and being envied by other people, etc. Being an overachiever try-hard is cool these days. Weed makes you a bit lazy and when you smoke you're not 100% super productive and you're not living your life to your "fullest potential".

How is that not a completely useless waste of energy, time, money and resources?

My son is 6 so it falls neatly in that bracket and if the covid lockdown is the most stressful thing to happen in his childhood I will consider us extremely lucky.

And even so, cuddling more with parents? How will they ever recover?

Sorry for the questions, I know there's a lot of stories the internet already, but I trust NH users opinions more than reddit and I'd really like an idea of how things might turn out in the long term.