Three In Five Millennials Feel Their Lives More Stressful Than Average, and They Might Be Right

A study commissioned by CBD oil company Endoca found that 3/5 millennials believe their lives are more stressful than the average person’s.

According to Study Finds, a survey of 2,000 American millennials found that 58 percent feel they live in a consistently high-stress environment. Those surveyed said they feel the stress due to an “accumulation of daily micro-stressors — seemingly trivial experiences — such as being stuck in traffic, waiting for appointments, or various smartphone issues.”

Survey Finds reported that among the top were the stresses of losing your wallet/credit card, arguing with a significant other, and not getting any “likes” on social media posts:

For example, although losing one’s wallet or credit card ranked as the top source of stress for respondents, 1 in 5 say they’d be even more apoplectic if their smartphone screen broke. For more than 2 in 5 millennials (41%), a damaged phone screen is worse than seeing their “check engine” light flash on in the car.

Meanwhile, getting into an argument with a partner was the second greatest source of stress for participants overall, but nearly 1 in 5 agreed that getting zero “likes” on a social media post is a more stress-inducing experience. One-third feel that having their phone die is a more miserable scenario than seeing a fraudulent charge on their credit card bill. (For good measure, the researchers found that the average remaining-battery percentage for when millennials begin to feel stress is 23%.)

“Stress isn’t an abstract issue – it’s a significant problem and doesn’t necessarily have to be caused by one large inciting incident,” says Henry Vincenty, CEO of Endoca, in a statement. “No matter what’s causing our stress, we should take care to be proactive about finding solutions before it begins affecting our health.”

The top 20 breakdown of what Millennials find most stressful looks like this:

1. Losing wallet/credit card
2. Arguing with partner
3. Commute/traffic delays
4. Losing phone
5. Arriving late to work
6. Slow WiFi
7. Phone battery dying
8. Forgetting passwords
9. Credit card fraud
10. Forgetting phone charger
11. Losing/misplacing keys
12. Paying bills
13. Job interviews
14. Phone screen breaking
15. Credit card bills
16. Check engine light coming on
17. School loan payments
18. Job security
19. Choosing what to wear
20. Washing dishes

While many of these seem silly, it may not be the event itself that is causing the stress. It acts more like the pebble that causes the avalanche.

Millennials grew up in a world of consistent perfection being displayed by others on social media, creating a need to display the same kind of perfect in order to avoid feelings of inadequacy. As Thrive Global wrote on the subject, the age of social media is, indeed, a stressful time to live in:

According to PsychCentral, one of the chief contributors to social media-related stress is our tendency to compare ourselves to others. We’ve all heard about how people don’t always portray their “real life” on social media, and this can lead to some serious psychological concerns that arise when we view these posts.

In a nutshell, receiving constant updates from friends or family showcasing how “perfect” their life is can cause feelings of inadequacy. This in turn can cause you to become anxious, stressed or even depressed as you worry that your life isn’t as exciting or that you haven’t accomplished as much as your peers.

Everyone is pretending to be “living their best life” and displaying it for everyone else to see, thus triggering insecurities and wrongly initiated self-reflection within others. The consistency of staying connected to the whole world and trying to put on a public persona in order to be judged as likable by everyone puts an enormously high amount of pressure on people, a pressure usually only experienced by celebrities, and many of them don’t even deal with it well.

While some of the things millennials are getting stressed out by are incredibly silly, they lead highly stressful lives thanks to their almost forced connection to the public sphere. One of the co-creators of Facebook has even publicly expressed regret over its creation, commenting on the fact that it’s tearing society apart.

“The short-term dopamine driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” said Palihapitiya. “No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

“We curate our lives around the perceived sense of perfection,” he later said. “because we get rewarded in these short term signals. Hearts, likes, thumbs up, and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth. And instead, what it really is, is fake, brittle popularity.”

The stress millennials feel is very real, and it’s akin to the stress a drug addicted person feels when they haven’t gotten their fix.

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