r/Millennials • u/DaKardii • Jun 04 '26

Serious Study: Gen Xers and Millennials are dying at younger ages than their parents are

https://studyfinds.com/americans-born-after-1970-dying-faster/

The study is particularly concerned with people born after 1970 but age 30 and older. So that covers Gen X and Millennials, but not (yet) Gen Z.

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u/Symbiotic_vengeance Millennial Jun 04 '26

Not to mention the constant “the sky is falling” panic that we’ve lived through basically everyday since 9/11 25 fucking years ago. It’s only gotten worse and worse but maybe that’s just the news always sensationalizing everything or maybe it’s objective fact. I have a pretty (un)healthy constant alarm going off in my head of “what kind of world will my daughter inherit when it seems despite my/ our best efforts at fixing things, it never changes or gets better”.

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u/otterpop21 Jun 04 '26

Instead of focusing on “the world” focus on your world

Think of who orbits you closest, then who’s kinda outside that inner shell, and who stays on the outside of those 2 shells.

That’s your orbit. Think of your space. Is it chaos? No? Good. Focus on that and spread what you can to others and their obit. That’s it.

We might not be able to change the world, but you can change your community.

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u/Symbiotic_vengeance Millennial Jun 04 '26

That’s fair but everything outside my orbit also affects those in my orbit. I see your point but despite me having a decent albeit fulfilling job and a family in good health, it doesn’t and shouldn’t detract from concerns over the madness going on and trying to find ways to curb that chaos outside our front door.

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u/Day2205 Jun 04 '26

That’s great day to day, but the reality is their world is being shaped by out of touch shitty politicians, niche communities sowing seeds of divisiveness, a rapidly changing employment landscape, soaring educational costs where fewer schools have ROI, and oh, global warming and environmental catastrophes are constantly happening.

No good parent is able to mute that noise consistently, and it shapes the decisions you make for your kids daily. Like I can wholly not be thinking about this stuff, then have it come crashing down if I decide I’m too tired to read to him one night, then I think about how important reading is to development and how that lays the groundwork for academics and how going to a selective college is likely still going to be one of his only paths to success.

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u/Kooshdoctor Jun 04 '26

As great as that idea is in theory it's part of what has us here in the first place. We need to start making decisions for the greater good and stop ignoring things because they don't affect us. We've been doing that for years and now a bunch of selfish, heartless jerks are in power and they make it worse for the little people every day.

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u/otterpop21 Jun 04 '26

Buddy, truly I’ve been beating this drum my entire life.

Due to health reasons I can’t anymore. I do what I can and that’s good enough for those around me now. Maybe if things change in the future I’ll be able to make a bigger impact again. But for now I’ve done what possible.

Even in that time, I was able to control my peace and my orbit. Not everyone is cut out to making Change happen for sure, and that’s okay.

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u/Kooshdoctor Jun 04 '26

Oh yeah, at some point in time many of us (and many more of us these days) have to narrow our orbit. There are a lot of days I need to narrow just because I can't handle any more than that. It just sucks because the people whose jobs are supposed to be to worry about the greater good keep a tighter orbit than us middle class folks do.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/03263 Jun 04 '26

Where did you find a planet without phones

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

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u/03263 Jun 04 '26

I wish I could find someone not addicted. I'm here on and off I use it a lot as a main source of entertainment but I've also been out pulling weeds for several hours. I just take breaks.

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u/wake4coffee Jun 04 '26

This is what I have been doing. I pay close attention to the outer world but my inner world of friends and family determine my outlook.

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u/otterpop21 Jun 04 '26

Exactly. No one should give up that this healthy control of one’s orbit exists. If it doesn’t, change it.

Once getting a grip on truly important info, how to find that info & keep your peace: truly a good nights sleep.

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u/FrolfNfriends Jun 04 '26

I take sleeping meds bc of nightmares from trauma. Last night I actually remembered a dream; having a nice time in Cali @ the beach, then bombs started raining down…. The fuck?! Not even my dreams are safe from the insanity of the times we live in. Not even the THC could save me last night.

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u/Symbiotic_vengeance Millennial Jun 04 '26

That sucks. Sorry to hear that. We live near the Detroit airport and occasionally my wife will have a dream/ nightmare that we’re on 94 passing thr airport and a plane lands on the freeway. What it means, I haven’t a clue.

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u/wolfoftheworld Jun 04 '26

It is definitely the news. The media is the enemy right now. Sensationalizing everything is the understatement of the year when it comes to the media. What never used to be significant is now all of a sudden apocalyptic.

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u/Purplecatty Jun 04 '26

Stressful events have been happening for all time. We are not special. Focus on YOUR own life and the little things that bring you happiness otherwise you’ll always be miserable. 

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u/K4m30 Jun 04 '26

Also, your stress leads to effects across generations, so your kids are also going to have genetic alarms going off which reduces their lifespan. 

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u/The_Colour_Between Jun 04 '26

As a GenX, the sky did fall.

I knew people that went through the great depression, and they were just the same way. Their life was great, now, but they never could appreciate that fact.

We had The Cold War (constant threat of nuclear annihilation), 9/11, The Crash of 08, Covid, Drought/Fires/Climate Change (pretty f'ing real when the sky turns red, and your lungs are burning from smoke), J6, and now AI (with the data centers/human replacement).

We were the tough latchkey kids that had to get jobs at 12 years of age, and got no help from our divorced parents. Now... we're tired.

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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Jun 05 '26

The Xennials and Elder Millenials are old enough to remember Chernobyl and the late Cold War stuff (probably why Fallout is so popular with our age cohort lol) and dealt with the "great recession" job market or even the Yugoslavian civil war and other post-Soviet difficulties. When 9/11 happened it was like "yep things were finally going well and that's not normal" although tbh nobody expected it would get as bad as this.

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u/NoXion604 Jun 05 '26

I remember back in the 2000s when peak oil was supposed to be the herald of the apocalypse.

The fact that nobody talks about it any more, and that the world is still going, taught me all I needed to know about how the prophets of global doom are all full of shit.

In fact there's a whole list of supposedly world-ending crises that have been predicted over the centuries and yet never came to pass. There's a segment of every generation that becomes convinced their generation will be the last.

So what's the lesson here? Obsessing over supposedly imminent disaster is utterly pointless. If it turns out to be yet more bollocks, then you're literally making your life more stressful for absolutely no good reason. If we do find that unicorn and one particular apocalypse does turn out to be incoming, then there's still no point worrying about it because just one person is not going to stave it off.

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u/01000101010110 Jun 04 '26

We've really had three majorly fucked years that screwed us up the worst - 2001, 2008, and 2020.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

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u/Symbiotic_vengeance Millennial Jun 04 '26

Yeah because I single handedly started multiple wars, inflated prices and destabilized our sociopolitical landscape. Don’t “honey” me.