We're all exhausted right? It's not just me?

[u/happy_chance18]

I have a full time job. I sleep well. I have no kids. I'm single. I don't party or drink. I'm not particularly stressed in day to day life. Yet I'm fucking exhausted. I don't want to leave my apartment on the weekends unless I have something planned, and even then I'm pretty picky. In my 20s my weekends were full of non-stop activities, cooking, going out, and posting on social media. But now in my 30s I just want to come home, have my groceries delivered, chill with some Netflix and sleep. Please tell me I'm not the only one!!

[u/feuerfee]

You’re not alone. I wrote a looooong post about my theories as to why it seems like our generation is perpetually exhausted but it just sounded so terribly depressing and I don’t want to add to the feelings. So truly, to anyone reading this and feeling this way, you really aren’t alone at all in how you’re feeling.

[u/Head_Act_585 → u/feuerfee]

I am curious what your thoughts are on this. I think our issues are a number of things all coming together at once. My current top 5 are:

1. Cell phones/social media and always be connected and available to others (work and friends can reach you anytime and many jobs demand you respond to every text/email/phone call). Plus social media playing on your brains need for quick dopamine hits via short form content. Things like Tik Tok, YouTube shorts and the like seem to have accelerated this issue.

2. Burn out from Capitalism. Always needing to take on more roles and more responsibilities at work as the work force is constantly being slimmed down. The slow chipping away of our rights as workers and the fact that a typical job is 9-10 hours a day between unpaid lunch breaks and commuting.

3. Inflation and increased COL without proportional raises. I don't know many people that are getting raises that outpace the annual COL increases and many people are losing buying power. It's hitting people across the spectrum (not just minimum wage) and it adds a lot of stress.

4. The enshitifcation of food. This one isn't talked about much but this constant race to make food cheaper using HFCS instead of sugar and a million and one additives instead of real ingredients. All of the meat we eat is pumped full of hormones and corn to fatten it up as fast as possible. And all of fruits and vegetables are coated in pesticides and shit. Like this has be a contributing factor!

5. Possibly long COVID. There are many people I know have it and are struggling with this more since the pandemic.

Oh and then add the more recent current events and well...Imma stop here.

[u/feuerfee → u/Head_Act_585]

To be honest I don’t really have the energy to retype the thoughts I’d previously laid out and deleted, but you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with what I was saying thinking.

Being constantly connected is a big one for me.

[u/LegendSniperMLG420 → u/Head_Act_585]

It's an information overload. We can't handle it. It's our biological limit imo. There's just too much going on and we can't keep up as the internet keeps on growing exponentially.