I think part of the problem is that we don't have real problems. Throughout the last centuries every single generation had very fundamental challenges, mostly related to survival. Wars, hunger, whatever. Now first you have to find out what you want (career, gadget, car, traveling), then work for it, but the problems are not as simple and existential as they used to be. Most challenges are related to competition, pride and ego building, not to basic things like finding a small shelter to stay in, acquiring food and raising as many children as possible.
Yeah this is a problem. I think a lot of it comes down to cultural value shifts. My wife asks her students why they choose major X or Y and they almost always answer that they think it will help them to get a job. She then asks why they want that job and they say that it's important to be stable and have steady income. These are 18-19 year old kids, mind you. They should not be worried about being stable, they should be plotting adventures and taking risks. But the US has become so crippled by fear (of terrorism, joblessness, the NSA whatever) that a whole generation of kids is growing up and simply being as safe as they can be. And because they don't seek out trouble, they don't get to feel the excitement of overcoming problems, and that's very dangerous in my mind.
I don't really agree with this. 50 years ago those 18-19 year olds were working and getting married, and at 21-22 being fathers and mothers. But now we accept that 18-19 year olds are still 'kids'. I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem we are discussing, but I'm pretty sure at 19 you should be worried about a stable life. It is the best time to do so, maybe just not 'go to college, get a job' stable since that doesn't seem to work anymore.
I think we understand how the human brain develops now a bit better than we did 50 years ago. And that at 19 you're basically not fully cooked yet. So yeah, at one point you were thought to be fully developed by 19 and that meant you should go get a job and put an oven in the kitchen for the little lady. But now we know that your attitudes and opinions will (or at least are likely to) change a great deal between 19 and 25. This also means your motivations and what makes you happy will change. But if you're concerned with locking down the 9-5 as soon as possible, then you're much less likely to find something that actually makes you happy.
The thing about taking risk is that you may not overcome problems. If you are sure that you will overcome all problems, then it was not a risk to begin with. Those who plotted adventures always either graduated into booming economy or had rich parents to help them.
Thinking about your ability to find job in bad economy after you take all that debt on you does not strikes me as excessively risk averse. The opposite strikes me as irresponsible.
And punishment for not finding job and being unemployed for months is hard. There is a big difference between "I send application and a job with benefits is found in a month" and "it will take a lot of time and may end up as long term unemployed". America is not exactly nice to those who failed and even yours kids will have it hard to impossible to get better life if you fail.
We have the idea that 18-19 old should be worry free because we graduated into exceptionally good market and economy. We were privileged so to speak. If you look at history, non-priviledged non-rich adults did not used to have worry-free-do-not-care about income periods in their lives.
I'm not advocating just throwing caution to the wind and hoping everything works out. But this culture of fear that drives people to nearly always take the safest path is not one that will lead people to happiness. My best friend took the opposite route as me. He drugged out for several years and recently joined the navy. Now he has learned some cool skills that can transfer to other jobs and, more importantly, he's gotten a huge build in self confidence. But with his personality he would have been miserable just taking some safe job somewhere and settling down. He needed to find something that inspired him and only then did he really turn his life around.
I do not think drugging out several years of your life is kind of adventure and risk taking I will encourage in my kids. Anyway, your friend was lucky he was not caught. Military does not welcome people with criminal with open arm. It significantly lowers your chances to get in. In effect, it significantly lowers your chances to get any job anywhere.
There is middle ground between and afraid of everything. And I agree that some people tend to be on paranoid side, especially when it comes to physical risks or anything that resembles terrorism.
However, decisions that make or break your earning and quality of life for next dozens years are not the best place to start with risking.
Interestingly, he did get caught. Severs times. I asked him just before he shipped off to his first deployment and he said "You know, that's one thing I've learned. The military really doesn't have their shit together. I just lied on all the forms when it asked about criminal background and when they asked about drugs."
Keep in mind, he's not planning in making a career out of it or becoming an officer or anything like that. But he did get his life turned around for the better, even though he didn't take the safe route early on.
It's interesting that you say this and I guess many people believe it as well.
And yet there are so many problems in the world and people don't feel they can make a difference. The analogy that jumps to mind is that society is similar to a car. In the 70's cars could be fixed by someone with a manual and common sense. Now they are so complicated you need special equipment, knowledge and money to even start figuring out what's wrong.
Regardless of my bad analogy young people seem feel powerless to change anything at any level in their lives.
The problems are real, just more diffuse and less immediate (no war to get conscripted off to for example). The big problem right now is the huge shift in the value of human labor resulting from by a whole series of causes (immigration, technological change, movement of capital, globalisation, etc).
