A recent British study found that nearly 6 out of 10 millennials are experiencing a “quarter-life” crisis.
While young people might have their whole lives ahead of them, they are suffocating under financial, career, and personal pressures. The study, funded by First Direct Bank, surveyed 2,000 British millennials, but the results shed light on trends across the pond as well.
Financial troubles comprised the single largest cause of quarter-life crises, with more than 30 percent of those in a crisis saying they spend more than they earn on a monthly basis. Respondents also noted that they were struggling to find the right job (26 percent), working in a challenging job (22 percent) and trying to get on the property ladder (22 percent).
First Direct, a popular internet-based bank out of the U.K., conducted the research and worked with Dr. Oliver Robinson to analyze the results. Robinson is a psychologist and “Quarter-Life Crisis Expert” (yes, that’s a real job) who has studied how millennials have trouble coping with life and emotions.
Robinson outlines two types of quarter-life crisis victims: the locked-in type and the locked-out type.
The locked-in type feels stuck in a major commitment like a relationship or job. Whether the struggle is “adulting” or just a plain lack of interest, the locked-in type breaks away from the situation, does some soul-searching and finds their new path.
Meanwhile, the locked-out type fails several times at jobs or relationships and finds that they’ve hit a wall. They proceed to redefine or rescale their goals for resolution.
Sound familiar?
Both of these “types” reveal some major underlying issues with the millennial generation. In the “locked-in” scenario, millennials have either been deprived of the proper “adult training” in their life or have been pushed by their parents or mentors into an unfulfilling course that they had no business pursuing (college education, a high-paying but boring job, etc). In the locked-out scenario, the same is true and is more externally obvious. Failure is evident and inevitable for these poor souls.
The good news for both is that this crisis can be a “catalyst” for change.
While Robinson tends to focus on how to deal with quarter-life crises, he doesn’t spend time discussing how millennials have arrived at this point. Our generation has been pushed on to an expensive college track without much return on investment. We have been told by society that everyone’s a winner and thus we haven’t learned how to pick ourselves up after failure.
In other words, we’ve been fed lies about how the world truly works.
Millennials should do what they must to find their way out of a “quarter-life crisis,” but this trend should also be a wake-up call for those who are counseling young people. The fictitious world that liberals imagine is far from the day-to-day reality in which we live.
