Kids Are Racked With Anxiety, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: why the kids these days are so on edge, why eating lunch at your desk is bad and why you shouldn't respond to every email.
The Kids Are Not All Right
Here's an interesting essay from a Baptist pastor in Vox this week — based on his own anecdotal observations, John Thorton Jr. thinks that kids these days are more anxious as ever.
Sure, it'd be easy to point the finger to technology or the internet. Though adolescence has always been difficult, the thinking goes, nothing has really changed about being young except the introduction of the smartphone and social media. Which: yes, true.
But Thorton Jr. keys in on something that, I think, we're only starting to realize as the millennial cohort ages into adulthood and Gen Z starts filtering into higher education — we've become so career focused it's driving our children insane.
Schools, educators and parents are all asking their children to think about future careers long before they've even graduated high school. We're demanding our children to have it all figured out before their bodies have even physically matured.
And, yes, it's all seemingly good natured. We all want what's best for our children, but demanding that they think about what they want to do for the rest of their lives when they're 13 years old makes it feel like there's little wiggle room. We're telling them if they literally do not do everything right — take all the right classes, get all the right grades, make time for all the right circulars — for the next decade or so they are going to fail. Of course they're taking long drags from their Juul in between classes.
[Vox]
You Shouldn't Be Eating Lunch At Your Desk
Before I say anything else, I just want to say that I understand. I know why you inhale sandwiches at your desk while trying to answer emails. I know because I used to do it. And while I would never paint my own experiences as universal — maybe you eat lunch at your desk because you have so much goddamn work to do and if you don't do it you'll get the axe and then who's the asshole? — I know that desk eating is a way to show that you're a team player, a hard worker, a passion-for-your-work-haver.
I also know how hard it is not to eat lunch at your desk when the rest of the office is eating lunch at their desks. This week in the Guardian, Phil Daoust examines the habit of desk eating, and finds that it really doesn't help office morale.
As a million food and cooking shows will tell you, eating together is one of the most basic human things. Sharing a meal with others is the best, and arguably easiest, way to get to know other people. And that extends into the workplace. I've experienced this firsthand: if you sit down to lunch with your coworkers on a regular basis, you'll find yourself actually looking forward to that midday lunch break, feeling refreshed for the afternoon and genuinely enjoying working with them. It's wild! Adding a lunch table to your office is one of the best ways to make people happier.
Look, I know you're all working very hard. It's why you're reading this blog right now. (If you're reading this at lunch, thank you! But also get some fresh air!) Please go ahead and take your lunch not at your desk. Go outside. Go for a short walk. Take a break! And if you're in a management position, realize the message you're sending to the rest of the office when you decide to eat lunch at your desk.
Don't Respond To Every Single Email
The Atlantic's Taylor Lorenz has a brilliant new idea for handling email in 2019: Don't respond to them. It's a great idea!
It might sound rude on the surface. Obviously not responding to email will probably get you in hot water if your job hinges on responding to emails. But Lorenz is right to point out that the current default expectation that every email deserves a response is wrong. You shouldn't feel like you have to respond to every email!
Look, you're probably an adult with a job and emails to catch up on, so you know better than anyone else which ones you really need to respond to and which ones you don't. So just don't respond! If someone emails you when you're not working and that email gets buried by other emails, oh well! If it's important they'll definitely follow up.
