Yet it is also unfashionable to alarm others that,
Seventy-one percent of young people are ineligible to join the military, according to 2017 Pentagon data. The reasons: obesity, no high school diploma or a criminal record...According to one report, 52 percent of employers in Pennsylvania find it challenging to hire people with adequate skills, training or education. - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/14/military-service-most-young-people-dont-qualify-careers/3665840002/
Most ineligible youth (44 percent) are disqualified for multiple reasons rather than in only one area. Among those ineligible for only one reason, being overweight was the highest disqualification, at 11 percent. Drug use (8 percent), medical/physical only (7 percent) and mental health only (4 percent) were the other leading categories found in the study. The largest increases in disqualification estimates observed between 2013 and 2020 were for mental health and overweight conditions.- https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/03/77-of-young-americans-too-fat-mentally-ill-on-drugs-and-more-to-join-military-pentagon-study-finds/
Gen Z First Ever to Show Lower IQ Than Previous Generation, Breaking Century-Long Trend .. For most of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, average intelligence test scores gradually increased across generations.Improvements in education access, nutrition, public health, and information availability contributed to that rise... researchers argue that educational environments increasingly centered on screens, condensed information, and short video formats may influence cognitive development.
According to this view, frequent exposure to fragmented content encourages rapid scanning rather than deep comprehension, which can lower the national average IQ.- https://nchstats.com/gen-z-iq-decline/
Fifty years ago suicide among young people aged 15–24 was a relatively infrequent event and suicides in this age group constituted less than 5% of all suicides in the United States. As can be seen in Figure 21.1, between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, the rate of suicide rose markedly among this age group. This increase was observed most dramatically among young males, whose suicide rates more than tripled between 1955 and 1977 (from 6.3 per 100,000 to 21.3). Among females ages 15–24, the suicide rate more than doubled during this same period (from 2.0 per 100,000 to 5.2). By 1980, suicides by 15-to 24-year-olds constituted almost 17% of the approximately 30,000 suicides in the United States (National Center for Health Statistics, n.d.). - https://academic.oup.com/book/38543/chapter/333673952
From 1970 to 1980 the suicide rate for older teen-agers and young adults, both male and female, rose 40 percent, the national Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday.Feb 22, 1987. - https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/22/us/youth-suicide-is-rising.html
October 12, 2022: Teen Suicides Jump 29% Over the Past Decade,
And younger generations are far less active than previous generations. "Four in five children don't do any housework, even though "doing chores is proven to be one of the strongest predictors of success in life overall, and lacking in initiative.
Which started before the more recent generations. Related to that,
Rising Number of Men Don't Want to Work - Newsweek May 6, 2024 American men are opting out of the workforce at unforeseen rates. For many, it's not an issue of not being able to find a job. They have simply opted out altogether.
Millions of men have dropped out of the workforce, leaving companies ... A large number of American men between 25 and 54 years old are not working or even looking for work.
Back to kids, lack of unstructured play, which is important, is part of the indolence among youth. Which even includes not riding bikes, an unstructured activity of freedom:
From 2019: Fewer Children Are Riding Bikes - Forbes Jul 31, 2019 Various surveys find a sharp decline in the number of children who ride bikes -- and there are many, many reasons why.
The number of kids riding their bikes regularly has dropped from 20.5 million in the 1990s to just 10.9 million in 2023 - https://www.boisebicycleproject.org/about/blog/2025/7/22/why-fewer-kids-are-biking
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