Generation Anxiety

Cambridge Analytica helped bring to the world’s attention what we have known all along: Facebook is bad for you.

Living while millennial is hard at the best of times - but imagine if you had an impairment that stopped you participating in ordinary life. This episode we speak to Sara Gingold, disability activist and consult, about the experience of young people living with a disability in a country that doesn’t cater for their needs and sometimes doesn’t even believe in their disability.

Friend of the pod, Simon Copland rejoins us to talk identity politics, queer spaces, and what a powerful, unbridled campaign for equal love can do to quash homophobia and enhance the rights of everyone in the LGBTIQA+ community.

The election of Donald Trump and the sudden prominence of white nationalists organising in the streets has caught many people by surprise. But for people of colour, racism has been a part of their daily experience of the world their entire lives.

We're halfway through this 2017 nightmare so we're looking back at what we've learned so far, examining a few more issues of anxiety that have arisen for young people, like "attacks" on free speech and a moment of hope thanks to our best boy's UK Election result.

Ads are a ubiquitous part of the world we've grown up in: they peer at us from billboards, sit next to us on the train and obnoxiously clog up our news feeds. No matter where you look there are ads and it's only getting worse. You probably find ads annoying, but have you ever stopped to ask what impact all that advertising might be having on your brain? Because it turns out it's probably not good for you.

Are you anxious because you feel like the world is ending? Well the good news you aren't crazy and it definitely is. In fact scientists confirm that all the predictions of a fiery climate change apocalypse are being realised promptly ahead of schedule! And you can thank the fossil fuel industry and years of political inaction for that one. But there is hope. Cop a listen to find out how we can burn down the system and save our future.

It doesn’t seem to matter what the topic is, every time we talk about the issues facing young people today one word keeps popping up: neoliberalism. It appears to be at the root of so many issues facing this generation of young people, but do we even know what it is?

With the news that the rent-bidding "Rentberry" is coming to Australia promising to push already sky-high rents even higher, we are joined by Yaelle Caspi from the Tenants Union of Victoria to take a look at what that could mean for young renters.

It seems that our rights at work are being eroded from every direction and it's enough to cause a bit of anxiety. We talk to Harriet Leadbetter from the Victorian Trades Hall Council about why work shit employers and bad work makes young people anxious and how organisations like the Young Workers Centre are empowering youth to fight back.

With our lives being lived online more than ever before we are creating more sensitive data about ourselves and our lives than we realise. In this episode we are joined by Carla*, a forensic technology expert, to look at just how much personal data we are creating, who could be using it and what this environment of omnipresent surveillance is doing to our relationships and our wellbeing. *Carla asked to speak anonymously, so we are using a pseudonym. Further reading What reporter Will Ockenden’s metadata reveals about his life – The ABC How the law allows governments to publish your private information – The Conversation How to Protect Your Data When You Travel to the United States – The Conversation So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed – Jon Ronson  

In this episode of Generation Anxiety, we look at how lower pay is not the only reason cuts to weekend pay is going to hurt young people. We also speak to writer Simon Copland about his latest article “Anxiety is a way of life for Gen Y. In an insecure world, is it any surprise?” and how young people can fight back.

In Generation Anxiety’s first episode we look at the results of Deloitte’s latest global survey of millennials which found that young people in Australia are the most pessimistic of all. We look at the top issues making Gen Y worry and why anxiety might be a rational response to the state of the world in 2017. Sources: Millennial Australians pessimistic about house prices and terrorism threat – The Guardian Stats and facts – Beyond Blue