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Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
1 review
savvylit's review
informative
slow-paced
3.5
In 2019, Petersen published an article on Buzzfeed about American millennial burnout that quickly went viral. As a young millennial, I deeply related to that article. Sharing it to one of my group chats with fellow millennials, we all found solace in putting a name to many of our feelings. We each agreed that we were experiencing burnout to some degree. When I heard later that Petersen had expanded the article into a book, I was eager to learn more about exactly why our generation feels so overwhelmed.
"Increasingly... burnout isn't just a temporary affliction. It's our contemporary condition." Beginning with an analysis of Boomer parenting, Petersen follows the economic conditions that shaped millennial childhoods. Millennials were born into a world of precarity yet raised by parents who believed that the American Dream was achievable. Thanks to a culture of workaholism instilled from a young age by those parents or parent figures, we expected that working hard resulted in securing a decent job and a living wage.
Petersen continues by explaining how myths perpetuated by both the media and well-meaning elders misled us to believe that hard work is the key to a comfortable middle class life. What no one realized/realizes is that inflation, the exploding gig economy, and crippling student loan debt have all made the American Dream an absolute unachievable joke. And no one is laughing! Furthermore, social media makes many of us feel that we also have to work hard during increasingly limited leisure time to be picture-perfect.
Overall, Petersen effectively explains the millennial condition and the unique challenges that the generation faces every day. Though it's specifically about millennials, a lot of the issues explored are ones that are also poised to affect Gen Z as well.
Can't Even was quite interesting but not enjoyable. At times, I found the book repetitive and tedious. Petersen's overall approach was too academic and impersonal for my taste.
"Increasingly... burnout isn't just a temporary affliction. It's our contemporary condition." Beginning with an analysis of Boomer parenting, Petersen follows the economic conditions that shaped millennial childhoods. Millennials were born into a world of precarity yet raised by parents who believed that the American Dream was achievable. Thanks to a culture of workaholism instilled from a young age by those parents or parent figures, we expected that working hard resulted in securing a decent job and a living wage.
Petersen continues by explaining how myths perpetuated by both the media and well-meaning elders misled us to believe that hard work is the key to a comfortable middle class life. What no one realized/realizes is that inflation, the exploding gig economy, and crippling student loan debt have all made the American Dream an absolute unachievable joke. And no one is laughing! Furthermore, social media makes many of us feel that we also have to work hard during increasingly limited leisure time to be picture-perfect.
Overall, Petersen effectively explains the millennial condition and the unique challenges that the generation faces every day. Though it's specifically about millennials, a lot of the issues explored are ones that are also poised to affect Gen Z as well.
Can't Even was quite interesting but not enjoyable. At times, I found the book repetitive and tedious. Petersen's overall approach was too academic and impersonal for my taste.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism and Gaslighting
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