Are the Kids Alright?

Young adults haven’t abandoned work, family, home ownership or the future. But many are trying to build a life using instructions written for a world that no longer exists.

In this opening episode of a new first-person series from Signal Room at The Age of Culture Project, Armaan Sahgal asks what actually changed for Millennials and Gen Z — and why so many familiar milestones of adulthood now feel increasingly difficult to reach.

From housing costs and precarious entry-level work to generative AI, loneliness, declining birth rates and the widening gap between economic security and personal choice, Armaan looks beyond the familiar accusations of laziness, fragility and phone addiction. The question, he argues, isn’t what young people are doing wrong. It’s what conditions hav ...