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I don't know what the data shows, but if Kerouac's On the Road is an accurate picture of what the 1940s/50s were like, it was a time when a young man could arrive in any big city with a thriving social scene, like New York, San Francisco, or Denver, spend a few days job hunting and find a random manual labor job like parking lot attendant or railroad worker, grab a shitty but private apartment (no roommates) somewhere, and spend his free time having fun and/or making art.
So part of me wants to say that a lot of the problem is that housing in dense, fun parts of the country is fucked. And the entry level job market is fucked.
I myself remember seeing my own city, in the last 20 years or so, go from a place where it's hard but reasonable for a person who doesn't have a solid career to pay the rent with random jobs to a place where it's very difficult to do it.
At the same time, modern media (both mainstream and non-mainstream) is constantly exposing people to pictures of stunning material success. Politicians, socialites, celebrities ranging from YouTubers to Hollywood actors. There's kind of a sense in the gestalt that either you hustle your way to being some kind of at least mini-celebrity with a personal brand, smart your way to being a tech/entrepreneur genius, or you're fucked, condemned to the permanent underclass.
On the sexual front, the blackpill has really risen in popularity compared to 20 years ago. 20 years ago a young man who typed "how to get laid" into Google would have found the pick-up artist community, which would tell him that by doing fun adventurous things like approaching women he could gain social skills and have a lot of sex. This was true, by the way. And it still is, despite dating apps. But now with the rise of the blackpill, it's more common for the young man to get sucked into some community that tells him that he is fucked if he doesn't looksmax his way to being a 6'2" male model with a square jaw. The dating advice for men has also become more political. 20 years ago it had more a libertarian, fun, adventurous attitude. Now it's gotten sucked more into the miserable culture war, with both male and female influencers spreading misogyny and misandry, the kind of energy that if one buys into it, makes one wonder why there's even any point in interacting with the opposite sex. Meanwhile women are comparing themselves more than ever to hot female influencers on social media.
The vibes in the country are bad. There's a sense that something big has to change, soon. The overall feel is of living in a declining empire rather than in an ascending one. Overall social optimism is scarce despite some good things happening (for example, homicides are way down compared to say the 1980s though part of this might be that medicine lets more people survive getting shot than in the past). And now with the AI revolution, things appear even scarier. It's nice if hypothetically AI increases social productivity, cures disease, and so on at some point in the future, but that's hard to enjoy if there is fear of becoming unemployed in the near future. There's a general precarious sense that seeking a stable career is a fool's errand and one has to constantly be on one's toes, ready to pivot one's life in an instant, if one wants to be able to adapt.
Third places have gotten scarcer and also people spend more time sitting at home online. Many young people complain about having zero friends. The Internet makes it easier for people to get sucked into a lifestyle where one doesn't meet people in physical reality, to spend many years in that lifestyle and then realize that one is 30 and has no social skills and no off-line social connections.
I think tech also may be starting to reach the natural biological limits of the human organism when it comes to being a cyborg, a tool-user. Beyond a certain level, constant engagement with technology might become corrosive to certain needs that the human organism comes hard-wired with. The typical human organism needs a certain dose of touching grass and socializing off-line in order to stay healthy. The modern software-enabled lifestyle also has a certain constant annoyance factor. One has the sense of living in a dystopian cyberpunk world of giant corporations that are constantly pursuing you with advertisements and pestering you with notifications.
Now, does all this explain the change in suicide rates? I really don't know. That would require some deep analysis to determine. But it's what first comes to mind.
For what it's worth you can still do this in Europe. I did it 3 years ago and went to France and became a chef, it's not always easy but I can usually get jobs for friends who want to do the same (as I did for an ex-programmer friend who lost his job).
It took me a few weeks of sending emails, Instagram messages and one flight to get the first job, and another two weeks of staying over with friends and in hostels to find a place. I did share with housemates but later realised that cheap apartments were available if you searched. I had zero grasp of the language but a couple of thousand in savings from working at a factory to get me started.
I know French bartenders and waitresses who just decide to show up in Paris or Marseille and try and make it there, I know a 20 year old Irish busker who travels across Europe surviving on the money he makes playing guitar on the street, and another Ukrainian guy who escaped the war at 17 and hopped around Europe before making it to France. It seems fairly doable if you're actually willing to be poor for a while.
This was also kerouac’s secret, and as roustabout illegal day laborers show it’s still doable today if you’re willing to be poor.
Yes yes I know they speak Spanish. Do you think the guys picking people up in Home Depot parking lots are hiring Guatemalans because they’re racist against whites? Or do you think it’s because they’re cheap and actually willing to be day laborers?
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