The surge in psychological problems among children and young adults is often blamed on social media, but the story begins earlier. Social platforms accelerated the trend and gave it sharper edges, but they didn’t create it out of nothing.
The American psychologist Jean Twenge—whom I cite extensively in The Road Out of Serfdom—has noted that no previous generation was raised on such relentless encouragement: “Any one of you can be president,” or “You can achieve every dream you have.” Children formed by this rhetoric are then thrown into the real world, where competition is harsher and opportunity narrower than it was for the generations before them. We shouldn’t be surprised that disappointment and depression have become generational attitudes. If the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” carried the death penalty, the world might be a kinder place.
Even if such corporate self-projections occasionally help someone climb a bureaucratic ladder, they do nothing for a person’s stability, their relationships, their moral health, or anything else that genuinely deserves effort.
But there is one kind of ambition that does help.
It’s the ambition rooted not in status, but in character:
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“I want to become an educated, cultivated, and wise person.”
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“I want to be kind, cheerful, and warm—someone people look forward to seeing, someone whose presence brightens a room.”
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“I want to be the sort of man women find irresistible.”
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“I want to be a wonderful homemaker who runs a household well, makes her own preserves, raises rabbits, and so on.”
Notice how little these goals depend on external conditions. If I want to become a more gracious person, I don’t need economic growth, government programs, or anyone’s permission. It’s my decision, my effort, my work.
And notice something else: these ambitions aren’t competitive. They don’t require beating anyone. They demand only that I become better than the person I was last year.
Such goals don’t produce depression. Research shows they correlate with high levels of life satisfaction. That’s not surprising: people tend to choose personal goals aligned with who they truly are. A bitter misanthrope rarely sets out to “become a kinder person.” A narrow, money-obsessed man rarely adopts “becoming wise” as his guiding star. Some skepticism is always healthy, of course—it can be hard to know whether a happy life encourages personal growth, or whether personal growth produces the happiness. But either way, this is the kind of ambition that strengthens individuals rather than hollowing them out.