I think there is a presumption of safety before everything in the later generations. Not without merit. I mean, I didn't grow up with school shootings, terrorist threats. I was graduated high school 2 years before Columbine and prior to 9-11. That's when USA changed. Truly it did.
So what I'm seeing with my generation (born in 1979 and the younger generations) is really more a resentment about what to do with it. Whether that is financially, physically, whatever. You know, that's real and there is marked difference at that point. Media became inundated with threat levels. Everyone was on high alert and that hasn't really changed. Especially with terror attacks, school shootings, suicide bombings, etc. Not to mention millennial's grew up as the Generation of Shame. They were shamed online by parents publically for likes and shares, shamed by friends at school in ways I definitely was not threatened with. It was disgusting.
So, there is this pervasive fear in these generations that looks different than how fear looked before. It had less of a recognizable face. Threats are everywhere. I think added to this, is that parents have been caught up in this and want to prevent harm to their children. They fell privy to over protection and fear just like anyone else. Look up Risk Compensation Theory and Risk Homeostasis for some interesting looks at this stuff.
Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected but what also gets argued is that with more preventative measures in place, more trust gets placed in those safeguards in lieu of the person maintaining critical awareness of risk. Eventually, I can't help but see what risk compensation tells us and having that reinforced socially equates to at least some amount of the population catatonic with anxiety paralysis. Trusting themselves less and less, reaching for higher and higher unbrella preventions.
I can't count how many of my friends have anxiety disorders and let that get the best of them. PTSD, whatever. Even more in this day and age, there are so many more resources for assistance!!! and yet, I see a shit ton of apathy and nihilism and wearing a diagnosis as a badge of honor instead of using it as an attempt to identify a path to solution. Let me tell you, my generation, not millennials, got PHd's in apathy and nihilism and no doubt, I see a lot of young people who have nothing to believe in, including themselves.
They look for blanket cures for anxiety, bill paying, mortgages, loans. Not realizing that those anxieties have been every generations anxieties and it isn't about erasing those things but managing it. Living with it all. That's what a successful adult does. I'm not bashing anyone who seeks to change the world for the better here, but I know a lot of people who fight for change on a grand scale while ignoring the small scale battle of their own lives.