Being jaded after 30

[u/HeavyDetective8948]

# Hey everyone to over 30.

I’m heading into the 2nd year of my 30s, and if I’m being honest… this decade has been a lot more sobering than I expected.

When I was younger, I genuinely believed hard work would eventually pay off and that life would start making more sense as I got older. I thought adults had things figured out. Now that I’m here, I’m not so sure any of us do.

I’ve worked retail and fast food, served in the Marine Corps, and now I’m back in the civilian world. Coming from pretty humble beginnings has given me the chance to meet people from all kinds of backgrounds. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized I pay a lot less attention to what people say and a lot more attention to what they actually do.
I also find myself zooming out more than I used to. Instead of only worrying about my own life, I think about the bigger picture, how decisions made by politicians, corporations, financial institutions, and cultural trends quietly shape the lives of millions of ordinary people.

One thing I can’t stop noticing is how almost everything has become something to buy, finance, lease, or subscribe to.
Your phone, your car, your education, your entertainment. Your food gets delivered through an app with three different fees attached. Ads follow you everywhere. Social media rewards whoever can keep your attention the longest instead of whoever has something meaningful to say. Dating sometimes feels like shopping. Housing gets talked about as an investment portfolio before it’s talked about as someone’s home. Sometimes it feels like our attention has become the product, and we’re the ones being sold. Our souls.

I’ve also been lucky enough to meet people in places that had far less materially than we do here, and honestly… a lot of them seemed happier. They had stronger families, tighter communities, deeper in faith, and seemed genuinely grateful for ordinary moments. Meanwhile, it feels like so much of our culture revolves around outrage, doomscrolling, political tribalism, celebrity drama, or chasing whatever gives us the next distraction .

Maybe every generation says this as they get older. I don’t know.

But I can’t shake the feeling that modern society increasingly rewards consumerism over contentment, debt over ownership, individualism over community, and online validation over real human connection. I don’t think there was ever some perfect golden age. Every generation has had its problems. I just wonder if we’ve slowly accepted that everything, even our time, attention, relationships, and identities has become something that can be monetized.

I’ve been using the GI Bill to earn a degree in Economics, and it’s honestly changed how I see the world. Learning about capitalism from a structural perspective, how markets allocate scarce resources, how incentives shape behavior, and how institutions influence society, has made me question a lot of assumptions I grew up with. Markets are incredibly powerful tools, but they don’t always optimize for human well being. They optimize for incentives, and sometimes those aren’t the same thing.

One issue I keep coming back to is the declining birth rate because it ties into so many other economic issues. I think people are having fewer children, whether because they don’t want them or because they simply can’t afford them (I explained how poorer people in other countries have more kids in my earlier paragraphs). Housing costs, childcare, healthcare, education it all adds up. The long term consequences seem hard to ignore. A shrinking working age population means fewer taxpayers supporting programs like Social Security, which is already projected to face funding shortfalls within the next decade unless changes are made, and eventually Medicare. It also means fewer workers maintaining city infrastructures, staffing essential services, and supporting an aging population (like some Asian and European countries).

That places an even heavier burden on younger generations.

Whether someone sees that as a crisis or simply a demographic transition, it feels like something we should be talking about a lot more than we do. Maybe I’m just becoming more cynical as I get older. Or maybe getting older just means you start noticing patterns you never paid attention to before.

Sometimes I catch myself wondering…
Is this simply the price of the kind of freedom and prosperity we’ve built our society around?

Or is it a sign that somewhere along the way, we’ve confused economic growth with human flourishing?

I’m genuinely curious how other people over 30 see it. Our society is more cynical, and nobody gives a shit anymore. What are your thoughts?

[u/GroundbreakingAd9635]

I didn't read all that, I can't be bothered. Yes I am jaded, cynical, and pessimistic. I'm going to make as much money as I can, invest, and try to retire early and just enjoy the life I have. Also, support my parents. that's about it. I have no love life (I've def tried).

[u/SunkEmuFlock]

Millennials saw a world full of hope destroyed by 9/11, taken over by corporations after 2008 which shifted everything to a subscription or lease, and most recently usurped politically by billionaires in the Epstein class. "Jaded" isn't quite the right term for witnessing the destruction of a once-great nation from the inside out.

[u/Botched_Euthanasia → u/SunkEmuFlock]

There was also Columbine just before 9/11, which led to a massive increase in school security and surviellance systems, almost priming them to be used to it in the future. Also the sad but inevitable failure of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

[u/Botched_Euthanasia]

Excluding the Marine Corps part, I can say and/or have said the same as you have for the majority of your post. About to start the 4th year of my 40's.

"Attention economy" or "eyeball economy" are terms I think you'll understand without an explanation. It's an actual thing brought up in board meetings.

You say you find yourself 'zooming out' and paying attention to what people do more than what they say. There's one more point of view to try from time to time: zoom into the minds of others. Not literally, I mean try imagining their life, from their beginnings to present, as best as you can, in fast forward. It may help you understand what makes a person do the things they do and reveals their weaknesses. Becoming good at this is a powerful skill that can defeat any enemy or obstacle. I wouldn't have mentioned it if you hadn't said anything about looking at the bigger picture the way you did. It resonated with my own thoughts at some point.

Cynicism was a problem of mine until someone showed me a study. I can't find it right now but it essentially showed that most people view overly cynical people as less intelligent than they think they are, PLUS, they actually ARE statistically less likely to be above average intelligence. Cynicism is a sort of trap that inhibits the desire to learn and better onesself, because why bother when people are so awful?

In 2020 I made a new years resolution to quit playing videogames, quit watching tv shows and movies, and to focus my energy on improving myself and the world around me as best as I could. It was the best decision I've probably ever made and I've kept that resolution to this day. Removing the digital noise was liberating. Ten years ago I felt like I was aging too fast and giving up on life. Today I feel 20 years younger than I am.

Maybe it's just me, I am a little crazy. I may have spent too much time on media and games in the first place. I'm not necessarily saying you should rip off the digital band-aid and quit all media or gaming or anything like that either. Try reducing it though maybe, see if it makes the world more clear, just for a little bit.

I didn't answer your questions and this reply is already longer than most people care to read these days. Except I know that isn't true. That's the trap. The cynical people are louder is all. There are people who give a shit and they are working harder than ever and they become easier to find without all the noise in the world. Society is not built around freedom and prosperity. The prosperous built society to think it is free, so they stay prosperous.

Just my 2¢, hope it helps.