Perfectly put, Admiral Beez, and the music video is on point, though that truth is far from self-evident to those of us who've had to rely on the prevailing culture for a sense of moral guidance.
I wouldn't know if these are net new sources of anxiety for youth 13-18 these days, but here are some observations:
1. While discrepancies between rich and poor have always existed, the media currently glorifies a version of upward social mobility characterized by fast, explosive achievement. This sort of stuff has been around in one form or another since the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" laissez faire attitudes of the last century, but I would argue that the level of media consumption now sits at unprecedented levels.
2. Staying on the subject of media, a content analysis will reveal that the news (reality) are predominantly negative, while advertising, movies and sit-coms (fiction) are often ecstatically positive. I would argue that such a content mix will encourage a sub-set of viewers to live out passive lives of fictional indulgence. Lack of activity, lack of perceived personal power and a sense of frustration, dissatisfaction and anxiety go hand in hand.
3. Thanks to social media, charismatic teenagers are capable of forming vast social networks that span multiple states / countries. The magnitude of the traditional popularity contest has grown exponentially, from the confines of a single high-school building to basically the entire nation.
4. It has been well documented that people become happier and more confident as they grow older, primarily thanks to having scored certain victories and having successfully mitigated certain failures. Youth have all sorts of challenges ahead of them and have yet to accomplish major (often difficult) developmental breakthroughs. I feel that our adult attitudes to this otherwise natural state of affairs have shifted. We are quick to prescribe medication, assign counselling, and intervene when perhaps such interventions are doing more harm than good.
