That said, it must be pretty weird being a teen now, with the general collapse in the world, wars, Isis, EU fall, Trump and so on. Not the same climate we had as teens in the 90s when things seemed generally stable.
Interesting perspective. Humans (myself included) tend to look at the past with a bias towards the good memories. And people seem to think the present world has gone to *censored*. They were saying the same things in the 90's. You had the crack cocaine epidemic, fall of the Soviet Union (which while it did remove a potential threat, there was some chaos involved and we had no idea if all the nukes were accounted for), Oklahoma City bombing, rise of mass shootings in schools (U.S. only), the chemical attack in Japanese rail station, All the war and instability in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, second rising of Islamic terrorism with OBL, Marilyn Manson (I'm kidding with this one), Rodney King race riots, Jeffrey Dahmer, heroin epidemic (admittedly it has come back again this year), and that's all I can think of right now.
People (liberals mostly) think 2016 is the worst year. I can understand they look back at the 90's fondly with Clinton in charge, although he was pretty moderate. The media (both HuffingtonPost and CNN0 has been portraying 2016 as a terrible year. Even things like Aleppo can't compared to hardships endured in war in WW2, WW1, Korea, or even Vietnam. War is still terrible, but things are better today than they have ever been in the past.
Some positives of 2016. Western economies are doing great. Despite what conservatives may say, economies under liberal leadership has been great. Some countries recovered better than others. ISIS is on its way down. We still haven't had any 9/11 style attacks in 15 years. Nice I think was 2015 not 2016, and while that was bad, it wasn't 9/11 style. U.S. granted marriage rights to everyone, and I believe a few other countries such as Ireland have as well. Despite war in Syria/Iraq, and unrest in Africa, the world has largely been at peace. Seriously the economy is on fire right now. Yes a bubble will surely form, but smart investors realize this and don't invest when it is overpriced (as it is right now).
People think Trump is the apocalypse and he is not. He marks the last time a Republican will be elected President (yes I know I said this before, but him losing the popular vote by 3 million votes is telling). There is only so much damage he can do. Yeah he has a big mouth on twitter, so what. China will not attack us, and Trump will not provoke China except with mere words which China is smart enough not to fall for. We'll be in more debt in 4 years, but our economy is strong enough to handle it.