Millennials and the generations thereafter are considered to be weaker by people from previous generations.

The truth of the matter is past generations have left the economic state of the country and the country itself in shambles, effectively leaving millennials to clean up their mess.

Can millennials really be considered weaker or more sensitive when they are in fact more knowledgeable and aware of the world around them than any generation before?

A study by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality showed that young adults in their 20s and 30s earn less money with a college degree and are more likely to die pre-maturely from suicide and drug overdose than any previous generation before them.

The world left to millennials is one of disarray and chaos.

The difficulties of entering the job market during the most recent recession of the late 2000s is something no modern generation can compare to.

David Grusky, professor of sociology and director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality said, “Millennials are the first generation to experience, in a full-throttled way, the social and economic problems of our time.”

When a fresh generation of workers were ready to hit the job market, there was no job market left.

The often-sought American dream of working 40 hours per week and owning a nice home with that income is a fantasy now — especially in the Bay Area.

The economic gap was getting bigger and unemployment was at an all-time high when the first batch of millennials were entering work.

All this added up to one of the most difficult times in our country and to put that pressure on millennials, as they were entering their prime, stunting a whole generation’s growth.

It is not only in America that this generation was affected negatively by the past, in Japan what we consider Generation X, they consider “the lost generation”. The generation’s high school and college graduates recruited by companies to work was an all-time low because of an economic bubble implosion. This has left a whole generation of people, now in their 40s, whose careers never had a chance to take off.

The difficulty of trying to make it in this economically and socially strained climate has resulted in an increased mortality rate for younger generations.

According to the report’s analyses of health, written by Stanford economist Mark Duggan and economics undergraduate Jackie Li, between 2008 and 2016, mortality rates among those between 25 and 34 years old increased by more than 20 percent.

These deaths were driven by a rise in suicides and drug overdoses.

One has to understand the economic and social context in which millennials have grown up. It is difficult to not have empathy for a generation given so much yet allowed to do so little with it.

No other generation before has had unprecedented access to information like millennials, but it has all been for nothing as they arrived to participate in a workforce that was practically nonexistent.

Now, subsequent generations following millennials get to take their shot at navigating a broken economic structure — however, to say millennials are weak is just ignorant.