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this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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If someone can tell me one way that kids are better off now than in my generation (mid 90s) then please let me know. The only way I can say that is pretty good is being more accepting in general, but in every other important way it's worse. Climate change causing worse weather means it's harder to start a garden, more time spent indoors, less enjoyable calm weather, and that's just the readily noticeable effects.
Algorithms with websites are constantly trying to push people to be adhd and addicted, ai garbage. Don't get me wrong I'm still happy to be alive in this day and age, but I am truly afraid of how I would feel/ who I would be growing up in the tiktok algorithm ai zombie era, and I don't want to expose anyone to that, let alone kids that I would care about more than anything.
You could rattle off a bunch of childhood and young adult diseases we've eliminated, for starters. We don't talk about the AIDS epidemic anymore, because it's a treatable condition rather than a death sentence.
Aids was treatable in the late 80s, and we are getting other untreatable illnesses now like long covid, with america having just dumped 40+ years of research for being too woke. We are also seeing a return of measles because again the algorithm + media addiction pushing people to become antivax. idk it's just like every conceivable way things are just getting more cooked.
Zidovudine could extend life expectancy marginally. But patients regularly built up a resistance to the drug and eventually succumbed to the illness.
HAART was only introduced in the late 90s and did not become commercially available until the 00s. It was also a cocktail of drugs with a YMMV performance. So you needed to regularly administer treatment and constantly follow up.
PrEP and the long lasting injectables didn't arrive until the '20s.
We had antivax movements for as long as we've had vaccinations. This problem goes back over a century. You just don't learn about the Anti-Vaccination League of America or the the UK National Anti-Vaccination League, so we treat modern vaccine hysteria as novel.
I can't really argue that aids treatment isn't better, but by around the 2000s it was a single pill, and Aids is also something we learned how it spreads and could massively reduce the risk of, which is not true for any of the new problems.
We have never had the head of the fda being antivax and actively cutting vaccine programs. About 20% of Republicans are antivax, and the majority of Republicans do not think vaccinations are important. And yes, that's sort of what I mean, we're going back to 1880s levels(if not worse) of "vaccines are unsafe," despite 140 more years of research showing that they are unbelievably safe. That level of anti-science isn't unprecedented, but it's far far worse than when I was growing up. This is not contained to just the US either, but the US is the most extreme case.
What?
We have had a number of administrations, following the official creation of the modern FDA, abuse the roles and advanced industry profits over human health and safety. Reagan very famously made light of the AIDS crisis specifically, accusing reporters and advocates of sodomy whenever the issue was raised. Bush restricted the sale of Plan B abortion drugs, restricted public school education on contraception, and banned embrionic stem cell research to pander to Christian fascists in his party. You can just Google the various scandals around the FDA. No shortage of corrupt and incompetent leaders, nevermind instances when a president would leave the office vacant indefinitely to obstruct its functions.
Aids was preventable with condoms or staying with people who didn't have aids, the effects of climate change can't be avoided (besides maybe being rich and moving).
Pretty much every bad thing you've mentioned is happening right now, but all at once. Abortion/ abortion drugs are banned in many states, Trump and ~70 million republicans made light of covid which caused far more deaths than aids and encouraged people to spread it, we have the most insane levels of corruption (j6ers got pardoned and paid 2b, Trump coin, literal insider trading by the president, supreme court saying something would be "inconvenient" in order to give unconstitutional readings). And the people supporting this are not some small whackjob minority, it's 70 million people seeing an American on the ground not moving getting shot by ICE and saying "he was asking for it."
Condoms also weren't made widely available until the 00s.
I haven't seen that to be the case.
I mean despite that humanity is still ironically at one of the points with the most life quality. I mean I would prefer to be born today than the 300s so the time you're talking about is generally really short.
Still rn if people decided to not have kids not much would happen, it would probably be better even if that sounds a bit harsh. Before it would kinda just make humanity go extinct depending on the time and all.
One argument for anti-natalism too, which is what this is, is that adoption is better since you not only not bring anyone to the world, which may not be wanted for well, diverse reasons, you also help someone.
Yes 100% agree with adoption. I agree it is a short time span, and might get better in the next 400 years (assuming people start looking long term after the climate disaster, which I doubt they will), but the time in between that my kids and theirs would have to suffer through still is very real.
I genuinely don't know if you would be less happy living in the 300s compared to if you're not wealthy living through freak weather heatwaves and massive shortages + algorithm addiction growing up 100 years from now.