I didn't come up with this explanation for the situation, though I wish I should have. The problem is probably knowledge. Knowledge how fucked the environment is, how fucked capitalism is, how fucked politics are, etc...

I had an easy time as a teenager first and foremost because I was a cishet white male but secondly and significantly I had the vague idea that bad things happened around the world but that was it. My teenagers know specific details of the state of the world like I couldn't imagine at their age.