Hard Times That Built Resilience Now Rare in the Digital Age
Decades of longitudinal data from the Oakland Growth Study and the Berkeley Guidance Study suggest that childhood hardship—economic deprivation, shifting family roles, and military service—fostered durable self-regulation and stable midlife outcomes. By contrast, cohorts raised with digital comforts and structured paths show fewer of these hard-won coping skills, implying an interrupted cultural transmission of resilience in the modern era.
