[0:03]One day, a friend of mine shared with me a fact that immediately gave me osteoarthritis. Now that 2025 is over, everybody born in 2007 is officially an adult. Yeah, I know. Horrifying. I have vivid memories of playing Runescape with my friends like it was yesterday. And now you're telling me that the people who are born in 2007, 2007, like my brother, are functioning adults in society. I mean, they they can barely drive. But the funny thing is, once I got over my shock, I started to get a bit worried about you guys. You are about to become an adult in the most chaotic time imaginable, in a world post-pandemic with human engineered social media designed to ruin your life and in the most unstable economy in recent history. How are you meant to tackle it head-on? You don't. I'm just kidding. It's actually all about
[1:03]Now, I don't necessarily think it's all doom and gloom, but doesn't it feel like the system is currently not as friendly to newcomers? And I know that this is anecdotal, but it's definitely what I've seen reflected in real life, in hospital, online, and most importantly, me. Nowadays, I feel like I put in multiple hours of overtime, volunteer for extra days at work, and struggle constantly just to scrape by. To me, it's like a never-ending cycle of watching money number go up, only to have random BS make money number and my feelings go down. And that's probably why I like games like Stardew Valley, where you can just watch money number go up endlessly. And then you have all these gaslighting us about how you don't actually have it harder and you need to work more, and back in my day we needed to tape our legs to walk across the coal mines.Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, okay, bro. Back then, all you needed to be successful was a Cuban cigar, casual racism, and a firm handshake. Now, I'm aware that the issues lie with massive systemwide faults that affect everybody. I really don't want to paint it like it's purely just a Boomer versus Zoomer thing. With that being said, what frustrates me is that those exact people who are older than us are in power here and they're the ones who shape our current system. And instead of helping those that come after, they make things even harder by kicking the can down the road. I mean, why care about the future generation? I'm going to die soon anyway, and I'd rather be married with my money. Not to mention the fact that the older generations have the added buff of owning some financial reserve or property to coast them through. Versus a majority of the newer adults who not only have the debuff of, you know, not having that, but also have the biggest detriment to them in their pockets. Yeah, that's right. I'm talking about the oh, I'm so sorry about that. Oh, this is kind of cute. Okay, here you go. It's your phone. Oh, what the hell, man? I need that. Yeah, but you know what else you need? One of the best browsers available today, Opera. That's right. Opera is back to kindly sponsor this video and they're ready for 2026 with some new features to help increase your productivity. The one that I've been using consistently is the integration of Google services directly onto the sidebar. My team and I use Gmail and Google Calendar for making these videos, so having these directly accessible on the sidebar has helped tremendously. It is as simple as clicking on the three dots at the bottom of the sidebar and under Google Services, picking the ones you need. They've also got a smarter, faster, and more powerful Opera AI available for free for all users. You don't even need to open an extra tab. It works within the context of the page to analyze your current tab or islands to help you out upon request. Like finding local restaurants or planning things around your friend's schedules. Or let's say if you're reading about a movie, you could just ask, where's the closest showing of this? And bam, there you are, ultimately saving you time and focus. And you know I can't stop raving about Tab Islands, one of my favorite features that I use every day. These allow you to group tabs by projects, which can then be named however you want, collapsed, expanded, color-coded. This is my island for YouTube. This is my island for medicine, and this is well, don't worry about it. To do this, it's as easy as manually hovering a tab over one another. If these features sound perfect to you, absolutely give Opera a try. By click on the link in the description or the pinned comment below, you can download Opera right now. I cannot thank Opera enough for supporting me for all these months throughout my channel. Please make sure to check out Opera One R3. Now, speaking about phones, I'm sure you've heard people say phones are bad countless times, but they may actually be onto something. Because firstly, being able to take photos or videos of you at the drop of a hat, ultimately very good for individual documentation purposes, but rough if you happen to be in middle school. I remember my middle school and high school experience, unfortunately, and I speak for all of us in the fact that this is an extremely embarrassing time for everybody. I was busy trying to grow up and I was doing and saying stupid things to test boundaries. And look, I'd be more than happy to leave it all in the past. Until, you know, I make videos about it. Not only is a way of learning what not to do using my own childhood experience as an example, but I got to make the number go up somehow. I mean, like we talked about this. Nowadays, though, with the potential risk and fear of being recorded, I think it's actually made you less likely to be your authentic self, especially when you're in public or among your peers. I mean, if you're doing something even remotely embarrassing, crashing out, or cringe, it's now at risk of getting sent to everybody. Let alone becoming viral on the internet and ruining your life. Then comes the natural next step, which is the grind to get views. Like committing literal crimes for pranks, being performative, or rage baiting. Which can I just say used to be called trolling. One piece is trash. Don't even get me started on social media, because that's where I've seen the most significant change. When I started YouTube, being online felt so much more innocent, trying to truly connect with one another. You know, social media. And I can say from my personal experience that almost all of my online friends that I've met with through random tweets, Discord servers, and animation memes. Nowadays, social media just feels so much more negative. And that's intentional. Each of these platforms are ultimately designed to keep you engaged for as long as possible. And the best way to do that is by getting you upset, angry, depressed, anxious, stressed. There's a reason why rage bait or controversial drama content with negative thumbnails and titles or straight up misinformation is so rampant, because it works. And then there's the monetary incentive for the regular Joe Schmo to do it, with hateful tweets or drama channels focus purely on controversies, which contribute nothing positive or thoughtful into the world. Earning more than regular workers, simply by rage baiting successfully. My demon hunter sucks because it's woke.
[7:00]There are some of you that are under the illusion that you can beat social media, or that social media doesn't affect me that much. But it can, more than you even consciously realize. These are systems built by hundreds of the smartest engineers that money can hire, all designed to trap you in their awful cesspit of a platform. And genuinely, do you think you can withstand that effect? You think you can go toe-to-toe with Jeff Bezos or Zuckerberg? That guy's a lizard, or their millions of data points that have already downloaded your exact behavioral patterns. I personally didn't grow up with social media, and it's something that I only got into in my teenage years. But despite that advantage, things have still become so automatic for me now. Like there are legitimately moments where I'll be studying or working, and then I'll get distracted because my attention span is now so short. And then my smooth brain will crave dopamine, and without thinking, I've now got YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok open, and it's suddenly 2:00 a.m. and I haven't blinked for hours. What happened? So you, growing up with all of this, yeah, I'm not surprised that all the research has demonstrated increasing ADHD, decreased attention span, increase in mental illness or dysmorphia, and for the first time in history, an average decline in IQ, even if we discount the flawed metric of what IQ stands for. And intangibly, I've started to see you change, with growing numbness to everything, desensitization to truly horrific events, radicalized views without a drop of nuance. And some of y'all don't even know it, because dissociation can lead to memory loss. No one mentions that one, and I think it applies to a lot more of you than you realize, especially when people are always trying to invoke anger. Hollow Knight's actually mid. Now, I can already imagine some of you watching this saying, but Mars, I don't have social media, so I don't think this would affect me. And my response to that would be, wait, really? You don't have any social media in 2026? That's that's actually impressive. Yeah, good for you, man. But you know what else you don't have? A house. As a relatively young adult myself, I've been trying to dip my toes in and see that maybe, or maybe Mars can try to get his own house. I mean, that's just what you do in life, right? Go to university, check. You're married, check. Buy a house, and it's two million dollars. That's awesome. That's great. I had a visceral moment where I looked at that property's purchase history, and it was bought for like $100,000 only 15 years ago. And now you're looking at me dead in the eyes and trying to say that it's worth 20 times the price. I'm a doctor and a YouTuber, and I can't afford this shit. The boomers were right. I should have been working harder and investing in real estate when I was 13. Oh, amateur hour. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Even if you're not looking to buy and are just looking to rent somewhere, it is still terrible. I'm currently moving to a new city, and as I was looking for a place to rent, all of the places around me are a minimum $1,000 per week. What the absolute is up with that? That's $52,000 a year. Just for a point of comparison, the annual salary of a brand new doctor over here is approximately $92,000, depending on the state. So, more than half of your income as a junior doctor now is going to literally having a roof over your head. Not even including water, electricity, fuel, and food. Like, I genuinely feel so bad for you guys, because you're just surviving at this point. And no one ever listens to you because TikTok exists. Even outside of that, you factor in jobs that now pay less, companies not hiring but putting up applications anyway to look better for investors. The fact that groceries are getting more expensive by the day, the policies for trading are so haywire that common people are suffering. I mean, I am not surprised at all that this started to perpetuate more and more negativity. In an environment like this, everybody becomes more hostile, unkind, and we lose our collective empathy here. Of course, it's all worrying, and I can definitely understand how you can start to feel hopeless. And again, I want to stress that although young adults may feel the brunt of this, I do think it's a universal problem. Everybody is feeling the strain from multiple different directions. And I'm sure if you were to talk to your parents, they're probably going through the same hardships as well. All the while, the top 1% continue to profit from us, all pointing a finger and getting angry at each other. And honestly, despite trying to provide an impartial view about this, I think it's starting to affect me a lot more than I let myself feel. It's difficult for me to write about topics like these because I'm almost always enthusiastic, optimistic to a fault, wearing my heart on my sleeve and my life on my back. And as an extension of that, I like creating content that carries that same feeling, you know, trying to spread good into the world. However, things are getting to a point that even for me personally, I no longer feel as certain about where my life is going to go. Things don't feel as secure or safe as they once did, and I certainly don't feel like I have a semblance of control in my own future. And with all of those thoughts swirling in my head, I thought it'd be more inauthentic if I didn't at least acknowledge these feelings with you. It's been pretty tough, and it kind of makes me wish that we were back in 2007, playing RuneScape, despite that now being 18 years ago. At least 2007 was financially secure. Wait. Wait, what is that? These emotions that I, and that some of you feel, are entirely 100% valid. There are far too many statistics to show it's not just in our head, and that there is a direct correlation as to why people are suffering financially and mentally now, more so than 18 years ago. And I'm advocating for how important it is to acknowledge that, yeah, things are sucking right now. And I also think it's equally as important to at least try and keep your head above water. Be able to figure out the solution to make things work, to avoid letting the world win. From my perspective, and I'm going to be honest here, there were a few concepts that I was taught in medical school that I initially laughed at. Things like mindfulness, getting good sleep and exercise. I remember them being so gung-ho about this that there were multiple lessons where we had to sit in a circle with other people, meditate, and, you know, we all fell asleep because we were tired medical students. And then slowly eat a raisin to feel the texture and be present in the world, like Ratatouille. Like genuinely like Ratatouille. But what's fascinating about it is that it's those exact concepts that I keep seeing in literature and research over and over as ways that can help mentally. As ways to help cope throughout this entire system, being able to center yourself, take some time to relax, and sleeping enough to allow your brain and body to repair itself, are super strong, scientifically backed ways to be content in life. And as repetitive as it may have been in my life, I've been trying really hard to prioritize that. Everyone keeps talking about journaling and writing down everything that you're grateful for, and I just do a baby version of that. Where every night, I journal three small things that I was grateful for that day, and one thing that I would aim to improve for the future. Being a creative guy, I also draw a smiley face to represent how I was feeling that day. Sleep has always been an obstacle in my life, and generally, I got an award in medical school saying the most likely to fall asleep. So, hear me out when I say that I've been really strict about maintaining sleep, along with everything else, and the changes I've seen are already immense. It's made my own optimism ten times more potent, even when I'm having a really awful day. Because I've now made it a habit to find the most positive and grateful moments, I find it easier to weather the storm a bit. I find that negative news and drama don't affect me as much as they used to. It's made me even gone to a point where it's a bit too much, like, I'll be rounding with my team of junior doctors, and out of nowhere I'll just say out loud, Are we all lucky that we're safe and healthy and we get to do this for our jobs? They can't say anything because I'm their senior doctor. They love it. These are just some of the ways that I personally have been able to cope with what's going on. I am aware that things are much more complex. Things are not just going to be solved by going to therapy, sleeping more, eating better. I get that, but I do believe we just need ways for trying to break through this monotony and the current climate and try to make this world work for you. There are countless displays of millennials and Gen Z rising up and advocating so fiercely for what you believe in. And I think this is a signal showing how unhappy people are with their perceived loss of control over their own life. There is true momentum to be had when we all go out and change it. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, and I hope this is not controversial to say, but it is in our best interest to be active in our local politics and vote. Large scale, small scale elections, all of it is important because that is how we install change. Because slowly but surely, I'm sure we'll see things change for the better for all of us. Things are admittedly a bit bleak, and yes, we don't know how things will look in the coming months or years. But I don't think this changes what has to happen, because I think ultimately, with how unstable things are, the base priority about trying to find work, retain your job, grinding to survive in the current system, doesn't really change. All you can do for now is hang on and remain hopeful for the future. You might be watching this and think, he should get a reality check, or, wow, this guy is super unrealistic. And yeah, maybe I am. I know I'm probably being naively optimistic, but my counter is, you have to be. I mean, you have to be, like the world currently makes it so, so, so easy to be cynical, judgmental, and negative, hating on your fellow peers. And I refuse to fall into that, because I truly, genuinely believe that we can come out of this together. With 2026 coming around, half a decade since COVID happened. It's a fresh year, and I know that I'll be trying my best to survive. And I sincerely hope that it all works out for you as well. Happy New Year, everyone, even if it is a bit late, and good luck out there. I'll be right there with you, just making videos about how I'm actually feeling, silly concepts that I have, and videos of my friends. Thank you so much, everyone, for all of your support. This is coming up to my 10th year of YouTube. Who knows what the future holds for all of us. And with that, ladies, and stay amazing.
