Something that breaks my heart as a millennial is we actually thought we were going to fix everything. We had AIM and iPods and MySpace and a feeling that the world was genuinely getting better. We marched for things and believed it mattered. We watched a Black president get elected and thought that meant something permanent. We thought the internet would connect us. That information would free us. That progress was a door that once opened couldn’t be shut. Nobody told us about the people who had keys. Gen Z was born already knowing the door could close. They never got to be naive about it. That’s what hurts most. We lost the optimism after we had it. They never got to have it at all. And I genuinely don’t know which is worse