I'm in my early 30s and slightly less pessimistic about the future, although looking at my peers and Gen-Z, I frequently do feel I have every right to feel otherwise.
I try to keep it in the perspective of looking at every generation that came before me. The rightfully derided pot-smoking, free love, hippy dippy trippy 20-somethings of the 60s eventually molded themselves in to practical, useful members of society. The early-mid Gen Xrs didn't end up playing Pac Man down at the the arcade until the end of time or have their nose in their Game Boy for the rest of their lives. Despite the best efforts of the public school system, global conglomerates, and board directors looking to make a quick buck by shipping every possible entry-level manufacturing job overseas, I managed to make something of my life. I was part of the only generation to spend my formative years in a pre-internet/post-internet era. I went from being enamored by the very idea of a bag phone to meeting some of my closest friends as a teenager on AOL Instant Messenger and car forums. Some of those people are my closest friends in life to this day.
On the topic of skills, I would like to point out that I know plenty of boomers who are entirely useless when it comes to doing literally anything with their hands. Dishwasher broke and all it needs is a pump? Throw it out and buy another one. Toilet stopped up? What's an auger? I'll pay $350 for a plumber service call instead. My car needs brakes? Guess it's going to the dealer on Monday. This is not a generational issue, it's a societal issue that I believe is most predicated on the removal of Home Ec and Vo-tech from the school system and further reinforced by the trope of "You didn't go to college?! The only job you're going to find is being a PLUMBER!" The constant derision of the skilled trades is why nobody is skilled anymore. The fallacy that a professional must take care of every basic facet of your life is the problem. The idea that you can't possibly have an opinion on a complex societal issue unless you came out of an Ivy League school with a $350,000 Ph.D is the icing on the cake.
Something happened in society that has made the average person believe that they cannot possibly be competent outside of their "lane". Maybe we've had it too good for the last 50+ years and the chickens are coming home to roost. Hard times make strong men, and all that.
I refuse to submit to the way things are going now. Maybe spending a lot of my later teenage years with a sick father and dwindling household savings made the difference. Learning to fix my S-box car was not a hobby, it was done out of necessity. If I wanted to get to work at 16, I was going to have to learn how to make that 20 year old Pontiac run again because taking a car to the shop is not a luxury afforded to people who live in run down trailer parks. Between my friends and I, I can't count how many engine swaps, transmission swaps, top end rebuilds, timing belt changes, and tuning projects we've done to this point. That stuff made me a better person. Begging a guy my buddy knew for a miserable structured cabling IT job at 18 where I dealt with incompetent rent-a-drunks from a staffing agency and working miserable overnight shifts got me on the track to get the skills I needed to be in the job I have now. Had I listened to society and gone to school for four years for a degree in underwater basketweaving I would have graduated $120k in debt and would probably work at Starbucks. I've managed to get through life by usually eschewing anything society tells me I should do. I am a millennial high school dropout from a trailer park, yet I somehow made it.
Society isn't screwed because of the current generation. The current generation is screwed because of society.
LOL
hopefully this will take them far in life as skills are all I have to offer since I never became rich & famous 
