CNN Millennials have been through a lot. Many of the generation were young adults when the Great Recession began, and to this day, they struggle to buy homes and pay off student debt. Now these jaded millennials are sharing their wisdom with Gen Z on TikTok, posting preparation tips and no-buy lists to ease the minds of young people who could be entering their first major recession as adults.

President Donald Trump’s whiplash-inducing policy changes have everyone warning about dire consequences for the US economy, from Fed Chair Jerome Powell to Goldman Sachs analysts. The Trump administration’s tit-for-tat escalation in the global trade war could lead to a recession for both the US and the world this year, JPMorgan said this month. It comes during an already unprecedented string of events for young people — people in their early 20s are earning less and have more debt, already battered by the Covid-19 pandemic and an onslaught of inflation.

So, the United States might not be in a recession right now, but its youngest working adults are still anxious — and seeking advice from their older peers. When scrolling through TikTok, Sasha Whitney, 37, noticed Gen Z users shared the same feelings over an impending recession: “downtrodden, frustrated, very bleak and hopeless about the future.” It’s a stark difference from when Whitney graduated from college in 2009 during the Great Recession, before social media became as pervasive and when Barack Obama, who ran his campaign on the concept of hope, just took office. Sasha Whitney, a content creator on TikTok, gives tips to Gen Z viewers who are preparing for their first major recession.

– Courtesy Sasha Whitney “When I talked to some of my millennial friends, they were like, ‘Yeah, we were broke. We were struggling,’” said Whitney, whose primary audience on TikTok is aged 18 to 25 years old. “However, we weren’t trying to keep up with the Joneses.

You weren’t trying to portray a lifestyle for social media.” Other millennials joked on social media about the sense of community they had during the recession, sounding nostalgic for the days of cheaper liquor, wearing business casual and endless replays of feel-good recession pop. “If you want to know how we survived, yeah we blacked out,” one millennial user quipped on TikTok. But millennials did share their real financial struggles.

After graduating, Whitney lived at home for a bit, then moved out, paying rent and student loans and leaving $20 a week for groceries. She worked in retail immediately out of college and figured out how to handle her finances through trial and error. “I’m buying packs of tuna, frozen vegetables, bread, putting it in the freezer.

That’s when it really hit me that something’s going on,” she said.