Yep it's tough to be optimistic. I like to think about a micro-meteorite falling on my head. It's possible at any moment, and yet I always ask myself why I'm not worried about it.

The best advice that anyone can give you is to stop looking at social media, or reduce it by 90+%. The kind of "depression" or "despair" you express is a symptom of doom scrolling.

My next advice is a question - If you can't enjoy today, why do you think you would enjoy tomorrow, even if everything in life were perfect? "One day at a time" is really good advice. Do something tangible to mark your successes or failures on this one single day, and then rinse and repeat tomorrow. If you are "failing" too much, then recalibrate your expectations until you can mark several points of success, no matter how small. "I read my work email" or "I did zero youtube".

My non-expert prediction is that LLMs will ruin the youth's coding skills. Anyone in a deep dev discussion will have to have instinctual knowledge that LLMs can't teach, and their value will be apparent when non-trivial tasks arise. And remember, a micro-meteorite could fall on our heads at any time!