Cancer rates are rising in young people

This is very well said and quite important in my opinion.

As a senior GenXer, I grew up during the cold war, and things were looking pretty scary for us (human civilization) for several years in the 1980s. I remember asking a number of my high school peers if they expected to be around by the age of 21 and more than half though that we'd be nuked by then. (We lived in a place surrounded by primary targets.)

Personally, I was raised by my grandparents, who were born in the late 1910s, grew up on farms where starvation was very close by a lot of the time. My grandfather fought in a number of bloody locations in World War 2 while my grandmother helped build bombers.

I admit, for a while, I was somewhat skeptical of claims that Millennials were dealing with a lot of stress, but I've grown out of that fortunately.

"I think the nature and persistence of low-grade psychological stress we carry now is unique. And our support systems are worse" is absolutely right on target, and I think the science is starting to catch up.

I'm glad you're doing well with your cancer treatment. One thing most people don't realize is how much better, on average, the prognosis is for cancer in developed countries, though the rise of various types is certainly very concerning.

May I ask what kind of cancer you had? Thank you.

That said, the pop media (of which Scientific American is part) routinely conflates rates of diagnosis with rates of late-stage cancer, even though they're very different, and there's a discrepancy between them. I don't know about colon cancer in particular, but I know that it's been a long-term trend in many different cancers -- for example (iirc) skin cancer -- that people are getting diagnosed far more often, but death rates due to the illness are essentially constant.

This tells you either that we're getting worse at treating what we diagnose, or more plausibly, that we're not detecting things that would lead to death.

It also tends to conflict with causes of those cancers that we were able to discover, and which are usually almost monocausal, especially in younger age. The main reason for lung cancer isn't stress, but tobacco smoke. The main reason for mesothelioma isn't stress, but exposure to asbestos. The main reason for cervical cancer isn't stress, but HPV infection. The main reason for stomach cancer isn't stress, but Helicobacter pylori infection.

In all likelihood, the current cancer resurgence isn't caused by stress either. I suspect something much more specific, like microplastics.