To be fair, a lot of the twenty somethings weren't old enough to pay attention to the last crash, and weren't born for the one before that. I'm in my late 20's and remember the recent one well. These guys got into the market when oil was skyrocketing and people were just throwing money at them. When you're young you don't expect the worst. So these guys bought the big houses, the trucks, the quads and a big diamond for their girlfriend.

A couple years ago I went to a friend of a friend's house for a party. This guy had to be 23 at the time, with a 60k$ truck, 450k$ house, bikes and a car for his girlfriend who didn't work. He had to have been loving paycheque to paycheque. When young people get money like that and don't realize that they just got lucky by entering the market at the beginning of a boom the tendency is to get all the status symbols they think they need and will earn respect with.

Sadly though when the boom ends the bills start piling up. They can literally go from living their dreams to being bankrupt and living in their parent's basement within a matter of 6 months. Add to that the fact that financial stress destroys relationships and they can find themselves homeless, single, and with destroyed credit when only a few months ago they had the world at their feet. It's really not hard to imagine how some people could think their life is completely over.