Millennials Are Literally Dying From Overwork

The news: Yet another millennial has died after working insanely long and strenuous hours. Mita Diran, a copywriter at Young & Rubicam Indonesia, died from heart failure just hours after sending out a tweet that read “30 hours of working and still going strooong.” 

There isn’t an official cause of death yet, but her father suggests Diran’s collapse was from “working overtime for 3 days” and “working over the limit.”

The backstory: Diran’s death is part of a frightening trend among young people this year. In May, 24-year-old Li Yuan died from a heart attack after working until 11 p.m. every night for a month. And 21-year-old Moritz Erhardt, an intern at Bank of America Merill Lynch, was found dead of a seizure. He had worked three straight 21-hour days trying to impress his boss.

Why this matters: Simply, young people should not be dropping dead from overwork. Heart failure and stress-induced seizures aren’t something millennials should have to worry about when they’re beginning their careers. It’s indicative of a culture of overwork. Millennials are told to work their hardest if they want a good job – but sometimes there is such a thing as too much. No one is encouraging young people to work until they literally drop dead, obviously, but this is the work-hard mentality taken to the extreme.

“The more you spend time at the office, the more you consider moving your bed here,” Diran wrote earlier this autumn. It’s this idea that millennials have to give everything to their job if they want to get ahead. They have to live for work. And sometimes, they die for it.