An older friend once described his freshers’ week in some detail: a botched proposal, two inadvertently-acquired tattoos and more alcohol than he cared to remember. Mine was rather different: I was confined by the pandemic to a 3×4 metre room with solitary meals in an exam hall canteen. Corridors determined household bubbles (there were two of us) and ‘going out’ meant yet another riveting walk.
For many young people, substantial chunks of education or early working life were marred by similar experiences. With all these setbacks, you’d think we might have raised a generation of hyper-resilient go-getters, eagerly and adequately braced for the inevitable challenges of the real world. But many people don’t think that’s the case.
Steven Bartlett describes Generation Z – those, like myself, born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s – as ‘the least resilient’ cohort yet. The Economist frets in a recent article that, for Gen Z, ‘the popular view is that smartphones have made them miserable and they will live grimmer lives than their elders’.
My contemporaries and I are often branded delicate and half-hearted. We’re seen as easily offended, work shy and devoid of basic social skills. We’re WFH-obsessed quiet quitters who retreat behind email at the first opportunity. Constant job-hopping, absenteeism from work and school, and surging rates of mental health complaints have now become the norm.
Some might attribute this to cushy parenting or woke indoctrination. Alternatively, criticising the youth of the day is nothing new, and every age group has different aspirations and challenges. Is what we see today yet another round of the generation game, a classic case of kids-these-days critique?
Perhaps the painful truth about Gen Z is that there really is something amiss. When I look at many of my peers, it’s plain to see that too many find it hard to adapt. Prioritising standardised testing over problem-solving and critical thinking in schools leaves many of us ill-prepared for the real world. Our national obsession with university burdens too many of us with significant debt (£60,000, in my case) for degrees with minimal career relevance. This rigid system discourages risk or ‘unconventional’ pathways.
R&I – Obey
RandyMarsh
Article URL : https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-painful-truth-about-gen-z/