Am in the country this weekend for a dose of sun and spring (after what seems like months of rain). It’s bluebell season to boot, and the forest floor is blanketed with a rich spread of wild garlic blossoms dotted with blue. Lambs are dropping, lettuces are a-planting, and friends are starting to visit once more. Driving around Somerset’s picture-perfect green hills in our country car, a decades-old Mazda, I mused that my non-electric car driving muscles are rusty. I am forgetting how fun it is to zoom around a corner while shifting gears, or to break gracefully down a hill by gearing down.
My kids learned to drive stick shift, but their kids are unlikely to. Or own a car for that matter. An entire metaphor, of ‘gearing up’ to a challenge, will disappear gently - along with the clutch.
I’ve been doing some research on Gen Z for a course I’ll be teaching. The technology that your generation grows up with is a seminal part of who you are and how you like to communicate with other humans. Especially when there are big tech shifts that you are born into. So while our parents dated and mythically spent time kissing in their cars, our kids aren’t hurrying to get their driver’s licenses. Or kissing.
In fact, they spend a lot of time with their parents. And on their phones. But they don’t call anyone, they prefer to text. Gen Z, born around 1995 (the year the internet came alive) are the first generation of humans not just to be digital natives, but to be IPhoned. And connected to 8 billion people - at their fingertips.
Losing Our Minds?
The big debate raging (at least in academia) is whether it’s social media that is behind the rise in mental health issues faced by this generation. There’s a steep increase in reported mental health issues (and much steeper in girls) starting in 2012 - the year the IPhone was introduced. Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge are two major proponents of the social-media-as-cause summarised in Haidt’s latest newsletter. Haidt is writing a new book about it, after documenting the phenomenon in his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Jean Twenge isn’t much more optimistic. Her book is lengthily titled IGen: Why Today’s Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. That pretty well sums up her thesis and she scrupulously documents it with mountains of data, like these telling graphs (dozens of them):
She summarises this cohort, pretty negatively, as:
In No Hurry - extension of childhood into adolescence (17 is the new 14)
Internet - extensive time on phones
No In-Person - decline of in-person interactions (why your Gen Z won’t call you - or anyone)
Insecure - mental health issues (spiking from 2012)
Irreligious - decline in religion (least religious US generation to date)
Insulated - decline in civic involvement
Indefinite - new attitudes to sex/ friendships and kids
Inclusive - acceptance, equality
Independent - political reviews
A more optimistic vision of this generation comes from four women academics (from Oxford and Stanford) taking a cross-disciplinary look at our young in Gen Z, Explained - The Art of Living in a Digital Age. I interviewed one of them, Roberta Katz, on my 4-Quarter Lives podcast. Thei book offers a refreshingly nuanced – and optimistic – look at a group of people who have much to teach all of us about how to collaborate and thrive in the digital age. Since one of the authors is a linguist, they also created a 70-million-word collection of the language used by Gen Z that they call the “iGen Corpus.”
Their view?
“That as much as postmillenials have to learn, they also have much to teach. They are trying to humanize an intractable, inhuman world that seems to be headed for disaster. Their skills are complementary to predigital generations.”
It’s forever been that the older are concerned about the kids. What does a generation that was dying to get its drivers license → so it could get a car → so it could get away from its parents say to a generation that ain’t that interested in a license, can’t afford a car, and is happy to hang out with their family - and sit in the back seat texting their friends?
Technology is certainly a disruptor, and I’m ready to believe that the more you are addicted to your devices, the more ill-health you’ll suffer. A recent McKinsey study on Gen Z and Mental Health corroborated the link, especially for the young. But also noted the many positive reported impacts of technology - across all generations.
What seems promising is the pent up demand from people of all ages to work together. A report from CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) looks at what it would take to de-silo America’s age-compartmentalised cultures - and how welcome this would be.
Given today’s rich age diversity (see graph below), and its evolving balance of backgrounds and cultures, this could be hugely promising - and potentially conflictual. As of 2013, the majority of the US population won’t be white, so we’ll add on all kinds of complexities to working cross-generationally. For the moment, the majority of our kids want to work with us (about 76% of Gen Z). Depending on how we respond, this may or may not last.
There’s a paragraph hidden deep in the McKinsey study that seems to point to a pretty rational explanation why the kids are worried. They are coming of age just as the climate crisis is starting to roll its long hot shadow across the globe. They’ve been educated on environmental issues, usually since kindergarden. Is there any reason for them not to be scared shitless? As they watch new wars explode and authoritarianism rise, how is it possible not to be disappointed in the adults in the room who are fighting amongst themselves as the world burns? Hidden deep in the McKinsey report is this:
Climate change appears to be a major concern across generations: in the McKinsey Health Institute 2022 Global Gen Z Survey, more than half of respondents across all age groups reported feeling highly distressed when asked about climate change, with females reporting a higher percentage compared with males. Many Gen Z respondents reported experiencing stress, sadness, anger, and frustration due to climate change and its related disasters. More than 50 percent of total respondents expressed fear and anxiety about the future, with Gen Z demonstrating greater concern than other generations. More than 50 percent of all respondents agree or strongly agree that “government leaders and companies have failed to take care of the planet.”
We’re failing future generations.
“It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” writes long-time climate activist Bill McKibben, in his newsletter By The Numbers.
We’re now in uncharted territory, folks.
The clutch is gone. And the kids know it.
Informative, useful, but not surprising.
These comments are from an early baby boomer, married twice, no children, but who was coding/computer programming in the early 70's, and never expected to stay in one company very long. Worked in the technology part of the print business, and 20 years into consulting.
Throughout my life most things improved, although in hindsight as humans we have learnt little, and huge numbers of people do not do well in the world we have developed. If the adults cannot handle it, then it is hardly surprising those still growing and maturing have massive issues.
From experience I suggest that each generation has less resilience. Both my parents were in the RAF, and as many in that generation necessarily resilient. Boomers are less resilient than their parents, and financially more secure, and so it rolls.
As a boomer I know I am hugely privileged, although my parents divorced early and there was no money, no car or home ownership.
I am so so glad there were no cell/mobile phones available when I was growing. Social media corporates and governments do not know how or wish to control what is happening, and AI is just beginning to amplify the challenge.