Opinion
For the past generation or so, Western society has been running a vast, largely unacknowledged social engineering experiment on its children. That it has been a grotesque failure is more and more inescapable. But no-one, least of all those most responsible, want to talk about that.
In fact, they’ve never wanted to talk about it, from the very beginning. Anyone raising their voice in question of such things as, for example, cradle-to-school childcare, was shouted down. It was almost as if everyone knew they were steering a generation off a cliff, but, in Emperor’s new clothes fashion, no one wanted to admit it. Worse, it was more as if the crowd had lynched the little boy pointing out the emperor’s nudity. Just ask cartoonist Michael Leunig.
Worse, we were told that it was all working out just fine. Children dragged from their mothers and placed into childcare as babies were happy and well-adjusted. The children of what were once honestly called “broken homes”, were doing splendidly. Children raised in something never before tried, en masse, in human history, the same-sex family, were, in fact, better than kids from traditional families. Take that, bigots! And new technology? The wonder devices of the ages!
Yet, for a generation supposedly swimming so well through childhood, there was an unusual preoccupation with therapy, counselling, and “resilience”. How’s that worked out, then?
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.
But, haven’t older generations complained about “the youth these days”, since time immemorial? As long ago as Plato, old men were yelling at clouds about those darn kids. Get off my acropolis, so to speak.
All this is true, but the flip side was that younger generations were cockily self-assured of their own superiority. That doesn’t seem to be true, any more.
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.
We’re also just not comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Raised in echo chambers and a cancel culture that silences alternative thinking, minimal exposure to healthy debate then erodes our ability to challenge consensus or respectfully disagree […]
Smartphones and incessant connectivity have fuelled a generational desire for instant gratification and a lack of perseverance. Using TikTok too often destroys someone’s attention span. This may seem trivial, but it has real-life consequences; peers shun live television due to adverts, or insist on finding ‘the one’ through countless swiping. Even corporate job applications have now been gamified.
Even as an elder who grew up on television and arcade games, I’m conscious of just how much modern technology has impacted my own concentration span. The constant, nagging impulse to glance at the phone cuts into times when I really need to concentrate. I can only imagine how deep the impulse is ingrained into Gen Zs.
The cumulative effect is a generation conditioned to avoid discomfort, unaccustomed to perseverance, and ultimately ill-prepared to adapt to life’s inevitable challenges. Throw in a constant anti-establishment rhetoric describing society as flawed and oppressive, alongside numerous social media platforms and 24/7 influencers further distorting our perception of the world and ourselves, and you can begin to understand some of the factors that have shaped our lives to date.
When I look at many of my peers, it’s plain to see that too many find it hard to adapt.
Perhaps the most unforgivable outcome of this social experiment is how it’s atomised society. Where I spent my 20s regularly socialising, where it was just a given that “the group” would meet up at this pub or that cafe on any Friday night, my own kids rarely socialise except through the medium of a screen. They are hardly alone.
As for dating — there is growing evidence that young men especially are simply opting out. Why even bother?
I sometimes hear people defend Gen Z as disruptive or innovative. Such claims are simply not true: the reality is far less romantic. Of course, my generation is not all the same, but on the whole we are gritless. We do lack determination. There is nothing to celebrate about loss of resilience or ambition.
The Spectator
These deleterious social effects are only likely to go nuclear, as the Covid generation grows up. Already, it’s obvious that children born during Covid are experiencing substantial learning difficulties. Anecdotally, family members talk of their children who never met anyone outside their family during the first year or so of their life: they’re notably fearful and shy.
There’s hope, perhaps. I also know of young people who’ve ditched most forms of social media, especially the execrable Facebook. They say they don’t miss it an iota.
Maybe, then, our kids will make a better play of the shitty hand we dealt them than we have any right to expect.