"Is Gen Z depressed because the world is a harsh place? Or do they think the world is a harsh place because they are depressed? By definition, depression involves perceiving the world around you in a more negative light.
Even before COVID, teens were more likely to agree that “When I think about all the terrible things that have been happening, it is hard for me to hold out much hope for the world” and “I often wonder if there is any real purpose to my life in light of the world situation” than at any time in the past five decades. Gen Z is pessimistic about the state of the world and isn’t afraid to say so (see Figure 6.52).
The changes show the power of perception, not events. Sometimes teens’ pessimism spiked in response to national events (like the LA riots in 1992 and the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009), but other big events did not lead to pessimism: The first survey after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in spring 2002, actually saw an all-time low in pessimism among teens. Plus, if the economic woes were the main cause, pessimism should have gone down after 2012, when the economy improved. Instead it continued to go up.
Gen Z is also less optimistic about their personal prospects. After rising sharply between Boomers and Gen X’ers and staying high among Millennials, teens’ expectations for their future educations, jobs, and material prospects suddenly declined as Gen Z began answering the questions (see Figure 6.53). Fewer Gen Z’ers expect to work in professional jobs, fewer expect to get a graduate or professional degree, and fewer expect to own more than their parents—even though median incomes rose during this period. Gen Z is more uncertain about their future than Millennials were. “Gen Z is distinctly nihilistic,” one young adult wrote on Reddit. “I feel like it’s the reason why so many of us struggle with mental health issues. 99% of people who are like, ‘LMAO, life is pointless, but don’t worry, I’m fine’ are NOT fine.” When Hunter Kaimi made a TikTok video trying to explain Gen Z’s economic situation to older generations in 2022, he said, “You had the privilege of growing up in a world where there was hope and opportunity—and we don’t.” The outsize optimism of the Millennial young adulthood is gone, with Gen Z’s increasing self-doubt overwhelming the usual push of individualism toward self- confidence
Negativity among the young is also not good news for politics and society. For a democracy to survive, its citizens need to believe that the system is fair and that the country functions reasonably well—these are positive and optimistic beliefs. It also helps to have an inspiring origin story about how the country was founded.
Among young people, all three of those beliefs are in peril. First, young adults are less likely to believe that “America is a fair society where everyone can get ahead.” Six out of 10 Gen Z’ers disagreed with this statement, thus arguing that the society is unfair. Perhaps as a result, 3 out of 4 Gen Z’ers think we should, in effect, tear it all down and start over, saying “significant changes” to the government’s “fundamental design and structure” are necessary (see Figure 6.54). The old way of doing things, they feel, doesn’t work anymore.
Most stunning is this: 4 out of 10 Gen Z’ers believe that the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “as heroes.” Somewhere along the line, a significant portion of young adults developed the idea that America’s founders were more evil than good. Fewer than 1 in 10 Silents or Boomers—four to eight times fewer—agree, creating a substantial generation gap.
This result also argues against the idea that Gen Z is pessimistic because things really are worse: They are negative not just about the current world but about a time 250 years in the past. Their disapproval of their country is so well entrenched that 4 out of 10 think that the founders of the U.S. were the bad guys in the story instead of the good guys.
n a July 2021 poll, only 36% of 18- to 24-year-olds (all Gen Z) said they were “very” or “extremely” proud to be an American. In contrast, 86% of those 65 or older (Boomers and Silents) said they were proud to be American. John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, spoke to hundreds of young people for his 2022 book, Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America. When asked to describe the U.S., he found, young Millennials in the mid-2010s used words like “diverse,” “free,” and “land of abundance.” A few years later, Gen Z’ers instead said “dystopic,” “broken,” and “a bloody mess.” When he asked Gen Z’ers about moments that made them proud to be Americans, “I got blank stares, or examples of random sporting events like the USA soccer team finally beating Ghana in a 2017 friendly match,” he writes.
Young people have also become more negative about capitalism. While younger adults once had a more positive view of capitalism than older adults, that flipped after 2012 as Gen Z started to age into adulthood. By 2021, only a bare majority of U.S. young adults saw capitalism in a positive light, compared to nearly 2 out of 3 older adults (see Figure 6.55)
One young Gen Z voter told Della Volpe that their definition of capitalism was “Children grow up to work until they’re mentally unstable and call it normal.” Another, a 16-year-old in Ohio, said, “Our school system is based on being successful in a capitalistic society. It’s not about being happy, it’s about working for the big guys and helping them make money and then you can spend your money on their products.
Gen Z has a point that the U.S. government and free market capitalism are far from perfect. But these are not new problems. Income inequality, for example, rose the most between 1980 and 2000, not from 2000 to 2020.
So why did pessimism increase? Technology may have something to do with it. Social media and the internet became the default source for news. Negative stories get clicks; positive stories not so much. In addition, online discussions become aggressive and negative more quickly because people are not looking each other in the eye. It’s much easier to be insulting and impatient with someone you can’t see.
Twitter is a prime example: If it’s negative, everyone has a lot to say; if it’s positive, there are often crickets. The site is sometimes a giant complaint machine. TikTok, Gen Z’s social media of choice, seems more positive with its cool dances, but it often features dark humor. In one video, a young man sings a catchy tune about how everyone needs to do their part to help the environment —but it soon becomes clear he’s being sarcastic (“Don’t dump 2.4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico!”). Like many TikToks, it ends abruptly (with the exclamation “Metal straws!”). The message: Sure, we can all talk about what to do to help the environment, but it’s big companies that are destroying it, so what’s the point?
The increases in depression among teens and young adults may also help explain their negative outlook. Depression is not just about emotion; it’s about thinking. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most popular and effective therapy for depression, observes that depression often involves cognitive distortions. Several of those distortions are relevant for how people view society. These include negative filtering (focusing almost exclusively on the negatives and rarely noticing the positives, such as “Look at all of the bad things happening in the world”) and discounting positives (thinking that the positives are unimportant, such as “Freedom doesn’t mean much if the system is so unfair”). It’s not just that more young people are suffering from depression—which is already very concerning—but also that more view society negatively, and then want to work to change it. That instinct can lead to positive change, but can also lead to trying to x things that aren’t broken. When you’re depressed, more of the world looks broken.
Another cognitive distortion characteristic of depression is dichotomous thinking, or viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. In everyday life that might be a thought such as “Everyone is so rude.” In considering the society, dichotomous thinking might lead to thoughts such as “This country is no good.” In other words, because a few things don’t work well, it might be better to change everything—a thought very similar to how the majority of Gen Z says significant changes are needed in the structure of American government. Viewing people in all-or-nothing terms (“You’re either for us or against us,” or thinking someone who makes one mistake is evil) also has consequences, including cancel culture and political polarization—two other features of Gen Z’s world.
Going forward, this will be the biggest challenge in the U.S. and potentially around the world: How can leaders convince young people that their country is a good place to live? If they can’t, young people might want to junk everything and start over. There’s a name for that: a revolution."
--- Generations The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future / Jean M. Twenge
Together with other traits she identifies Gen Z as having (e.g. Liberal Unhappiness and Depression, Political Activism, Political Polarization, Perceiving Discrimination and Having an External Locus of
Control), this explains modern liberalism
