A large cohort reaches adulthood. Around 2 billion people were born worldwide between 1997 and 2012: they are “generation Z”. In the United States and Great Britain, that group makes up a fifth of the population and rivals the proportion of baby-boomers; In India and Nigeria, young people far outnumber older people. For each generation there is a simplistic narrative: that boomers were shaped by postwar abundance, for example, or millennials by the 2007-2009 financial crisis. For Generation Z, the popular opinion is that smartphones have made them miserable and that they will have more miserable lives than their elders.
More and more people in the West respond in surveys that today’s children will live worse than their parents. Young people themselves worry about everything, from the difficulty of buying a home to the dangers looming due to climate change. Social scientists fear that members of Generation Z, having spent their formative years scrolling through endless scrolling and suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out), are now gripped by an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Politicians in the United States and Great Britain are considering banning cell phones and restricting social networks to those under 16 years of age; Parents and teachers everywhere are trying to police screen time.
All of that may make it difficult to feel optimistic about Gen Z. However, when you look at the world and a broader set of factors, Zoomers are far from doomed. In many ways, they are doing quite well.
To begin with, the general narrative makes one important omission: the approximately four-fifths of young people aged 12 to 27 who live in emerging economies. Thanks to the growth and spread of technology, young people in places like Jakarta, Bombay or Nairobi live much better than their parents. They are richer, healthier and better educated; Those who have a mobile phone are better informed and connected. Not surprisingly, in a 2021 United Nations survey, young people in emerging economies were more optimistic than those in the rich world.
However, in some places there are fears that the rapid progress of recent decades will not be repeated. That anxiety is manifest in China. Due to economic uncertainty and the emphasis on quantity over quality in higher education, more than a third of graduates in that country could be unemployed.
In the rich world, the outlook is more encouraging than one might think. Members of Generation Z who have jobs (and in the United States today there are almost as many as there are boomers) are doing well. The strong demand for workers helps, as does the fact that members of Generation Z have the sense to develop marketable skills. More and more people are pursuing careers in science, engineering and medicine; the humanities have lost acceptance.
Generation Z wages are rising at a much faster rate than older workers, and across the rich world the youth unemployment rate is at its lowest level in decades. In the United States, the income of the average Zoomer, taking into account taxes and benefits, comfortably exceeds in real terms that of a millennial or a member of generation X at the same age. It’s true that housing affordability has worsened since the 1980s. However, thanks to higher Z wage growth, house prices as a multiple of income are roughly where they were for millennials a decade ago. decade. And today’s young people are able to dedicate a greater part of their salary to savings. Members of Generation Z are already transforming the world of work. They have bargaining power, and they know it.
Many millennials came of age in the shadow of the global financial crisis; They felt so precarious that they were afraid to ask for raises. Generation Z seems to have fewer qualms about quitting a job in search of a better opportunity, or about taking things easy and enjoying life. The employers, unaccustomed to seeing answers, complain. However, older workers will be quietly grateful if pay and benefits rise across the board.
Generation Z will also shape society in other ways. As young people reach voting age, their concern about climate change will make states more likely to act. More generally, zoomers respond in surveys that they want greater participation from the State. Maybe they’ll change their mind when they have to pay more taxes… or maybe they won’t.
They are a formal group, less given than their predecessors to late nights, drunkenness and promiscuity. That has its dark side. They socialize less in person, have less sex, and are more likely to say they feel lonely. Reported rates of anxiety and depression are increasing in much of the West. That may partially reflect a greater willingness to talk openly about mental health. Although other factors also influence.
Debate is heated about the extent to which social media fuels mental distress among young people. In the West, the rise in anxiety coincides with the adoption of social media. However, clear evidence of causality is scarce, and most comes from studies of adults in the rich world.
What is clear is that Generation Z has been at the forefront of a technological revolution. The speed with which mobile phones and then social media applications were adopted around the world has left other users baffled, and young people in particular, who have had to work harder than them to figure out the best way to navigate these new environments. Social networks have brought benefits, such as entertainment and connectivity, but also costs. Some content can be harmful, and time spent scrolling could have been spent studying or sleeping.
Transformative technologies often have drawbacks. In the past, people have adapted: think about seat belts and the rules that have made cars less deadly. There are encouraging signs of a shift in social media habits as users weigh costs and benefits. Instead of posting about themselves publicly, for example, many are retreating to private groups on messaging apps. So far, there is no evidence to justify a blanket cellphone ban for young people, although schools should be free to ban them in classrooms, and parents are right to restrict screen time.
Nothing is more natural than the elderly to worry about the young. If that leads to better mental health treatment, or fewer restrictions on building more housing, great. Anyway, let’s also celebrate the capabilities of Generation Z and their successes.
© 2024 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
