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    Are You Stuck in the Mess Earlier Generations Created?

    Frequent Characteristics of GenZ

    • Born roughly between 1997 and 2012
    • First true digital natives
    • Experienced life virtually during the pandemic
    • Failed to learn basic reading, writing and mathematical skills
    • Failed to learn social skills required in the post-pandemic world
    • Currently entering adulthood without the structure and comradery of friends from HS or college
    • Inherited economic and political realities that echo some of the darkest periods in modern history.

    Education Interruptus

    The COVID-19 pandemic struck just as the oldest members of Gen Z were finishing college and the youngest were in elementary school. For millions, education shifted from the class room to screens. What was meant to be a temporary measure stretched into months, and years, of Zoom classes, asynchronous learning modules, and educational triage.

    The toll was measurable. Studies have documented learning loss across subjects, with particular impact on mathematics and reading comprehension. But the subtler costs—the loss of casual hallway conversations, collaborative projects, extracurricular activities, and the simple practice of existing in shared physical space—are harder to quantify yet no less real.

    For many Gen Zers, their high school or college experience exists primarily as a series of grid squares on a screen. Graduation ceremonies were held in living rooms. Proms were cancelled. The rituals that traditionally marked coming of age NEVER HAPPENED.

    Even before the pandemic, Gen Z was spending unprecedented amounts of time online. But lockdowns accelerated and normalized what had been a growing trend. Video games, social media, streaming content, and virtual communities became not just entertainment but lifelines—the primary means of social connection when physical connection became impossible or heavily constrained.

    Forced to Live in a Virtual World

    Platforms like Discord, Roblox, Fortnite, and Among Us weren’t just games; they became social spaces where friendships formed and were maintained. For many Gen Zers, their closest confidants might be people they’ve never met in person, scattered across time zones, connected only by shared servers and voice chat.

    This isn’t inherently negative. These virtual spaces provided genuine community and support during isolation. But they also created a generation with a different relationship to socialization—one mediated through screens, where body language is absent, where you can mute or log off when interactions become difficult, where the friction and awkwardness of face-to-face connection can be avoided.

    The Social Skills Gap

    Due to the necessity of living in the virtual world, many Gen Zers never developed the social skills needed to live a fulfilling and productive adulthood. They often feel discomfort with traditional social and professional interactions. While phone conversations provoke anxiety, in-person meetings can feel overwhelming. The unstructured social navigation of office life—small talk, reading a room, handling conflict—can feel like operating without a manual.

    This Isn’t A Moral Failing

    It’s a predictable outcome of formative years spent in digital spaces that operate by different rules. Previous generations learned these skills through countless hours of trial and error in physical proximity. Gen Z had fewer of those hours, and for some, the critical period for developing certain social competencies was simply missed

    Result

    The result is a generation that can be simultaneously hyper-connected and deeply lonely, fluent in online community norms but uncertain in face-to-face environments. They can organize activism through social media but struggle with the office politics that might advance their careers.

    Education for a World That No Longer Exists

    Beyond the pandemic disruption, many Gen Zers are discovering that their education—whether completed virtually or in person—didn’t adequately prepare them for the current job market. The promise was straightforward: get good grades, earn a degree, secure stable employment. With the But that pathway has become considerably more complicated.

    The job market now demands not just credentials but extensive experience, often before entry-level positions. Internships, once a way to gain experience, are frequently unpaid or intensely competitive. Meanwhile, the cost of education has continued to rise even as the perceived value of a degree—at least a bachelor’s degree alone—has declined in some sectors.

    Gen Z is entering a workforce that prizes adaptability, cross-functional skills, and what’s often called “emotional intelligence”—precisely the areas where pandemic-era education fell short. Technical skills can be taught; the soft skills of collaboration, negotiation, and professional presence are harder to remediate later.

    An Age of Uncertainty

    Perhaps no generation has come of age with less certainty about the future. Climate change presents an existential question mark over long-term planning. Economic stability seems elusive as wealth inequality widens and traditional markers of adult life—homeownership, financial independence, starting a family—drift further out of reach.

    The information environment itself feels unstable. Gen Z has grown up watching truth become tribal, seeing how easily misinformation spreads, and witnessing institutional failures in real-time through their phones. They’ve seen political polarization intensify, watched social media amplify extremism of all kinds, and learned to be suspicious of virtually every source of authority—sometimes wisely, sometimes to their detriment.

    The Trump era and MAGA movement in particular created a political and informational landscape that many Gen Zers find disorienting. They’ve watched family members embrace conspiracy theories, seen political rhetoric become increasingly divorced from verifiable reality, and struggled to maintain relationships across widening ideological chasms. The experience has left many deeply cynical about democratic processes and institutions.

    This isn’t to say all Gen Zers share one political viewpoint—they don’t. But even those who align with various political movements often express a fundamental skepticism about the systems they’re inheriting.

    The Economic Reality

    Here’s the hardest truth: Gen Z is entering one of the most challenging job markets for young people in nearly a century. While overall unemployment numbers may not tell the full story, youth unemployment and underemployment—working jobs that don’t require your level of education or provide adequate income—are at levels that haven’t been seen since the Great Depression.

    The pandemic economic disruption hit entry-level positions particularly hard. Many companies hired freezes for junior roles while retaining more experienced workers. Remote work, while offering flexibility, also increased competition for positions as geographic limitations dissolved. And automation and AI are now threatening to eliminate or transform many entry-level positions that traditionally served as gateways to careers.

    Gen Z is also carrying substantial student debt (for those who went to college), facing a housing market where prices have far outpaced wage growth, and trying to establish themselves during a period of high inflation that has eroded purchasing power. Many are living with parents longer not out of immaturity or failure to launch, but out of economic necessity.

    The comparison to the Great Depression era is sobering. That generation—sometimes called the “Silent Generation”—was marked by caution, pragmatism, and a deep wariness of risk-taking. We may be seeing similar patterns emerge: Gen Z reports higher rates of financial anxiety, is more risk-averse in career choices, and is delaying major life decisions at higher rates than previous generations.

    What This Generation Brings

    Yet to focus only on challenges would be to miss important strengths. Gen Z is also:

    • More diverse and inclusive in outlook than any previous generation, with a baseline comfort with differences in race, sexuality, and identity that represents genuine social progress
    • Digitally fluent in ways that position them well for future work, even if current economic conditions are difficult
    • Pragmatic and entrepreneurial, with many creating their own opportunities through side hustles, content creation, and alternative career paths
    • Socially conscious, with clear-eyed awareness of systemic problems even if solutions seem distant
    • Adaptable, having already navigated more disruption by age 25 than many people face in a lifetime

    Moving Forward

    The question isn’t whether Gen Z will be okay—resilience is a human constant. The question is what kind of support and systemic changes would help them thrive rather than merely survive.

    This might mean:

    • Rethinking education to better integrate social-emotional learning and practical workforce preparation
    • Creating more accessible entry points to careers that don’t require unpaid labor or extensive prior experience
    • Addressing the housing and economic policies that make basic financial security increasingly unattainable for young people
    • Building mental health support systems that recognize the particular pressures of growing up digital
    • Fostering intergenerational understanding rather than the mutual resentment that often characterizes discussions of generational differences

    Generation Z didn’t choose the circumstances of their coming of age. They didn’t create the economic systems they’re inheriting, the political polarization they’re navigating, or the educational disruptions they endured. They are, like all generations, doing their best with what they’ve been given.

    The real test isn’t of Generation Z—it’s of our society’s willingness to create conditions where the next generation can actually flourish rather than simply struggle through. Their challenges are, ultimately, a mirror reflecting our own collective failures and, perhaps, an opportunity to do better.