I'm a Millennial and in my late 30s. I distinctly remember the Bush years and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kids got blown up, families died, hundreds of thousands died overall and yet NO ONE on the left was screeching about genocide. Not a single leftist during that era ever uttered the word because people back then understood what shit meant and that words can't be interchanged and randomly tossed around just due to vibes. I genuinely loathe the vast majority of Gen Z for being dead set on being just flat out fucking WRONG and maliciously ignorant. It would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous to progress
Anon, while your frustration (and their dysfunction) is real and valid, please don't write off Gen Z or regard them as particularly broken or malicious.
Did you see the news a few moths ago about how Generation X has been disproportionately messed up by lead exposure?
Assuming that published lead-psychopathology associations are causal and not purely correlational: We estimate that by 2015, the US population had gained 602-million General Psychopathology factor points because of exposure arising from leaded gasoline, reflecting a 0.13-standard-deviation increase in overall liability to mental illness in the population and an estimated 151 million excess mental disorders attributable to lead exposure. Investigation of specific disorder-domain symptoms identified a 0.64-standard-deviation increase in population-level Internalizing symptoms and a 0.42-standard-deviation increase in AD/HD symptoms. Population-level Neuroticism increased by 0.14 standard deviations and Conscientiousness decreased by 0.20 standard deviations. Lead-associated mental health and personality differences were most pronounced for cohorts born from 1966 through 1986 (Generation X). [x]
Those of us in Gen X had our brains disproportionately poisoned by our environment. There's nothing we could have done to change what we were exposed to as children. The resulting uptick in difficulties we experience are not, scientists believe, the fault of Gen X.
Lead poisoning did this to us. It isn't a generational weakness, character flaw, or moral failing. We were poisoned and it damaged our brains.
So I find Gen Z sort of relatable - because they were also poisoned, and it isn't their fault, no matter how much those of us in elder generations act as though it is a generational character flaw in Gen Z.
Generations are different because their environments are different - so let's look at the media environments of Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
Gen X was the first generation to embrace the internet, but we grew up in a pre-digital world.
Stranger Things isn't exactly right, but it's the portrayal which most matches my memories and photos (photos taken on film using analog cameras).
Gen X remembers rotary phones mounted or tied to the wall with cords and incredibly expensive long-distance rates if you made a call outside your area code. We grew up with large, deep CRT televisions with curved screens which looked like pieces of furniture with bunny ear antennae and no remote control. The really fancy homes had projection TVs.
VHS came out while we were kids, and we kept our teenage music collections in large binders of CDs.
Cable TV was the peak of our childhood media technology and a lot of people had it at home, but most people watched the three broadcast networks, listened to the radio, and read magazines/newspapers.
Almost everyone at school watched the same TV shows and knew the same top 40 pop songs.
Facebook and Gmail came into existence when Gen X was in it's 20s. We were young enough to embrace the new internet technology of the Web more quickly than our elders.
We started the first big blogs and big online forums and we read long-form articles online from mainstream media and new online-only outfits like Salon.com (which didn't suck at the time). We invented (for better or worse) early social media. We stayed on Facebook a long time, even after our parents joined.
You millennials mostly experienced computers and the internet early in life.
You witnessed the transition from analog technology to digital as kids. You had landlines, but they were definitely cordless and push-button. You saw the new flat-screen TVs come out. Cable was more ubiquitous for you, and you experienced on-demand viewing, an explosion of cable channels, and the advent of the streaming age.
Your media was much more fragmented and personalized. Someone else at school might not have heard of the music you loved. Yours was the first US generation to broadly experience that sort of thing.
Millennials were the first generation which had easy access to global content, and experienced much more connectivity to the internet than prior generations.
Millennials were into Facebook and Instagram for longer than most admit. Y'all read blogs, and very well may have had one. You still liked to some read long-form articles, but also got interested in more short-form content. You recognized how much of what you saw online was bullshit and prioritized authenticity over almost all other virtues. You were about 20 when the first smart phones were released.
Gen Z, though? They're the REAL first digital natives
They were born into a media ecosystem where smartphones, high-speed Internet, and social media were a given, totally ubiquitous from early childhood. They had constant, integrated connectivity which research suggests has made Gen Z more accustomed to rapid, always-on interactions and instant content gratification.
Gen Z, as a result, favors fast, engaging, and interactive content. They were the early adopters of SnapChat and TikTok. Short-form videos, memes, and ephemeral, quickly-forgotten content were the norm. Understand: This isn't how you or I grew up, Anon.
They consume media much faster and adopted the Millennial devotion to authenticity while adding a new twist. For Gen Z, authenticity and real-time engagement are highly valued over polished, edited works. They want it not only real, short and fast, but personalized.
They're grown up with their dopamine reward systems being constantly manipulated.
The content targeting them is designed to capture attention in a matter of seconds. Gen Z's social media usage is not just about consumption, it's also deeply tied to creating and shaping digital identity - and this isn't just me ranting, the research supports this.
Gen Z's experience has been packed with immediacy and interactivity, and they have high expectations for both authenticity and rapid change. Authenticity and relatability are prized over expertise. Moral resonance is prized over research.
These things satisfy the quick gratification their media environment has hacked their brains to need.
I know that my own attention span has taken a hit in recent years, and I didn't grow up online or with a smartphone. Imagine what the same media environment did to developing minds which never experienced anything else.
It's not a character flaw in Gen Z.
It's something that was done to them by the environment in which they have been raised.
Gen X was poisoned by lead exposure.
Gen Z was poisoned by their media environment.
Don't hate, my friend. Its not their fault.
The reward systems of their brains have been hijacked and they need our understanding. We need to try to help them.
