Pampered, illiberal, woke snowflakes: the slurs that are made against Gen Z are so well-worn, so boring, yet they just don’t seem to go away. Despite what some of our elders seem to think, the reality is that our lives are pretty bleak. We are poorer than generations before us, deal with high levels of depression, and face the very real prospect of living through runaway climate breakdown for the rest of our adult lives. Instead of this being seen as an indictment of a society that has betrayed young people, it is instead used to berate us as “fragile” or “entitled”.
New research by Channel 4, which looked at more than 1,500 13- to 24-year-olds, sheds some fresh light on a debate that seems to go round in circles. It found that the cost of living, a lack of affordable housing and uncertainty about the future were Gen Z’s top three concerns. Contrary to the belief that we spend all our free time doxing C-list celebrities who don’t acknowledge their white, cis, hetero privilege, it turns out our priorities are fundamentally material.
