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.
It is little wonder why. As a 26-year-old, I’m on the older edge of the Gen Z cohort, having experienced what happens when you’re on the other side of education. The job market is full of insecure, low-paid work, enabled by decades of union-busting. Flying the nest and moving out of your parents’ home is a pipe dream for many, given the exorbitant cost of rent and house prices – and with interest rates set to rise. In 1997, when I was less than one year old, the average house price where I live was 5.2 times average annual earnings; now the corresponding figure is 14.7.
What makes this all the more anguish-inducing is the fact that avenues for change are limited. Addressing our concerns is seen as parliamentary kryptonite by both major political parties. Labour is terrified of repeating anything resembling the modestly transformative policies of its previous leader, because it is worried about how older voters might react. Younger MPs in the party, such as Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome, are marginalised like naughty schoolchildren for daring to speak on issues that many people their own age care about, agree with or are affected by.
Older generations have held us electorally captive in every vote in our lifetimes. A survey by YouGov found that in the 2017 general election, a majority of voters under 47 years old voted for Labour, with support particularly high among the very youngest. This “tipping point” age was 39 in the 2019 general election. A similar age pattern was found in the Brexit vote, with a majority of under 50s voting to remain. We know who prevailed in each of these contests – not us.
But what about the idea that Gen Z is “illiberal”? The Channel 4 study also found that almost half of 13- to 24-year-olds surveyed thought “some people deserve to be cancelled”, compared with one-third of over-25s. A quarter have “very little tolerance for people with beliefs [they] disagree with”.
My first reaction to this is to point out that it is the ruling Conservative party, which I don’t believe has been captured by a secret Gen-Z cabal, that has introduced the most illiberal legislation of recent times; the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, along with the upcoming public order bill, more or less criminalises effective protest in Britain. No generation has a monopoly on illiberalism, but if every call-in show or TV debate about “cancel culture” spent more time focusing on actual government legislation such as this, perhaps the stereotypes attached to my generation might have less traction.
But I don’t want to dodge the issue either. While views among Gen Z are nuanced on this issue, and many believe that cancellations go too far, I think there is some truth to the notion that we have less patience in the realm of debate. It might be that the way social media structures our social lives – where people can be “blocked” – has bled out into real-world attitudes. We’re also more used to following self-authored content, which can provide a front-row, empathic insight into the lives of others, rather than the Punch-and-Judy debates you might associate with TV.
But, more importantly, we are a generation that is very diverse and less likely to inhabit a social world that is straightforwardly Christian or straight or cis-gendered. Being intolerant of intolerance is, for many of us, not a performative game of woke point-scoring, but is a matter of respect for ourselves and those around us.
The demands of Gen Z are pretty fair and simple. We want a world where we and those around us are treated with respect and without prejudice, and to live in a future where we could maybe put a deposit down on a studio flat before the floodwater is lapping at the door. Is that too much to ask?
Sammy Gecsoyler is a 2021/22 recipient of the Scott Trust bursary
