WHAT I MEAN WHEN I TALK ABOUT THE LATEST GENERATION
GenX
I am a representative of what lay demographers refer to as GenerationX.1 That means I came of age in the eighties. I am now at an age where the cultural representations of my youth are framed in nostalgia. The streaming phenomenon Stranger Things, the extra-dimensional demons notwithstanding, epitomizes this starry-eyed nostalgia of a youth riding bikes all over creation, playing D&D, being the first generation to start playing with super-cool computer gizmos. We were the first generation influenced by home videogames with our awesome 32-bit graphics!
I guess coming up in the eighties was okay. As a sociologist I don’t look back on that time with nostalgia. I recognize that my experiences were those of the typical, white, suburban teen working at the supermarket, listening to Van Halen, navigating the temptations of easy access to drugs and alcohol in a world where sex was potentially deadly. In the meantime, many in my generation had very different experiences in the urban corridors and rural backroads.
My generation grew up while our parents were struggling with stagflation and gas rationing in the seventies. We came of age during the conservative resurgence and birth of neoliberalism concomitant with deindustrialization. Many of us witnessed our hard-working families devastated with the loss of once stable union jobs. We were latchkey kids, coming home from school to empty homes because both of our parents had to work to make ends meet. We saw our cities decay from white flight and businesses relocating to the shopping malls in the suburbs, leaving a Fourth World of poverty and desperation in red-lined neighborhoods behind them. Most crucially, we came up in a politics that told us in no uncertain terms that we were on our own. We could no longer afford the largesse of all those public goods that the Boomers enjoyed, because now the Boomers were entering their thirties…and they wanted their tax cuts.
Frankly, the real world kinda sucked for us. There were no great societal challenges to unify us like those faced by our grandparents of The Greatest Generation. The inspiring, youthful exuberance of our norm bending Boomer parents were contradicted by their embrace of Ronald Reagan and suburban ennui. Watergate and Iran Contra convinced us that those in charge were corrupt and incompetent. Meanwhile, we were well aware that at any moment one of those corrupt and incompetent imbeciles could push a button and blow us all to hell…and hiding under our classroom desks wouldn’t save us.2 Who among our generation does not remember the television movie, The Day After?
So, we did what any young people would do. We submersed ourselves in our fantasy worlds. Space Invaders and Asteroids, Dungeons and Dragons, MTV, smoking pot in the basement, backyard sheds or forts hidden away in what remained of the forests. Dr. Nassir Ghaemi describes us best, “Coming after the hippies, we rejected their rejection of the status quo, but we had lost our faith in it too. We were unmotivated, unmoored, and unconcerned.” Our heroes on television and the movies were those who rejected the sterile rules of society, who played by their own rules, rejected and even sneered at authority…but in the end found themselves doing the right thing for the right reasons. The rules we were expected to follow were illegitimate, not made for us. The authorities we were expected to follow showed no interest in us. So, we rejected them both.
As a consequence, the older generations, the so-called “Greatest” one and the Boomers, were gravely concerned about the future in our hands. We were lazy slackers, hopelessly self-absorbed, amoral tokers who would spend the rest of our lives living in our parents’ basement if they let us. Clearly, the future of the republic was in doubt if we were the inheritors.
And that’s what they thought about the “good” suburban white kids. Their assumptions about our black and brown co-generationists were much bleaker. We can see this in popular culture with movies about dystopian urban hellscapes like Escape from New York, Blade Runner, and others. Films like Dirty Harry and Death Wish literally featured middle aged white guys gunning down mostly GenX people of color. Politicians like Hillary Clinton labelled this cohort as “super predators” that need to be controlled by the state. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators: no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”3
There was something to this. From the point of view of the older generations, there was something wrong. For instance, as a generation, we were far more violent than GenZ. We were also much more likely to use drugs and participate in unsafe sex resulting in high rates of teen pregnancy.
The bottom line is, we were young, we were unsupervised, and the norms constraining us were questionable at best. It is understandable that many in the older generations might consider us difficult to work with. I remember working in that supermarket. I was a good worker as compared to my peers. But I wasn’t necessarily easy to work with. My friends and I were mischievous. We flouted the rules. We pulled pranks on other workers…and sometimes our bosses. I was ultimately fired from that supermarket job because I lied and covered for my girlfriend when she called in sick…so she could stay home with me and…um…violate some social norms.
This is why I take great satisfaction in pointing out the hypocrisy of my generation (and the Boomers) criticizing Millennials and GenZ for their lack of virtue and mental stamina. When I see this in real time my immediate response is, “Really? You realize that we were awful when we were their age, right?” GenX has no cause to criticize GenZ at all. And the Boomers really need to keep their mouths shut!
GenZ
Last year I was approached by a reporter for Gulfshore Business Magazine who interviewed me as a teacher and sociologist on the topic of GenZ and their challenges as they enter the workplace. The premise of the article was, “Three in 10 hiring managers said they avoid hiring Gen Z candidates, according to a January study from Resume Builder. Of those, 60% said it’s because those in the age bracket exhibit entitlement, and 26% said they are difficult to manage.”
To translate, according to this study, fewer than two [3(.6)=1.8] out of ten hiring managers say they avoid hiring GenZ candidates because they “exhibit entitlement” while fewer than one in ten claim they are difficult to manage [3(.26)=.78]. I wonder what this percentage would have looked like for GenX when we were entering the workforce. The article opens with an interview of Kia Parker, a GenZ college student studying biomedical engineering because, “I want to make a difference,” she says. “It’s just an innate part of me.”
The audacity!
The article then goes on to claim that there is “a growing concern for the newest generation of workers, with 74% of managers saying Gen Z is more difficult to work with than other generations…” The article then dedicates its time to interviewing a couple GenXers and older Millennials about why GenZ is so problematic. The only statements from a GenZ point of view was from Kia who said, “I don’t want to work. No one wants to work. I want to make money so I can do things I want to do…I shouldn’t have to work every day until I’m 60 and finally have time to do what I want to do.”
Um…to use the GenZ lingo…Based!
Of those interviewed, I tried to offer a more sympathetic explanation in defense of GenZ. My comments caught magazine editor David Dorsey’s attention. He approached me on doing a video segment for our local news channel, WINKNews. I was happy to oblige. I spent just under a half hour discussing the social challenges GenZ has faced and continues to face and how these challenges may have shaped their collective consciousness as they enter the workforce.4
The shortform nature of these media in presenting the story of GenZ as it relates to the workforce is problematic. For instance, out of the thirty minutes or so that I spoke with Mr. Dorsey, the editors only included fifty seconds worth of commentary. The same is true of the print story. This is nobody’s fault. These are news segments that need to fit within a certain word or time limit. Editors have to find the best way to say what they are trying to communicate in their pieces in the most efficient way possible. It’s very different from academic writing.
First, let’s dispel some preconceived notions about GenZ. There are three assumptions made about GenZ in the pieces cited above. First, GenZ is an especially problematic generation. Second, the problem with GenZ has to do with an especially acute sense of entitlement on the part of this cohort than was true of earlier generations, likely the result of being too “coddled.” Finally, the problems associated with GenZ are the result of the corrupting influence of social media.
I reject all of these theses, at least in part. Disparagement of the younger generation, what can be called Generational Tension, seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of human culture. Cultures either establish norms and traditions specifically to contend with generational drift, and/or they lament what they see as the lack of virtue or discipline or obedience that they perceive from the younger generations. Of course, in doing so, the older generations tend to ignore or understate their own youthful shortcomings. We can go back to Hesiod who lamented the dishonorable conduct of Iron Age youth toward their elders.5
All we have to do is take a look in the mirror and honestly assess our own youthful arrogance, lack of discipline, and impetuousness. We can go back and look at the things that the older generation was saying about us in our youth. We were slackers. Boomers were uncouth hippies and radicals. In 1928, a writer to the Chicago Tribune noted that the youth, those who would go on to be considered the Greatest Generation, “…is disrespectful and brazenly bold. They carry on their suggestive petting in the theaters and streetcars, yes, and even in the back pews of churches!”
Why do we attach so much antipathy to our youth? Part of it is because they are young. They do young things. Just as when we were young and did young things. The only thing that changes is the setting of the “petting”. On a buggy ride. In the theater. In the drive in. On Blueberry Hill. In the backseat of a ’79 Ford Granada. The other part of this may be, and this is an admittedly cynical hypothesis, that they are young…and we’re not anymore…and that just pisses us off!
That the young have some overdeveloped sense of entitlement is also problematic. On one hand, they’re young, emerging from childhood. Children are, in fact, entitled to care. As we all enter adulthood and have to let go of the entitlements of youth, all generations find themselves holding on to at least some vestiges of entitlement before finally letting go. But I would go so far as to suggest that GenZ actually feels less a sense of entitlement than we older generations expected as we were coming of age. This has to do with the individualistic social structures that have evolved over the last couple of generations that have left GenZ to struggle on their own, with fewer avenues for success than ever before. More on this in a moment.
Finally, it’s not the damn cell phones and social media. All major technological innovations incur cultural innovations that may be unnerving to the older set. In the 1920’s, it was the automobile, or “brothels on wheels.” Television has been a long-standing corrupter of the youth. In my youth, Atari and Nintendo were the source of our laziness as well as our criminal psychopathy…lazy criminal psychopaths? Now, we are scapegoating the cell phone for the presumed shortcomings of youth, as Jonathan Haidt has done with his book The Anxious Generation.
Haidt also adds the element of poor parenting to the discourse on our troubled GenZers. Of course, this is nothing new. Our parents were blamed for letting us come home to empty houses. We, as the parents of GenZ are being tsked for being overcontrolling helicopter parents.
And that’s not to say that there isn’t something to be said about these observations. There are correlations between cell phone use and anxiety disorders. It’s true that parenting has become more intensive. The problem is that little attention is given to the larger social forces pushing such behaviors. In a society in which two incomes are necessary for a median standard of living, you’ll have us latchkey kids learning how to be independent. In a society in which competition for opportunities is so limited and so expensive, you will find hyper-parenting…and, of course, fewer children because hyper-parenting is exhausting.
It is my experience that the lack of socialization among kids is exaggerated. Having worked in a high school for the last fifteen years, I can say that I never witnessed the kind of “zombie apocalypse” described in a New York Times review of The Anxious Generation in which kids are wandering the halls staring at screens, paying no attention to each other or their surroundings. Quite the opposite, in fact. High school hallways are just as rowdy as they’ve always been. GenZ, rather than being consumed by the technology, is among the first to start figuring out effective norms and values to guide human interaction in this new era. As with any such cultural change, such norms and values take time to develop.
Okay, so if it is not the cell phones, social media, helicopter parenting, and entitlement, why is there this perception that GenZ is problematic…at least in the workplace?
Well, this is a blog…so my hypothesis may require some testing. I cannot say that my answer is comprehensive. However, if we want to understand GenZ and their mindset as they enter the workforce, we have to look at their collective experiences and the lessons they MAY have derived from this convergence of history and biography.
According to sources on this topic, Generation Z was born in or around 1997. This means that GenZ was the first generation to experience the full weight of market-based reforms as they entered Kindergarten. I’ve written on this topic before, but I can’t overemphasize just how destructive I think this cultural innovation was to student development. GenZ entered school at just the time that schools stopped focusing on kids, and increasingly became “test-score” factories. The stress rolled downhill. The state put stress on school districts to raise their scores. The districts pushed administrators who would restructure their schools and get those scores up. Administrators twisted the screws on the teachers, especially those who taught core (meaning tested) classes. And those teachers depended on students to raise those scores to justify their jobs and any raises or bonuses they most get. Lost in the process was any attention to the holistic needs of children. GenZ students who were talented artists, for instance, lost their art classes when their language arts scores were too low, forced instead to take double blocks of the one topic that they were worst at.
And this was not lost on the students. They understood that their interests were secondary to raising their school’s grade. They understood that programs like AP, IB, and AICE were there not to create more opportunities to learn, but rather to attract the “right” students to the schools…the students who score well on standardized tests. The end results were some combination of young people overwhelmed with stress associated with success in market, rather than learning in a classroom, and those who just gave up knowing that their schools were not designed in their interests.
Furthermore, by the time GenZ started entering the workforce, they had already experienced the stressors of the market for ten to thirteen years. That they might be experiencing something akin to a midlife crisis at aged sixteen is predictable under these circumstances. They are already exhausted from being “in the market.”
As children coming into awareness of the world around them GenZ experienced nothing less than the complete collapse of global capitalism6. As children, they were vulnerable to the stressors their parents were going through as victims of the Great Recession. Many saw their parents lose jobs, lose homes. Many experienced homelessness. As the recession ebbed, GenZ children, like my own, witnessed their parents struggling to make ends meet. Often, at least one parent was rarely home, working multiple jobs to bring in extra income. They saw their parents working very hard…and getting nowhere. At the same time, they saw those who caused the recession being rewarded with bailouts and bonuses. They may not have understood the politics, but they saw the expression on their parents’ faces when the nightly news was on.
The first cohort of GenZ workers entered the labor market between 2012 to 2015. Some found themselves in the workforce as the economy began to grow. Often their supermarket or retail jobs helped to supplement their family incomes.
Others extended their educations with college or other accreditation programs. Many of this generation found themselves holding certificates that were worthless, having been scammed by “the market”. Others entered adulthood holding thousands of dollars in debt, without a degree. Even those who graduated with their four-year degree were buried in debt, often finding that the professional jobs they were looking for were already saturated with graduates. The first college graduates entered the workforce around 20197. By 2019, the were struggling for a foothold in the tempestuous economy. Often waiting tables or working a baristas with their degrees in a drawer. The lucky ones found their first, often low paying, entry level positions.
Then Covid hit a year into their careers. The Pandemic was rich with lessons on political economy for the young GenZ cohort. Many were told, “you know what? What you do all day really isn’t all that important. Go home and stay home until this thing is over.” Others, however, discovered that they were “essential workers” expected to risk their lives to keep goods and services deemed necessary flowing. Being essential, however, did not come with increased pay or benefits.
At this point in their lives, it was impossible to perpetuate the fantasy that their employers considered them “family” or even “fellow associates.” It was clear that they were nothing more than line-items on some spreadsheet on a boardroom presentation. Their employers did not care if they lived or died. Their little cell could be deleted at the push of a button. They were expendable…even if they were essential.
The final lesson they learned from the Pandemic was that the government could do a lot to help them. Even the do-nothing Republican Party was signing off on trillions of dollars in investments into the economy. The impossibly incompetent Trump government oversaw Operation Warp Speed that developed effective vaccines by the end of the year, a veritable scientific miracle8. At the height of the Covid Recession we actually reduced poverty.
And then, a year later, the government decided not to do anything anymore.9
Generation Z understands the stakes for their future. Global warming is impacting Climate Change, potentially reaching an insurmountable turning point in the next eight to twenty-five years. We could have started dealing with this fifty years ago…but we wanted the tax cuts instead. We could have subsidized tertiary education, just as it was for the Boomers, but we decided that Millennials and GenZ should foot the bill…while at the same time telling them that a college education was a necessity to compete in “the market.” We could have prepared them for the technological changes we knew were coming by encouraging and cultivating their natural creativity, innovation, and talent. We decided to focus on raising meaningless test scores instead.
Consequently, Generation Z is entering adult life with no delusions. And this is something that was neglected in the above cited evaluations of GenZ in the workplace. This latest generation knows that the game is rigged, and it is rigged against their best interests. They know that their employers couldn’t care less about them beyond their value-added potential. They will be dropped like a hot plate if their employer can find some other way of increasing revenue. And they understand that they are on their own. The government will not help them. Their parents are often not in a position to help them beyond letting them move back into their bedrooms until they can afford rent…which they don’t see happening anytime soon.
So, it’s true. GenZ has a much more jaded yet realistic understanding of “work ethic” than Boomers and we GenXers did. Kia Parker was right to say she shouldn’t have to work until she’s sixty before she can do what she wants to do. She understands that work is transactional, and her goal is to make money against the backdrop of an employer whose goal is to pay her as little as he can get away with. She’s right. And we are wrong if we criticize this mindset as “entitled.” Damn right she’s entitled to prioritize her life over her employment. Damn right she’s entitled to look after her mental health. After all, she’s on her own, and nobody is going to give a rat’s ass about her mental health if she doesn’t. So, she might just take a “mental health” day or two. Her employer will work her until she snaps…and then she’ll be responsible for the bill.
GenZ also knows that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done that GenX and the Boomers have completely neglected. They want to do this work. They want to make a difference. It’s an “intimate part” of who they are as a generation. Furthermore, having been bereft of meaningful interactions at school, at work, in college, on social media, they thirst for meaning in their lives. If they seek to make a lot of money, it’s not for money’s sake. They see money as a means of escape from the burdens of this sterile reality. In other words, they see money much like they see social media and their cell phone connections. The world that Boomers and GenX has built sucks. They want to work to make it better, and get the hell away from it in the meantime. This is not unreasonable.
GenZ started entering high school in 2011. That means, I have had the pleasure of working with this cohort of exceptional young people for thirteen years. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Just recently, I was interviewed by a young woman, Natasha, who is doing a school project on censorship. She read about my recent history and wanted to talk to me about my experiences and insights.
During the Pandemic, when she was in middle school, she started a charity program where she collected used books and delivered them to people and organizations in need. Most of my confiscated classroom library was donated to her organization. As a book lover, her concern for censorship is understandable. Her questions were well thought out and challenging. Indeed, it was the most comprehensive interview I’ve had since my “early retirement.”
When people ask me why, in the face of all the awful stuff that is happening in our society right now, I remain optimistic, I tell them it’s because I’ve spent my career teaching Millennials and GenZ. They are amazing young people with so much potential. They are innovative, creative, dedicated, socially conscious and empathetic. And they are these things not because of us, certainly not because of Boomers. Indeed, they will save the world and the rest of our sorry asses in spite of all the obstacles that we have put in their way. Just being around them gives me hope.
That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about GenZ.
- GenerationX: Right off the bat the problem is obvious. We had the Silent Generation, The Greatest Generation, The Boomer Generation. Then they got to us and couldn’t even bother with meaningful name. Meh! Just call ’em X. ↩︎
- Most of us never did the infamous Bomb Drills in school. By the eighties it was clear that that was an exercise in futility. GenZ in the meantime bears the scar tissue of very real active shooter drills. ↩︎
- Clinton did not specify that these “super predators” were kids of color…but they were kids of color. Opinion | ‘I’m Not a Super Predator’ – The New York Times (nytimes.com) ↩︎
- I did point out that it is dangerous to put too much emphasis on broad generalizations about a particular generation. The best we can do is take a look at the major socio-historical influences and how they may be related to general trends in the demographic. ↩︎
- Reinhold, M. (1970). The Generation Gap in Antiquity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 114(5), 347–365. http://www.jstor.org/stable/985800 ↩︎
- Ironically, market-based ideas didn’t work out so well for the actual…well…market. ↩︎
- This, of course, calls into question the notion that GenZ was “coddled because of Covid”. Covid did some damage, no doubt, but nothing insurmountable. ↩︎
- They then did everything they could to undermine that accomplishment, but that’s another post. ↩︎
- This is not an entirely fair comment. The Biden Administration has done a great deal more than folks like me expected. These accomplishments, however, are not well communicated to our younger voters, and they are often not of immediate impact to GenZ. Policies with immediate impact, like student debt cancellation, meanwhile are stalled. So, from the point of view of GenZ, the government can act…they just don’t want to…or are incapable of acting. Either way, GenZ is on its own. ↩︎
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