An earth-shattering YouGov/Public First survey of Gen Z’ers, (13-28 years old)demonstrated a generation almost unrecognisable to anyone older, especially Gen X and boomers (now 45-70 years old).
A generation that on the surface have everything boomers only imagined in sci-fi films; endlessly connectivity, digital ID’s, phones that fit in their back pocket, knowledge at the press of a button, choice beyond their wildest dreams… and yet, so disillusioned are they that only 41 per cent them are proud to be British and almost half (48 per cent) think Britain is a racist country. Unsurprisingly to me, only 11 per cent would fight for Britain.
Couple these attitudes with women rejecting motherhood in favour of a dog and a plummeting birth rate, kids convinced that they are born in the wrong body, teenagers never being more anxious and lonely with the medicalisation of behaviour seeing skyrocketing mental health diagnosis. I have never forgotten the Cambridge University survey where 51.3 per cent of students said that they were not heterosexual…. You know, the sexuality that reproduces the next generation.
As adults, they are loath to work with 14.5 per cent of 16-24 year olds not in work or education, and when they do work, they want to do it from their sofa away from people, continuing their isolation. They don’t answer phone calls and can’t hear or debate any view outside of theirs.
What on earth has gone wrong because wrong it certainly is. This is where I think it’s time to take a long hard look, not at what the Gen Z’ers are, but what we have made them.
By we, I mean parents, teachers, politicians, social media (and the access we have permitted). There has been a slow but meaningful march to ‘liberal’ parenting and the development of children with their feelings paramount and directing everything that happens around them. The result is a generation who have been taught that their feelings are the most important in the room, that their truth is the truth, and that anyone who questions their feelings or truth is inherently offensive and must not be heard. I have seen it in GP when a parent with a sick toddler spends eight of the 10 minutes consult negotiating with little Jonny to let me stick a thermometer in their ear or stethoscope on their chest. Well, I’m sorry, mummy of Jonny, this is just one of a multitude of events in Jonny’s young life over which he really should have no say. Just wrap him tightly in your arms and let me do my work, for his own good. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a two with a head injury, and mum said: “He just won’t wear a helmet to ride his bike. He is two for crying out loud; no helmet, no bike. It isn’t hard. So why is it so hard?”
It's time parents and society took a hard look at themselves, writes TV doctor Renee Hoenderkamp
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This damaging abrogation of parental duty; to rule authoratively, which builds strong adults (not as an authoritarian and there is a difference) has destroyed a generation and will destroy more because these Gen Z’ers, unless they wake up to the damage done to them, will damage the next as they raise them.
But it hasn’t just been at home where the damage has been done, discipline in the classroom has been eroded so that in many schools, teachers are trying to get to the end of the day without incident. They have no authority and are scared. This, in part, has been perpetuated by liberal parents turning up at the school to defend Jonny and reverse his detention and often using aggressive tantrums to achieve their aim. Just this week, a head teacher has sued a set of parents for bullying him and staff. When I was at school, and trust me, there was much wrong with my East London comp, my mum didn’t want to know how offended I was by a punishment, she stood square with teaching staff and would mete out her own punishment to back it up. School was for learning, teachers were to be respected. End. But teaching has not slipped into the mire purely under parental pressure.
The marxification of education has played a major role, and the end of rote learning, desks all facing forwards to the teacher teaching at the front of the class, has seen standards and behaviour crawl to the gutter. Ironically, countries like Singapore, who still use our much harder GCE exams and teaching methods and who have not followed us down this liberal road, get amazing results and behaviour. But poor Jonny would apparently be traumatised by this teaching standard, and so it ends up where we are: dumbed down education, selfish, demanding and fragile young people who leave school fit for very little and with ambition to match.
And of course, there is social media that has grown a generation who have never had more connections and yet never been lonelier. The data is clear, and screen time and social media are inversely related to anxiousness and behaviour deterioration. D
o we really believe that 25-48 per cent of school children have a ‘neuro-diverse’ medical diagnosis? Or do we believe the evidence that says feeding toddlers with dopamine driving cartoons before they can speak is changing their little brains into mushy messes that can only deal with information in 10-second bundles? How can we teach them when they can’t compute? And sadly, this is back to parenting. I can forgive those who allowed the screens and the social media before the data started to emerge, but now, there is no excuse, but for generation Z, it’s too late, and parents enabled it.
Of course, there has been another contributory factor; the bank of mum and Dad. Gen Z detest the fact that mum and dad were able to buy their own house through their hard work and yet are happy to let that hard work fund their life while they shirk adult responsibility. When you have risen at 5 am, age 12 to open the East Ham Station bookstall and serve commuters their daily paper before heading off to school, you appreciate the value of that £5 in your pocket. But we haven’t let kids do that for decades now, it damages their learning. It didn’t damage mine. When Jonny leaves school, instead of Mum and Dad financing him to cogitate in his filthy bedroom playing computer games or surfing Snapchat, they should charge him rent. In not doing so, they are again perpetuating the entitlement that has destroyed society.
And the result: Gen Z who don’t want a relationship, many feeling disconnected from their actual sex and the responsibility that comes with it, don’t want a job, don’t socialise in person or drink alcohol and are totally disconnected from the society into which they were born. So disconnected that they wouldn’t fight if needed. Imagine if the pre-war generations had felt the same; one wonders if Gen Z would have evolved as they have. If their gilded cage that they so despise would have instead have seemed a very different place. One where they may have yearned for everything that the boomers were and that they seem to detest. Boomers loved life, accepted rules and discipline and respected authority, people and their responsibility in society. Boomers accepted that work may be tedious, but one did it as a responsibility to society and that society functioned by asking what you could give, not take from it. In my humble opinion, today’s world is much worse for it.
