Gen Z deserves better
We say it all the time: The world is a vastly different place now than it was just 20 years ago, let alone when Boomers and Gen Xers were in their 20s themselves. But when it comes to recognizing how those changes have affected the people who are now entering the workforce, forming long-term relationships and trying to build a secure future, we’re still looking to the past rather than considering the unprecedented pressures facing Generation Z.
It started early. Members of Gen Z are defined as being born between about 1997 and 2011, when we had to invent new names to describe their parents’ tendency to overprotect them and remove the obstacles that lead to personal growth: snowplow or helicopter parents creating bubble-wrapped kids.
Far too often, Gen Z wasn’t allowed to learn from failure or figure out how to assess risk and develop coping skills. Too many parents told these kids they should blaze their own trail and be confident in their uniqueness, only to learn in postsecondary studies or from a boss in the workplace that they weren’t more special than their colleagues and had to pull their weight.
They are the first generation to not remember a world before smartphones and social media. They were handed iPads to keep them quiet and given video games and phones in their rooms, only to face scorn for their devotion to their devices and supposedly substandard social skills.
Many members of Gen Z started their work lives during the pandemic and the subsequent upheaval to long-standing norms. Their professional growth is hampered as their older colleagues insist on working from home, depriving them of mentorship and the chance to learn by observation and strengthen their work relationships.
They and their younger demographic compatriots missed out on regular high school and postsecondary experiences from proms and frosh events to the joys of in-person lectures and conversations.
Gen Z workers face threats to employment not seen in a generation — the coming slashing of the federal public service — or never seen before — employers’ embrace of the temporary foreign worker program rather than paying young people higher wages. And then there’s the complete unknown of artificial intelligence, the impact of which is sure to be visited most heavily on entry-level workers.
Looming over it all is the spike in the cost of living, and especially in rents and house prices. Yes, the latter are mitigating a little, but ask any young person whether life feels more affordable.
Despite it all, Gen Z is the most diverse, socially conscious, digitally literate generation Canada has ever seen. We owe it to them to build policies and social supports at all levels of government that take their unique needs and challenges into consideration.
Living successfully and happily requires adaptability. We all must adapt to change and to keep doing so until we die. That has always been the case. Maintain balance and keep moving forward.
Imagine the huge trauma farm boys from our community experienced when they went to war in 1914. Or the quandary in which young women found themselves during the sixties sexual revolution when the the pill suddenly provided a moral imperative for young women raised on modesty and chastity to be promiscuous. And let’s not forget the impact 9/11 had on twenty year olds in the workplace. Who do you trust? Muldar says the truth is out there but God only knows what it is.
So what are the special needs of Gen Z? Working in real, imagined and partial isolation due to the pandemic, being raised on screens, and AI? Okay, so Gen Z needs to redefine work and what it means. What is the purpose to which Gen Z can put its efforts, its energies?
Life has never promised young people they will own a house in their twenties, if ever. That hasn’t changed. There is no guarantee you won’t end up in a prison or on a ventilator either. Everyone is familiar with the game of chutes and ladders. Well, that is what life is. Every venture, even the act of breathing in and breathing out, involves risk. We throw the dice and gamble like crazy on hard work and good intention, then see where we land when we’re done.
No Gen z should feel victimized by life; it’s always been a risky business.