Gen Z: The First Generation With No Purpose

The rise of hopelessness in gen z, and what we can (potentially) do about it.

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#genz #loneliness #tiktok

Timestamps:
Gen Z Is The Most Free Generation: 0:00
Where It Began: Post Modernism: 0:40
Where It Began: Hyperreality, Signs, and Symbols: 4:11
Living With Purpose: The On/Off Social Switch: 10:51
How To Live More Deeply: 15:30
I Have Hope For Gen Z: 17:29
Self Improvement Tips: 19:08
How To Enjoy Being Alone: 19:58

Topics: Gen z is hopeless, gen z tiktoks, reject modernity embrace tradition, embrace masculinity, literally me, hypperreality, postmodernism

[summero-myin]

The single greatest problem of this generation is the lack of/loss of community, increase in loneliness.

[cameronnaylor]

Crazy that we live in a society where everyone wants to be loved but no one wants to love.

[yamomsahoelol]

As a gen z I can say with 100% honest I have never had a super deep conversation with anyone of my own age just because nobody knows how to have a deep conversation and it’s honestly frustrating because I want to find people my age that can have the deep conversations I want but nobody has enough attention span to actually talk with each other

[cjriketf]

as a 20-year-old and a member of gen z, I often feel so disconnected from everyone else despite not using any social media minus YouTube and sometimes Instagram. We have gotten to the point where no matter what we do as people, go on social media or not, choose our own paths or not, it will all end the same. I have never had a real romantic relationship, have only had a few friends who I just happened to run into, and only really have my parents as family. It's gotten so bad that at my college I cannot figure out how to connect with people anymore because all they talk about is tik tok and stuff that I just don't understand. I kind of wish all of that social media addiction stuff would just go away, cause it feels like its brought my generation more harm than good.

[Taichu]

It baffles me how many of my gen Z friends cannot be happy by themselves. My life drastically improved when I realized I could just do the stuff I wanted to do without waiting for someone to do it with. If society won’t accept me, the least I can do is accept myself.

[JustanamebroDK]

I think gen Z's biggest issue is the internet, social media and dating apps. We're just not wired for it. We expect to connect with a bunch of people, but we don't - because that stuff only happens in person. We see glimpses of people everywhere, people we'd like to know, and would love attention from. We chat with people and we might think we're getting along, but we finally meet and we're either indifferent or downright appalled. No surprise everyone feels insecure. We're being socially scammed on a daily basis. Chemistry and connection only truly shines through face to face, but we're constantly being attracted to people either platonically or romantically through a screen. It creates a scarcity mindset.

[shino]

"If you're a young person in generation Z and you've been unable to with people on a deeper level, a good portion of that is probably due to the fact that people lack the ability to dive deep into themselves and don't really want to anyway in our current society, which does not value that."

This man is spitting facts and making me realise things about myself!

[ZHibiki]

At leats for me, when I actually fully grasped the fact I can never retire, build my own house or even have more than 1 kid without struggling, thats when I honestly started to feel hopeless for the future, but weirdly enough, that also makes me feel less pressured somehow

[Superbustr]

The concept that you have access to all information to educate yourself online is null for me. It used to be that the internet was a free educational resource. Now the internet seems to be 50% centered on adverts. That last 50% of knowledge can only be accessed through direct searches in (specific) websites that are locked and not displayed by search engines.

[TryinBin]

As a gen Z, I am soul-crushed that one of the "best" solutions is forcing myself to be ok with a lack of genuine connection and intimacy. It only makes me feel more hopeless and purposeless. I'm gonna try my hardest from now on to drive more genuine connections with people, wish me luck on my journey out of hopelessness

EDIT: As per my original comment, almost 3 months later, I have made a new group of friends. It was really tough, but I did it. Now I'm trying to maintain it, but I've made some real connections with people I know have the potential with the right care to last me a long long time. People in my replies saying "people with a higher IQ or introverts tend to not want friends": I'm a high IQ INTJ. A couple of years ago I was a bitter skeptic who said friends are for losers, its not worth it because theyll leave anyways and the small talk is a bore, etc etc. The reality was I was depressed and making excuses for myself for not improving or getting better. It took me hitting a serious low to finally acknowledge things needed to change. I'm human and can't escape the human need for wanting close friends, as much as I bury it with scepticism and "I love my alone time" (which I do, it's just not a healthy mindset to live by). I recommend for those speaking so bitterly to seek help of some kind, whether it be spiritual, communal or via a specialist such as a psychologist. Whatever works for you. Good luck guys, it IS possible.

Edit 2: it's been over a year since I last edited this comment. My friendship group is still going strong, we are travelling overseas together in a couple of months :') been through some stuff, but we are all there for each other. I'm glad I've met some great people, and out the hard yards in to make sure these friendships can be meaningful and deep

[rob]

The lack of Community hits harder for me personally. When I visited my parents indigenous hometown. And how very communal and interconnected everyone was.

Especially the older generation. I felt genuinely more happier over there and had no issue with my depression. However coming back to the United States I started to see what everyone lacks here.

And what was the root of my own isolation and and what was the drive of my lack of purpose thinking. It’s this very individualistic mindset that is clearly very damaging to the human spirit.

[Poopholder]

I feel like people blame Gen Z for being so overly sensitive, annoying, etc. I think the only people who should be blamed are the ones who made society this way.

Blame the system, not the ones in the system.

[BManStan]

I feel like we're seeing the beginning of the "death" of social media's stranglehold on people. Younger gens are realizing how toxic and life sucking it is. I know my friends teenage niece basically has no social media because she just can't stand it and I have seen a similar trend with other kids her age.

[StephenP]

As a boomer millennial pushing 30, everything you just described has been going on for around 10 years and will not stop. It too, has admittedly altered the course of my life for the worse.


If you're gen z and reading this, fight becoming demotivated with all your might. Doing something is better than doing nothing.

[davidwhitney]

I'm writing as a 65 year old, born in 1957, a "late" Baby Boomer- part of that generation but too young to go on anti-war marches or to be at Woodstock. Every generation comes into existence "without a purpose- as did mine. Gen Z will find their "purpose, " in time, as has every generation before. Personally I find much that is admirable about Gen Zs, and I don't believe I'm being overly optimistic...

[knightsonofjack]

Everyone lives isolated lives nowadays, but older generations can at least remember a time before the internet

[yoshitheonly]

As a Gen Z graduate, I can palpably FEEL the oblivion stretched out before us. Since our first science class, we were told the world was on fire with no one in the last 6 decades caring at all.
How are we supposed to do anything knowing the world is crashing, species are becoming extinct, AI can replace us (from writers to artists), and all with an economy that ensures we'll never buy a home or retire?
("Ain't It Fun" by Paramore starts playing)

[TheRedneckjim]

A good article to read is “the demoralized mind” by John F Shumaker. He covers that people being diagnosed with depression are actually demoralized which is a completely logical conclusion the human mind comes to. Smart humans suffer from it the most because they realize that logically the path we currently on is pretty hopeless. The worst part is drugs can’t cure demoralization.

[dafnecantu]

As an older Gen Z, I highly recommend purposefully leaving your phone at home, in your car, or just turning it off for a day. Obviously let your people know where you’ll be especially if you’re underage, don’t forget to tell your guardians lol!! So anyway I just became a citizen this past month, I was raised here in the US since I was about 5 years old but bc my mom became a citizen after my 21st bday I had to do it on my own. And so after my oath I had to go to the social security administration office to make them aware of the change in my legal status. So as I arrive at the door, the security guard stops me and tells me to turn off my phone before I come in, & so I did. I got a ticket and sat down isolated from everyone else bc I’m just use to that. So as I’m sitting kinda bored just looking at the numbers on the TV listening to people get called, a younger Latina mom comes and sits beside me with her new born baby, she looks at me a couple of times nervously bc her baby is very fussy and crying. She begins to speak to me in Spanish unsure if I’ll answer back. I am fluent so I respond and as we are at conversation an elderly gentleman approached us and was clearly legally blind. She gets up and helps him take a seat, and her number is called so she leaves. He decides to sit right next to me. He immediately starts asking me about my day, and we begin to have one of the deepest conversations I’ve ever had in my entire 25 years of life. But something that stuck out to me was when he said “you’re warm, and welcoming unlike other young people..”I know it was meant as a compliment but it kinda hurt. It hurt me because I think highly of our generation, I believe we want to do better, we seek genuine connection, but we also seek an extreme & unrealistic amount of entertainment dopamine, validation24/7 and end up making situationships or relationships that lack everything we really want. This 76 year old man named Tom helped me realize that there is so much boomers and Gen Z have in common. He told me stories of post WW2 life, civil rights movement, segregation, ALIENS 👽 his wife, his new born baby who passed away. All the mistakes he made and how his generation thought they were the most innovative & how they planned to change the world. We also talked about race, ethnicity, about relationships etc. I never imagined I would make a friend that day.. bc it just feels like connections like these don’t exist anymore. But they do. We just have to be more present and in the moment🤍

Sd: go hiking, go swimming, go to that concert, join clubs, help out at a soup kitchen, go outside!! Get involved. This is one of the purest forms humans have made connections and it’s the best way. Meeting people in person helps you learn to read body language, communication styles, lip read. Just go for it 😊

[harrisonmccartney]

Our greatest form of social control is through coerced imitation. We're told to look down upon these original tribal societies as lacking in culture, intelligence, and basically amounting to uncivilized savages, when in reality they often experienced a greater level of freedom and community than we do in the modern day, and many of these ancient tribal societies had great inventions in architecture, mathematics, agriculture, etc. In turn, upper class society since the late 19th century has set the standard for what the "pinnacle of civilization" is "supposed" to be. In doing so, we're slowly being conditioned to accept these stratified aspects of society where the wealthy upper class is something to respect and aspire to, while the lower classes are looked down upon as we might look down upon "lesser" civilizations. Thus, by imitating the upper class and trying to associate with them, and feeling shame when we cannot live up to these ridiculous notions of what it means to be valued according to nothing more than arbitrary factors like wealth and birthright, we are subconsciously being controlled and coerced into behaving within the rigid structures and formalities set in precedent by the 19th and 20th century bourgeoisie.

Ironically, these standards were often set on a foundation of racism, as freed slaves and people of color being permitted to participate in business and society might elevate themselves to a respectable status, and so they had to make races/cultures seem "inferior" regardless of wealth and status, creating a Euro-centric pinnacle during a time when Europe was about to engage in one of the most savage catastrophes in human history (WWI and WWII), while trying to make more peaceful, though technologically backward societies seem less civlized and more savage and less desirable to imitate. We sort of broke free of this thinking during the 60's when people actually looked to these communal tribal socieities as a means of escaping the violence and social stigmas of thise Euro-centric imitations, but the world was gradually adapting to this concept on the whole, and modern conveniences started to trickle down into the average household, so that by the 1980's people were being brainwashed with pop culture and television to mindlessly accept these standards, and that trend has continued to the modern day. We're mindless drones in pursuit of a standard set by the racist elite of the early 20th century, and we have to first stop chasing these vapid things before we can redirect ourselves in the right direction, away from the pursuit of wealth and status, and towards a more community-based society.