First of all, who are we referring to? Gen Zers, members of Generation Z, are people born roughly between 1997 and 2012 and one of the key issues concerning young people nowadays is mental health and the factors that shape it.
A silent crisis
Let’s go into detail. In a February 2025 speech at the European Parliament, the EU Commissioner for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport, Glenn Micallef, talked about a “silent crisis”, one that affects the mental health of Europe’s youth and therefore Europe’s future.
In his report, he highlighted how much the Covid-19 pandemic worsened European youth’s psychological conditions. In fact, measures undertaken by governments during the hardest phases of the virus spread, such as the lockdown, established restrictions to daily social life, mainly affected young people, whose social competencies were still developing and had an abrupt slowdown. Statistics confirm it: in 2019, around 17 % of young people aged between 15 and 29 reported having a psychological issue, while, after the lockdown period, the number has doubled.
Furthermore, according to a global analysis conducted in 2021 by Jama Pediatrics, 1 in 4 young people experienced worsened depression symptoms and 1 in 5 claimed their anxiety increased in the first pandemic year.
Why do GenZers feel so stressed?
Current Gen Z mental health condition is the aftermath of several events and phenomena that have profoundly changed society. Nowadays there is a common feeling which can be described in one single word: solastalgia . This term refers to the sense of absolute powerlessness in front of current global crises that appear to be uncontrollable. For example, 45% of young adults aged between 16-25 report that they suffer from eco-anxiety, the chronic fear of drastic climate changes.
Current wars, inflation and increasing unemployment are pivotal issues too. A 2023 research by Harmony healthcare IT , reveals that for 48% of young people aged between 18 and 26 who were surveyed, the main cause of their anxiety was fear of the future, followed by financial and job insecurity.
Last but not least, social media and technology are having a problematic impact on young people’s mental health too. Several studies have shown how the increased use of technological devices is linked to the appearance of typical addictions’ psychological disorders.
What is the opinion of sociologists?
According to Zygmunt Bauman, insecurity is a social phenomenon owed by an unstable society that, having lost its old cultural anchors, such as a long-lasting job or family, is subjugated to the rapid changes that overwhelm its members who live dissolved in a “liquid modernity”. Everything continuously deforms according to the social canons of a specific historical period that, however, are ever-changing, just like a fluid put in different containers.
For instance, the modern globalized economic system fosters a fast labor market with fixed-term contracts that increase workers’ precariousness, a phenomenon that, moreover, AI is enhancing. Likewise, the current unstable political stage, ruled by chaos and force, rather than law and diplomacy, is contributing to build an uncertain future, which can turn into psychological fragility.
Single individuals struggle to adapt themselves to this hectic world and trying, they end up lost in an endless vortex where they don’t know who they actually are. By trying to be what the fluid society and its unstable institutions ask, they constantly are victims of a process of transformation that leads to insecurity.
Jean Baudrillard (1929- 2007), author of “Simulacra and Simulation” (1981), alleges that society defines you according to your belongings. What matters is what you have and not what you are.
However, what you have depends on what society and companies want you to have. In order to make you desire what they sell, they make you feel insecure and, at the same time, they offer you a product as if it was able to fix your insecurity. It is the cruel strategy that makes consumerism work.
Moreover, since everyone is scared of being excluded, they tend to conform to social norms that don’t actually represent their real personality.
In this case, social media play a central role: they are the showcases where you can show off what you own. However, this fuels comparison and competition with others because the more you have, the more you are esteemed. This induces the anxiety of being cut off, known as FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) or the impostor syndrome, the belief you’re less capable than others despite your achievements.
This situation can lead to social anxiety which refers to the chronic fear of any social interaction, often causing a lack of self confidence and fear of judgment. Reactions to this uneasiness can be divided in two types: whether isolation and dissociation from reality, as witnessed by the Hikikomori phenomenon, or “performance anxiety”, which consists in the need to show to yourself or others your own qualities by working or studying hard, constantly seeking for personal satisfaction that could fix your insecurity, though this void will never be truly filled.
GenZ’ future perspective
What GenZ is experiencing is unprecedented. We are living in a historical period where the future’s perspective gets worse, instead of getting better. Previous generations can’t say the same. If today’s young people look to the future, they see uncertainties, instead of hope. They feel anxious, instead of ambitious. However, the most unpleasant aspect concerns the fact that the people in power are mostly ignoring it and by doing that, they are not only throwing the future of young people in the trash, but they are stealing youth’s ability to dream.