Gen Z has actually witnessed multiple triumphs, such as NASA landing a probe on Mars. One of the shortcomings of “Fight” is that the author takes the word of teenagers as absolute truth. “I get blank stares, or examples of random sporting events like the USA soccer team finally beating Ghana in a 2017 friendly match,” he writes. Only a decade later, when Della Volpe asked Zoomers about the moments that made them proud to be American, they were largely at a loss. It’s certainly fair to say that nobody is going to be nostalgic for 2020, a year defined by sickness and isolation. But Della Volpe claims that, as a result of the difficult times they grew up with, Gen Z is “united by terror.” When asked to describe America they use terms like “dystopic,” “broken” and “a bloody mess.” By contrast, millennials in the mid-2010s used words like “diverse,” “free” and “land of abundance” to describe the USA. The author of “Fight” claims that past generations have had moments of American triumph, such as the boomers with Woodstock - but Gen Z has nothing to be proud of. One of the shortcomings of “Fight” is that Della Volpe seems to take the word of teenagers as an absolute truth. “Except for maybe Netflix, reruns of ‘The Office,’ Amanda Gorman, Halsey, Simone Biles, and Lil Nas X, Gen Z hasn’t caught much of a break,” Della Volpe writes. Millennials came of age during the election of our first-ever black president, Barack Obama. Gen X witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Boomers had Woodstock and the civil rights movement. When asked to describe America, Gen Z uses terms like “dystopic,” “broken” and “a bloody mess.” Getty Images/Westend61Īnd while other generations might have had their downsides, they also had moments of American triumph, Della Volpe claims. They’ve already lived through “the opioid epidemic… the militarization of police and national borders, an explosion of white nationalism, frightening red-alert active-shooter drills and school lockdowns, increasingly frequent and deadly mass shootings, the accelerating and genuine threat of climate change, and a global pandemic,” writes “Fight” author John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. Martin’s Press), out now.īorn between roughly 19, the oldest members of Gen Z are now 26. That’s the premise of “ Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America” (St. It’s the prerogative of every generation to think they’re living in uniquely unfortunate times.īut members of Gen Z really think they got a raw deal. Gen Z claims this beauty trend improves mental health: ‘I can literally trick my brain’ Gen Z is going out in their underwear in bold fashion statement I graduated with honors - trolls say my grad pics make me look ‘dumb as hell’

Most people use the Gen Z word ‘vibes’ to describe feelings: poll

She Kills Me by Jennifer Wright