The National Crisis of Gen Z

Jonathan Haidt claims something happened “all of a sud­den” around 2013 that led to the national crisis of Gen Z. What happened?

Last week I wrote about social media and the Artifice of Intelligence. It’s damaging, especially for Gen Z and cap­i­tal­ism according to Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University’s Stern School of Business. I’ve found many Christians who appreciate Haidt even though he calls himself an atheist. Haidt grew up Jewish in New York, went to elite schools (BA from Yale, PhD from the University of Virginia, postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago) becoming politically left-leaning. Throw in his hostility to Christianity (“they believe in creationism and we scientists believe in evolution”) and you might scratch your head wondering why Christians appreciate Haidt.

Haidt’s hostility to Christianity began to soften when he got his first teaching position at UVA. Up to that time he’d never met a Christian. He met some thoughtful ones at UVA. They radiated a warmth and humility he hadn’t seen before. This opened his heart and mind. Haidr came to feel the scientific community had misunderstood and underestimated religion.

From this came his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divide by Politics and Religion. Haidt posits that political conservatives (often Christians) have twice as many foundations for morality (six) as liberals (three). His hope is for politically liberal and conservative people to talk to each other, not right past each other as so many do. Together, they might operate more in groups, something Haidt sees religion good at doing.

Which is why I was drawn to Haidt’s recent Weekend Interview with Tunku Varadarajan. Haidt notes how de­pres­sion rates started to rise “all of a sud­den” around 2013, es­pe­cially for Gen Z girls. In other words, if we’d stopped collect­ing data in 2011, we’d see lit­tle change from pre­vi­ous years. But “by 2015 it’s an epi­demic.” Why? Go back to 2012.

2012 was the year the old­est Gen-Z ba­bies were in their mid­dle teens and Face­book ac­quired In­sta­gram. Young peo­ple flocked to In­sta­gram, launching the selfie era. Apple’s iPhone 5 (2012) with its improved camera skyrocketed the rates of Gen Z using so­cial media and making self­ies. Instead of getting out and “practicing the skills of adulthood in a low-stakes en­vi­ronment” with other kids, Gen Z kids started staying home alone. Gone were the days when kids would text each other, meet at the mall, do things to­gether. Their formative years were “largely just through the phone” Haidt says.

This is more prevalent among girls as they are more drawn to vis­ual plat­forms, In­sta­gram and Tik­Tok in par­tic­u­lar. “Those are about dis­play and per­for­mance. You post your per­fect life, and then you flip through the pho­tos of other girls who have a more per­fect life, and you feel de­pressed.” Haidt calls this phe­nomenon “com­pare and de­spair,” noting how “it seems so­cial be­cause you’re com­mu­nicat­ing with peo­ple. But it’s per­for­ma­tive. You don’t ac­tu­ally get so­cial re­la­tionships. You get weak, fake so­cial links.”

From this came “weak­ened kids” de­prived of “the nor­mal tough­en­ing, the nor­mal strength­en­ing, the nor­mal anti-fragility” that kids experienced be­fore 2013. Studies show pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of parents al­lowed children out­side on their own between age seven and twelve. Overprotective parents in 2013 were unsure about the effects of so­cial-me­dia, so they kept their kids home. For Gen Z, this meant going “out on your own” came later.

For many it came when they went to college. Gen Z fragility led to the coddling the American mind, another book by Haidt. He says coddling began in Amer­i­can universi­ties in 2015. “They all got stu­pid in the same way.” Universities im­ple­mented poli­cies for fragile kids: trigger guards, speech codes, etc. Haidt fears these could back­fire.

They are. The ripples of fragility are extending to the workplace. Man­agers tell Haidt it’s very dif­fi­cult to su­per­vise Gen-Z em­ployees, to give them feed­back. It’s difficult to ad­vance pro­fes­sion­ally if you can’t bear getting feedback that’s anything less than You’re doing great!

Haidt also sees ripples in a fragile workforce threatening American capitalism. He says so­cial me­dia pro­motes an or­ga­ni­zational cul­ture of fear. “If cor­po­ra­tions be­come less ef­fec­tive be­cause every­one’s afraid of Twit­ter, afraid of what will be said about them, this could se­verely dam­age Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism.” When man­agers are “afraid to speak up hon­estly be­cause they’ll be shamed on Twit­ter or Slack, then that or­ga­ni­za­tion be­comes stu­pid.”

“Stupid is as stupid does” refers to the actions of someone as often being an indicator of their intelligence (or lack thereof). I see the artifice of intelligence—the opposite of true intelligence—sending out ripples of fragility threatening not only Gen Z but the American experiment in self-government and capitalism. Whether or not you’re a Christian, we ought to be addressing these issues. Reading Jonathan Haidt’s books is a good place to start.