As forest fires rage and the threat of water shortages looms, young Canadians like Hannah Zilke are opting out of having children. They fear a future of climate change, economic instability, and unaffordable housing. The optimism once associated with Gen Z is fading as they face a world filled with uncertainty.
On the June day that Hannah Zilke, a 19-year-old university student, is explaining why she doesn’t want to have children, the answer wafts outside her bedroom window in Calgary: a haze of smoke lingering from forest fires still burning out of control hundreds of kilometres away.
As a group, they worry a lot about their financial security; in interviews, they often mentioned rising rent and grocery store costs. Nearly three-quarters disagreed that, as a generation, they would surpass their parents. These concerns no doubt contribute to their mental health issues: In the survey, more than half said they find it hard to sleep at night because of stress.
But these looming existential threats, she says, are emotionally draining. That’s the risk, one already showing up in the mental health struggles of Gen Z: it’s hard to sustain youthful optimism and creative energy when a generation feels overwhelmed by a mess they didn’t make.Anastasia Kartadinata, 17, is in first year at the University of Calgary.
They knew – thanks to YouTube and TikTok and family dinner conversations – that rent is rising, that the price of a home is outpacing salaries, and that, without solutions, a devastated environment will forever alter the way of life in Canada. In the survey, about “Not only will we risk losing the optimism and dynamism of youth,” says Bobby Duffy, director of The Policy Institute at King’s College London, “but when people think progress has stopped, they start to question the value of the whole system.”Young people skateboard in a Calgary lot. For demographic purposes, Gen Z refers to people born from 1997 to 2012, and are now aged 11 to 26.Gen Z is already a cohort of skeptics, according to The Globe’s survey results.
This negative view of leaders, businesses and people in general showed up in several questions in the survey. Respondents were significantly more likely to see people as untrustworthy than say they can be counted on to do the right thing. Roughly 70 per cent either strongly or somewhat agreed that “the internet brings out the worst in people.”
Maybe it seems like young people have always been distrustful, but as U.S. sociologist Jean Twenge writes in her new book,, this was not always the case. Dr. Twenge points to the Silent Generation – the great-grandparents of Gen Z – as that last truly trusting cohort, “I want to believe the best in the world,” says Anastasia Kartadinata, a 17-year-old first-year student at the University of Calgary. But, at the same time, she says, the internet is full of people faking good deeds for attention, or manipulating facts to their own advantage. “We’ve now been completely exposed to how bad people can actually be.”'I want to believe the best in the world,' Anastasia Kartadinata says, but she finds the internet has instead allowed her to see the worst.
When it comes to climate change, says Ravana Smith, a 19-year-old from Moncton, studying at Mount Allison University, Canadian Gen Zs may be the most worldly, racially diverse and open-minded young adult generation the country has ever seen. But as Dr. Duffy point out, their progressive values are extensions of a rebellious liberalism that began with those now-stodgy Boomers. The distrust of politicians is not acute, he says, but chronic. Even the hope that the next generation would enjoy a better future than their predecessors has been dwindling for more than a decade.
She found it at her job this summer, she says, talking with low-income immigrant youth, who, despite their struggles in Canada, still expressed optimism about society and their future role in it. She pointed to what happened this summer when the Barbie movie – a commentary on gender roles that celebrated individual beauty – filled theatres with audiences dressed in pink. “This speaks to how deeply we want to share a connection with people.” she says. “It makes us feel heard and seen.
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