In his book The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that we need to create a more “antifragile” society for children. He contends that kids’ social and emotional systems act much like our bones and immune systems: within reason, testing and stressing them doesn’t break them but makes them stronger. However, in his view, our current culture of safetyism and supervision means that children are denied these character-building opportunities.
Our overemphasis on the “dangers” of the real world may indeed explain why Generation Z is so unhappy: according to a new YouGov survey, almost two-thirds of 16- to 25-year-olds reported that they had experienced, or were currently experiencing, mental health difficulties. Around a third said that they were likely to need mental health support in the next 12 months.
For many, these figures will seem horrifyingly high, an inevitable consequence of diagnostic inflation and over-reporting. Yet, arguably, it’s a wonder that more young people do not report struggling with their mental health.
Imagine, for example, being a 16-year-old checking their phone last week. They would have seen the news that political activist Charlie Kirk had been shot, then watched graphic videos of him bleeding out on Instagram. After that, they would have read a horrific procession of gleeful, gloating messages on X or Bluesky, before scrolling through Reddit to decipher the memes, in-jokes and video game references inscribed on the bullets. They might have sought out TikTok for some light relief of pranks and cat videos, only to be met with clips of gym-ready body transformations, soft porn, and children being blown up in Gaza.
This is a generation whose members have grown up in permacrisis, who have spent their adolescence umbilically tethered to smartphones and social media. They are frequently physically inactive — only one in 10 teenagers do an hour of exercise a day — but sustained by dopamine hits rather than endorphins.
This is a generation that has been taught that every feeling matters, that there is little difference between trauma and discomfort, that every emotion is diagnosable and treatable. These are young people who have watched endless videos of content creators, cosplaying as medical experts, pathologising normal adolescent behaviours such as “struggling to concentrate” or “having a messy bedroom”. They have learnt that sharing — or oversharing — suffering leads to attention, identity and belonging, which is what teenagers truly want.
The loss of play-based childhood, the internalisation of therapy-speak, the lure of the promise of a “quick fix” — it should really be no surprise that so many young people report having a mental health condition. Every day, young people are exposed to levels of information, news, content and stimulation that were simply inconceivable a few decades ago, and our lizard brains simply cannot cope.
This constant barrage of tonally conflicting content cannot possibly be healthy for a developing mind. It’s easy to blame members of Gen Z for not having a backbone, but they are our modern-day Frankenstein’s monster. In this social experiment we have given them iPads rather than playgrounds, freedom in the online world and insulation in the real one. It’s little wonder that they feel so lost and abandoned.