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Here’s the rough distribution of the US population by age and sex, with generations marked:
Generational discourse is stupid — all vagaries and vibes. In the course of checking those dividing dates, we discovered the existence of so-called ‘Zillennials’, born between 1993 and 1998. It seems the joins between other tranches have had similar neologisms coined, layering fuzz on fuzz. Add the weird UK habit of importing US ‘Boomer’ discourse, despite Britain’s significant 20th-century baby boom occurring about two decades after America’s, and you create a truly useless framework. At most, it’s a convenient shorthand.
Still, young people exist in the US, and — because they’re pretty poor now, but probably won’t always be — Bernstein Research has tried to figure out what they’re like.
The answer: sad, sedentary and addicted to computer games.
OK: that’s reductive, and needs massive caveats. There are some ways in which, in aggregate, Gen Z (15–27 year olds) and Gen Alpha (0–14 year olds), might be expected to experience better health outcomes than earlier generations: they smoke less, for instance.
But overall, it doesn’t look like a super pretty picture from a public health perspective:
Gaming: way up. Homework: up. Exercising: down. Socialising and communicating: down.
Admittedly, these categories suck. As repeatedly implied, there were definitely points between the ages of 15 and 24 when if you’d asked the author how much time he spent playing video games per day, the answer would have been a lot higher than an hour. But much of that time was also spent communicating: you might argue about the quality of that communication, but it’s not as if video gaming and human interaction are mutually exclusive.
Nitpicking aside, the outlook is… kinda gloomy. Bernstein notes consumer confidence among 18-34 years olds is around the lowest in nearly half a century, and that the number of high school seniors who agreed that “life often feels meaningless” or “people like me don’t have much of a chance at a successful life” are the highest since at least 1990 and 1979 respectively. Meanwhile, anxiety has retaken the crown from ADHD as the most prevalent mental health issue for US children.
There’s also this:
The analysts write:
Physical and mental health of young Americans has considerably worsened over the last decade. Due to advances in medicine, Gen Alpha is significantly less likely to be harmed by severe illnesses like polio or leukemia vs. Boomers. But the sharp rise in childhood obesity has exposed Gen Alpha to chronic diseases ranging from diabetes to fatty liver disease that were never previously pediatric illnesses. This sets up Gen Alpha to be the unhealthiest generation in the modern era. Antidepressant prescriptions increasing at the fastest rate among the young. Gen-Z are experiencing the highest levels of loneliness and lowest levels of self-satisfaction vs. prior generations. Outlook on life and consumer confidence are at all-time lows for young Americans.
(The note later also says these issues “set up Gen Z to be the unhealthiest generation in the modern era”; we guess the supposition is just that things will get steadily worse.)
After reading all that, you might be feeling a bit sad yourself. But don‘t worry: Bernstein reckons this is, broadly, good for capitalism. Its analysts see positives across most categories, such as: greater restaurant spend (as young people give up on cooking), more luxury goods spending (as young people try to fill the empty voids inside their souls), and more vaping (ditto).
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