Reasons to be cheerful about Generation Z (2024)

A vast cohort is coming of age. Globally, some 2bn people were born between 1997 and 2012, and so are part of “Generation Z”. In America and Britain this group makes up a fifth of the population, rivalling the share of baby-boomers; in India and Nigeria the young far outnumber the old. For each generation there is a simple narrative: that boomers were shaped by post-war plenty, for example, or millennials by the financial crisis of 2007-09. For Gen Z the popular view is that smartphones have made them miserable and they will live grimmer lives than their elders.

More and more people in the West tell pollsters that today’s children will be worse off than their parents. Youngsters themselves worry about everything from the difficulty of buying a home to the looming dangers from climate change. Social scientists fret that Gen Z-ers, having spent their formative years doomscrolling and suffering from FOMO, are now gripped by an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Politicians in America and Britain are mulling banning smartphones and restricting social media for the under-16s; parents and schoolteachers everywhere are trying to police screen time.