What Exactly Does Gen X Want From Millennials and Gen Z?

As a Gen Z-er myself, I was raised by Generation X. And, as I'm assuming is the case with all adolescents entering adulthood, I was consistently told what to expect from life -- pain, hardship, and the awareness of the immortality of these things. Welcome to adulthood: life sucks, and that's how it works. Get used to it.

And so I did. I began looking into the ever-changing housing market, the seemingly unending rise of inflating rent and prices, the reality of overpopulation, the desperation from previous generations about climate change, the constant threat of post-9/11 terrorism, the rising threats of North Korea, Russia, and China, the spiking threats of gun violence, a worldwide pandemic, political turmoil not seen since the '60s, the expectation to get higher and higher education to attain employment in a crashing market economy, and the pressure for us to fix these problems ourselves.

And so what happened?

I got depressed. As did at least 55% of Gen Z. According to the American Psychological Association, 45% of Gen Z, 56% percent of Millennials, 51% of Gen X, 70% of Boomers, and 74% of people of older generations reported very good or excellent mental health. There is, then, a trend of worsening mental health as time goes on. Only 26% of those who lived through World War II report having a mental illness, as opposed to 55% of modern-day teenagers. It makes no sense, and yet it is a reality. Whatever the causes, Gen Z is clearly much less emotionally equipped to deal with death, destruction, disaster, and tragedy.

But then what does Gen X say? "Why, back in my day, we stayed outside all day and night, we hung out with friends, we played pranks on people, we quit our jobs one day and got another one across the street the next. Why don't you do the same things?"

Well, which is it, Gen X? Are we supposed to be cynical about the world and nihilistic about life, or are we supposed to be fun-loving and enthusiastic? Mature and detached or young and full of joy? You can't have your cake and eat it too. It has to be one or the other.

I know this has likely been a common trend throughout all generations and ages; the former generation is always critical of the next -- the music is terrible, society is declining, punks roam the streets, "what is the world coming to?" Gen X-ers themselves, probably best summed up (if a whole generation could possibly be represented by one person) by Kurt Cobain, are the epitome of angsty, anti-establishment cynicism, to which the Baby Boomers would have objected. But, of course, the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation had Elvis Presley, whose dynamic, provocative dancing and African American influences found disapproval in the eyes of the G.I. Generation. But the generational rifts feel more vast this time.

This, of course, could be reflective of a bias, since, having only experienced the criticism of Gen Z, I would obviously assume it to be the worst. But the statistics reflect greater rates of mental illness, so there does seem to be some advancing levels of pressure and deviation.

The obvious solution is petitioning Gen X to lay off a little in terms of criticism and expectation, but I don't necessarily think this solves the problem. We do need to be pushed if we wish to achieve anything, so getting rid of generational fault-finding would ultimately be harmful, especially given that it is not the source of the problem. The lack of parental pressure would only be marginally alleviating.

It is, rather, something inherent in our own generation that we need to solve. We Gen Z-ers do need to learn to relax more, Gen X is right about that, but not with our smartphones -- with one another. Technological progressivism obviously coincides with rising mental illness. We need to spark a counterculture that minimizes the use of technology in order to refocus on one another so we can become lively social creatures again, not robot zombies. Gen X needs to be aware of the contradiction of their expectations of us, certainly, because we cannot be both free-spiritedly jovial and fueled by some inherent pessimism simultaneously. But they're not totally wrong. First, though, we need to worry about learning to relax as a generation using something other than technology. Then, we can reclaim the solidity required to take on the problems that lie ahead of us.

The only way for progress itself to survive is to embrace the momentary regressivism of diminishing our reliance on technology -- just for a little while. We just need an ever-so-transient reinterpretation of deus ex machina -- not God from the machine, but God in spite of it.