A Chronic Lack of Agency.

One of the most frustrating experiences in life is when someone is in clear need of help, yet they refuse it. You provide them a blueprint to build from and yet waste it. This is unfortunately a common experience amongst young adults. Far too many of them live life as though it is happening to them instead of it happening for them.

It’s a generation that is falling behind as far too many fall victim to doomscrolling or sports betting - developing no life or interests beyond consumption. Yet when offered a way out of it, the response is often “oh that’s too hard” or “what about my mental health?”.

A perfect representation of this is the online trend “Bean Soup Theory”. Bean Soup Theory was coined after a TikTok video went viral about a vegan bean soup recipe made for women with anaemia. A user responded that she doesn’t like beans and asked if she could make a substitute - defeating the purpose of a bean soup. Lacking so much agency to look up an alternative on their own, they instead respond almost like a bot.

There is a theory that algorithms have essentially altered users’ perspectives on the internet to the point that it makes them self-centred, i.e. this video was shown to me and it was only for me. But frankly, I think that is wrong; I think it reflects a trend of pure laziness amongst Gen Z, with vast swathes of users using social media in place of Google or third-party sources. Take for example the endless hordes of Twitter users using the platform’s AI ‘Grok’ to perform all the thinking for them.

This is learned behaviour. Many in Gen Z have lived mollycoddled lives, with a generation that is drinking significantly less, socialising significantly less, and having significantly less sex than any other. It has resulted in a risk-averse generation that is more likely to look towards other people to make decisions for them.

In some sense, I am being particularly harsh on my fellow generation. The graduate job market is one of the worst in 30 years, there is essentially no prospect of home ownership for vast chunks of the generation, and an atomised social scene that tilts majority-online for many. Yet many in the generation are unwilling to accept the realities of life, with outrageous pay demands, little respect for those older than them, and my personal pet peeve: a bizarre attitude to aging.

I probably don’t have to tell you but Gen Z — there are exceptions — don’t save. Whilst of course there is an element of not having enough, I don’t entirely believe that. When pressed on this, the overwhelming response from Gen Z falls into two camps.

Either “why would I want a million dollars at 60? I am basically dead” or “Climate change is going to kill me in 10 years, why should I save?”. Both of which make my skin itch with irritation. The first is obvious to anyone over the age of 35: you will be 60 one day — far sooner than you expect — and when you are, you would probably like to retire. The second is even more frustrating; it’s a form of political fatalism where they’ve outsourced all individual agency to the state, effectively deciding that if the government hasn't 'solved' the planet, there is no point in them making any effort at all.

Climate change no doubt will be bad. There will, at this point, be a couple of degrees of warming. The results will be catastrophic for some: scorching temperatures, extreme weather events, and parts of the planet unlivable.

Yet the people that say climate change will kill them are usually rich Westerners that will experience the least of climate change’s effects.

But they are have outsourced so much of their agency that they are incapable of reading a single report to discover this. They think that climate change is like some video game character that is just going to kill millions of them out of nowhere once we pass 2°C of warming - that everywhere in 2050 will be like barren desert of Saudi Arabia.

Lack of agency is a feature in every generation, there are countless people who have little to no agency over their lives. But to me Gen Z embodies the mantra of living life as though it is happening to them instead of it happening for them.