By Freya India

May 21, 2024

Screenshots: TikTok @boxmunk; @nells_unmasked; @elliemidds

I think a major part of my generation’s declining mental health is growing up in a culture that has lost the language of defiance. For Gen Z, it has become almost offensive to suggest someone can overcome their struggles. We are inundated with stories of defeat and disadvantage, but so few of defiance.

What happened to overcoming the odds? Defying expectations? Rising above it? Now we obsess over barriers—we talk endlessly about what diagnoses we have, what discrimination we face, the obstacles in our way. We wrestle over who has it worse.

A telling example of this is how Gen Z talks about mental health online. We know by now that young people are not only identifying more and more with their mental illnesses, but glamorising them like never before. “Hot Girls Have ADHD”, apparently! We have fun flavours of autism! You’re not neurodivergent anymore; you’re #neurospicy!

But it’s gone further. We aren’t just identifying with and glamorising our mental illnesses. Now we seem to be competing over who is more mentally ill. Those without autism and ADHD are said to enjoy “neurotypical privilege”. Then there’s competition within mental health communities. Oh you struggle with your gender identity? Well try struggling with mental illness and gender identity issues, like those who are “autigender” or “neuroqueer”! You’re autistic and that’s hard? Have you tried being an autistic person of colour? Sure, you have ADHD, but have you considered how much worse it is to be neurodivergent without pretty privilege, or someone who isn’t “neurotypical passing”? And don’t you dare say you have Asperger’s and still succeed. Sounds like “aspie supremacy”.

I’m not blaming Gen Z. Of course we compete over who can cope the least. We grew up in a world with every cultural, commercial and technological incentive to do so. A billion-dollar mental health industry pushes us to pathologise normal negative emotions. Universities extend our adolescence and treat us like children. Consumer capitalism indulges childlike dependencies. Social media platforms trap us in feedback loops that become self-fulfilling. Virtual reality and AI technologies allow us to avoid risk and discomfort like never before in history. Meanwhile we have a progressive movement that sees strength and stoicism and confuses it for privilege, that takes tough love and calls it stigma, that promotes hyper-vigilant parenting and pretends it’s love. And so if you’re a 14 year-old who does struggle or is disadvantaged in some way, of course you want to capitalise on it. “When you reward victimhood, weakness and suffering with praise and attention, you get more of all three,” Konstantin once told me. “Incentives are everything.”

Share

This is not to say that Gen Z aren’t suffering. We are in a mental health crisis; the modern world is chaotic and confusing. But a major part of this crisis, I think, is our loss of resilience. Yes, we have all these comforts and conveniences—but we also have a constant cultural message that we aren’t capable. Yes we have it materially easier in many ways—but it’s harder to develop resilience when you were raised on screens, without play and risk and danger. And I think the trouble with growing up in a world of incredible technologies and instant gratification is you do, inevitably, end up feeling entitled to a life without friction and discomfort. You expect the world to bend for you; to relieve you of the burden of being human. We demand the world makes us comfortable and call it discrimination or a diagnosis when it doesn’t.

To parents and older generations, please: stop incentivising this. You can be compassionate toward young people struggling with the pace and demands of the modern world without immediately diagnosing them or affirming their every anxiety. Without coddling or infantilising. Without denying them the chance to see what they can do. The message Gen Z is receiving from every corner of culture is that we are not capable. That it’s okay not to be capable. We have to hear something different. We must be told we can be more.

Because a culture that rewards victimhood is not compassionate. It’s cruel. Compassion is not rewarding suffering until it slides into self-indulgence. Compassion is not belittling Gen Z until we lose belief in ourselves. Compassion is recognising that previous generations got through war and poverty and deprivation and came out stronger—and we are capable of the same.

And to Gen Z: these might be good incentives in the short-term. You might get attention on TikTok and get out of doing hard things—but you won’t grow. The more we depend on and define ourselves by our diagnoses, the less resilient we will be, the more we will need to rely on them. Of course I’m not talking to those with severe mental illnesses. But I am talking to those of us being tempted to label our laziness as “ADHD executive dysfunction”, to hoard and hang onto our every painful experience, to compete over who has the most difficult collection of disadvantages. I’m saying that when you are 25 years old and too scared to talk on the phone and telling yourself it’s social anxiety disorder, you are doing yourself a disservice.

Even if it’s true! Maybe you do have it worse than someone else. Maybe making a phone call is harder for you. Maybe you are neurodivergent or do have an anxiety disorder or did face childhood trauma. But when someone tells you that you can overcome these things, or that you can handle them with grace and dignity and become stronger, they are not necessarily saying they aren’t real. They might be real. But you might also be more resilient than you realise.

Life is hard, for everyone. Nobody gets through it without cruelty and injustice and hurt and illness and rejection. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what privileges you have, life is hard. But one thing is for sure: we will make it a lot harder with all this self-pity.

And here’s the truth: there will be something in your life one day that brings you to your knees. That floors you. And you can either stay down or get up. You can be someone who complains and pities themselves, and insists that their pain is more important than everyone else’s. Or you can be someone who does have a challenging diagnosis or was dealt a bad hand and still overcame the odds. Who somehow held it together. Who managed to serve other people. Who conjured up some strength from God knows where. Who did suffer and still demanded more of themselves. Forget earning the respect of older generations. This is about earning respect for yourself.

Or we could continue as we are. Our culture can go on pretending that 20 year-olds are children, funnelling them endless empty mantras like it’s okay not to be okay without any caveat to pull themselves together at some point, and indulging whatever labels we invent and depend on. Keep calling that compassion, if you want. Meanwhile members of Gen Z can take offence when told they can overcome their struggles, and remain feeling powerless as a result.

I’m done with that. Let’s bring back the language of defiance. All of us. Older generations can sympathise with the struggles unique to Gen Z, but then talk about overcoming them. Talk about what’s next. They can expect their children to become capable adults, trust them to try and to fail, and refuse to comply with a culture that insists they are weak. This is not about ridiculing or punishing vulnerability—it’s about not rewarding victimhood. Not rewarding it in our children. Not indulging it in ourselves.

If we do this, things will change. Gen Z will still face challenges, perverse incentives will persist, but we can see ourselves as more capable. We will learn that we can overcome the odds. That we can surprise ourselves. That we can each become someone who says yes, this world did its best to break me but look: I’m still standing.

Let’s bring that attitude back. And start defying anyone who tell us otherwise.