As families gather for New Year’s celebrations, a little intergenerational friction is to be expected. One familiar faultline will be youthful worries about the state of the world in 2026, against elders — channelling former British prime minister Harold Macmillan — insisting they’ve “never had it so good” and should simply toughen up. “OK boomer” will be the sardonic reply.
It is hard not to empathise with Gen Z. The headlines don’t offer them much hope. Artificial intelligence is supposed to be coming for their jobs. Global temperatures keep rising. Home ownership remains a stretch. Rising taxes are crimping ambition. The long, isolating lockdowns of the pandemic era didn’t help. Unsurprisingly, the global incidence of anxiety disorders among 10- to 24-year-olds has risen by more than 50 per cent in the two decades to 2021.
In turn, the notion that being young in the 2020s is a unique disadvantage has become a meme among many teens and twenty-somethings. But a diet of pessimism can also be blinding. There are, in fact, plenty of reasons for young people to look on the bright side.