September 2024
Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are the most risk-averse generation in history. A 25-year study has found that risky behaviours including smoking, underage drinking and drug use have sharply declined among today’s teenagers.
Some suggest this is encouraging. Others note that this generation is less likely to participate in outdoor activities, preferring time with their electronic devices. They drive less with the percent of 16-year-olds having a drivers’ license dropping from 50 percent in 1983 to 25 percent in 2020. Employed teens have dropped 17 percentage points since 2000.
Generation Z exhibits an extreme aversion to risk both physical and emotional. They avoid drinking and falling in love. They are encouraged to report even the most minor disagreements to others rather than find a way to resolve them. They confuse extreme emotion with danger. Even the word “unsafe” has been repurposed to represent actions or statements that cause some sort of lifelong trauma rather than disagreement.
An entire generation seems intent on avoiding for as long as possible adult obligations of employment, bills, mortgages, marriage and caring for young children. They enjoy freedoms while avoiding responsibilities, and are more intent on living with and relying on parents. There is too much risk and danger in being independent.
Condominium living fits with their propensity for risk aversion. They purchase a home while never seeing bills for most expenses or dealing with most home repairs. They report concerns to a management office and expect someone else to resolve most of their disputes. They can work and exercise from home, never step outside, and have a concierge who accepts deliveries for them.
Generation Z exhibits a growing inability to tolerate risk and rising rates of anxiety and depression. Self-reported rates of mental illness were found to be rising sharply according to researchers Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their essay for The Atlantic about the rise of safety-ism on college campuses. What we once considered ordinary responsibilities are overburdening younger generations. They rely on technology to avoid dealing with people including receiving and making phone calls. Many have chosen to avoid human contact to the extent that food, groceries, alcohol and home goods are ordered online and delivered without seeing or speaking to another person. Speaking with a stranger, and providing a phone number, is to be avoided. Calling this “contactless” makes it sound better when what it means is eliminating direct contact with other people.
Generation Z has no experience or even memory of having direct contact with anyone after completing school other than immediate family except for what occurs in front of a screen. It seems that anything other than eating and drinking alone in front of a computer has become cause for anxiety. Social skills are never developed making it harder to obtain employment. They fear not only conversation but standing too close to others. In short, they don’t want to feel uncomfortable and avoid doing so rather than learning how to live in a world with people who at times test, annoy or infuriate us. Condominium living is well-suited for this way of living.
Our focus on privacy and safety has reached a dangerous extreme. The most minor of hardship is to be avoided rather than embraced because it creates discomfort so must be eliminated.
