Generation Z has a participation problem. Is it depression, or pure laziness? Or both?
By: Gian Garmendia
I am Gian Garmendia. I am currently 20 years old as of today, September 20th 2026. As someone that is a part of Gen Z, I can personally say that I was never very ambitious in my life. Sure I was competitive, but it seemed that as I grew older, my will to accomplish fizzled. You could say it was because adult life is much more difficult than childhood. But if you, someone born in Gen Z, took a look at your peers, you would likely feel oddly familiar with the personalities around you in that right. Excuse my informality, but we SUCK at doing things. It sounds simple, just go to work, go to school, engage with your career. But for our generation, it just doesn’t seem so. I am not interested in prodding into your personal responsibilities and demanding you take action, but simply to make a raw statement on how we handle ourselves. .
I am going to start small. Why do you go to college? I’m sure you’ve heard that question in one of your classes on the first day, likely in your very first semester. Even if you haven’t, what would your answer be? Personally, I do remember my answer when the professor asked the class said question. “Because my parents made me.” Depending what year of college you’re in, that answer might sound slightly ridiculous, yet familiar. Because for a while before you even went to college, you knew you were going. Not because of the opportunity or the idea of creating a career, but because you HAD to. If you, as an 18 year old, said you were not going to college, it would be depicted as you throwing your life away. So already, before you even got an idea for what you wanted to do with your life, you took a backseat in your own existence. Do you actually WANT to go to college? Do you know what exactly is provided here? Because to be frank, not making a decision is a big decision. Likely the decision was made for you, because your parents thought you were inadequate to make your own decisions. But the average college life is only one component of inaction from Gen Z.
Smart phones are another part of this awful equation of hopelessness and laziness from our generation. Imagine how much information is retained each day by the average phone user. In our case, I believe that knowledge to be a curse. The news operates through negativity, the first big story covered is often negative. Murder, robbery, death, death, death. What else might we see covered? “ICE forces are now being deployed to New York.” Our country often leaks American blood through the seams. Some of it is local, but almost all of it is national. Horrible things happen everywhere. And information about tragedies, sometimes even live recordings are just at our fingertips. If a calm, slightly strong willed person were to consume such content, what would their reaction be? “This is reality, horrible things are just a part of life.” For the average young adult in Gen Z, this concept is often echoed through the mouths of adults belonging to past generations. “Welcome to the real world.” Doesn’t that sentence just piss you off? Because they’re right? Every single time? “But I can’t do anything about it, I’m only 18, someone else will.” Ironically, there was an ad I saw on Tiktok, the very inspiration for this article. It was a personal, reverse-psychological ad for young adults to vote. I will link it at the bottom. But it highlights the laziness and overall inaction of our generation. That all we do is whine because our government is corrupt and unjust, we’ll post about it, but we won’t do anything. We are fed negativity every day, and we slink slowly into an undiagnosed depression. Because the world is just the way it is, and life is supposed to be hard.
There was one final topic I wish to talk about: cancel culture. We all know or have heard of it before. One post on social media is enough to ruin a reputation, as long as the accusations are awful and slightly proven. This type of culture is largely relevant with Gen Z. The generation of whiners, not doers, according to the video. But this culture seeks to punish and ruin those that do shadowy and selfish things. Seems very ambitious. And yet, said ambitious people likely do not vote. They do not have small contributions to society. Because what we are is not just a generation of whiners, but also a generation of convenience. We are LAZY, unless it comes to our little electronic life in our devices. Surely you remember the Epstein files. Hundred of posts covered them, all over the media. And now. P Diddy using a Domain Expansion to fight Jeffrey Epstein. That is a real, AI generated video on social media. Memes and sarcastic online culture is not only how we cope, but also how we deflect from genuine accountability and being upstanding citizens. Because if it wasn’t for “Chomper from Plants Vs Zombies worse than Jeffrey Epstein” being a thumbnail found on Youtube, we’d ALL have to stand up and say something, right?
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTyY7XBeq/ Don’t Vote Ad
What are we doing?
