There is no such thing as ‘Generation Z'

Telegraph

02-04-2025

Is there a group today that is analysed with greater scrutiny than Gen Z?
Every week there is a new feature or essay obsessing about them in our national press: from racism and the idolisation of Andrew Tate to feminism and mental health, their condition is now a shorthand for the anxieties of the modern world. Gen Z has become merely a proxy for the nightmare from which we are trying to wake: we dump all our fears into the ongoing development (or lack of it) of a generation.
We are told that they are not patriotic enough. That they believe Britain is a racist country. But they are also more authoritarian than their parents and grandparents; and don't drink or have as much casual sex as older generations.
They are woke and post-woke, cynical and earnest, too progressive and too conservative, a generation full of narcissists who are unable to read a book because their brains have been fried by excessive social media use. Besides, the books that they do actually manage to read don't constitute literature in any meaningful sense.
This level of attention to a group of twenty-somethings and teenagers is not healthy, and probably says more about their parents and grandparents than many would care to admit. There is little use in describing Gen Z as self-absorbed without paying attention to the unusual media coverage that they generate; in some instances, sparking outright hysteria whenever their name is invoked.
Perhaps this strength of feeling is justified, with Gen Z bearing the brunt of national decline far more than the millennials ever had to grapple with. They are growing up in a country in which living standards have collapsed over the past decade, and where the combination of stagnant growth and high inflation has immiserated any young person who has done the right things to succeed in life: worked hard at school and university, and established a solid career in early adulthood.
Instead they are now priced out of their capital city; the ones that stay know they need to rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad to get on the housing ladder. The green and pleasant land of British imagination feels ever more distant in today's haunted collection of sad high streets.
Any generational pessimism can only come from the well-justified sense that the country is getting worse in a painfully visible way: you need only to look up from TikTok to witness the normalisation of petty crime and the dysfunctional state of schools and hospitals.
But when we invoke Gen Z to fight any of our culture-war battles, we're not really talking about them. We are talking about ourselves. In truth, Gen Z does not exist. It is a phantom.
We have all heard the stories about Gen Z giving up on liberal democracy. But a recent poll by the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow has found that 57 per cent of young people prefer democracy to dictatorship, while 63 per cent of them are optimistic about their personal lives and believe it will be better than their parents.
The idea of a coherent group that unites people born between 1997 and 2012 makes no sense – not least because the immigration over the past 30 years has radically transformed, and continues to transform, what constitutes a young British person.
A study by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life this week found that a majority of British Muslims over the age of 65 primarily identified as British. But if you look at Muslims in their 20s they identify first as Muslim rather than as British.
In light of these changes, it is no surprise Gen Z are more 'spiritual' and more 'socially conservative' than their predecessors. The key word that is missing in these conversations, though, is 'some'. Some Gen Z are more conservative; some are more religious. But many are not.
When we talk about Gen Z we are obliquely talking about a loss of control in the direction of our country's future: the transformative demographic impact of immigration; the remarkable diversity of values expressed through modern technology; a political status quo that is utterly broken and with no discernible movement that can restore the nation to strength.
We talk so much and so desperately about Gen Z because, as a nation, we have very little sense of who we are.