by Mark Tapscott, PJ Media:
Interesting analysis this morning from Axios in a “Deep Dive: Inside the Mind of Gen Z.” The piece pulls together a bunch of data points and quotes from experts to provide a snapshot of a generation that, at least in my humble opinion, is in deep trouble.
Here’s the key data from the Axios analysis:
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“By the numbers: Gen Z (defined as people roughly ages 12 to 27) reports the poorest mental health of any generation, according to a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation report.
- “Just 44% of Gen Zers say they feel prepared for the future.
“The big picture: They dodged familiar teen pitfalls — with lower teen pregnancy rates and lower rates of alcohol use. Instead, they’re grappling with alarming rates of loneliness, depression and suicidal thoughts.
“Zoom in: Partly by choice and partly out of necessity during the pandemic, Gen Z socializes online, rather than in person, far more than previous generations. That’s not healthy, experts say.”
I suspect that many PJ Media readers will immediately grasp the connections within those datapoints, so let’s do a little digging of our own and bring them to the surface in a way the Axios analysis avoided.
First, note that less than half of the respondents feel prepared for the future. For those still in or just entering adolescence, that’s no surprise, but there are millions of Gen Zers between the ages of 21 and 27.
Not feeling prepared for the future is another way of expressing significant insecurity and anxiety about their purpose and prospects in life, which ultimately is a spiritual issue.
So, it’s no coincidence that Gen Z is also the least faith-oriented, as found by the Survey Center on American Life”
“In terms of identity, Generation Z is the least religious generation yet. More than one-third (34 percent) of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated, a significantly larger proportion than among millennials (29 percent) and Generation X (25 percent). Fewer than one in five (18 percent) baby boomers and only 9 percent of the silent generation are religiously unaffiliated.”
This being the case, nobody should be surprised that, as Axios describes it, Gen Zers are grappling with alarming rates of depression, loneliness and suicidal thoughts. What Axios doesn’t highlight is the related factor of absent fathers, which is particularly acute among Blacks but is steadily increasing among Whites as well.
“Over 45 percent of single mothers with children under the age of six live in poverty, while married couples with children have a single-digit poverty rate. Decades of research have also shown that children raised in homes with married parents have better social and emotional outcomes than children in any other arrangement,” writes Heritage Foundation Research Fellow Delano Squires.
As Squires notes, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued the famous report bearing his name on the Black family in 1965, one in four Black children were born to single mothers. Today, that percentage is 70 percent, and among Whites, the number is nearing 50 percent.
