The Current - Adulting 101: How Gen Z fell behind on basic life skills

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Some schools are offering so-called adulting 101 courses, teaching Gen Zers basic skills like cooking, cleaning or changing a tire. Some social scientists call it “delayed adulthood,” the phenomenon of younger people lacking life skills that past generations took for granted.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It is a sunny day at Toronto Metropolitan University Quad in downtown Toronto. The birds are singing, the trees are starting to bloom, and students are sitting around on the grass or on park benches enjoying the warmth to be young. Or maybe not. These students are technically adults, but they are grappling with what adulthood looks like. Adulting means to me living sufficiently by yourself without the help of another person, you are able to make important life decisions, you're able to survive based on your own skills and responsibilities. It turns out that Gen Z needs a little help with adulthood

or at least some notions of what it means to be an adult. Alden Garcia is in first year. I don't know how to change a tire. I don't have a car at all, so I don't know how to change a tire. I don't have a car at all so I don't know how to sew. I don't know how to do a lot of things other than cooking. I cook, I make my own meals. I learned how to cook by necessity. It was around two years ago because I wanted to have food by the time I get home. Sometimes my mom isn't home and she doesn't have much time to cook. So I started cooking around when I was 18, 17, coming out of high school.

Within the school curriculum, I think it is so important that children are taught financial literacy. A lot of stuff involves money. Going to school, paying for tuition, that's thousands of dollars that most kids don't even work until they're 18, 19, 20. What does paying a mortgage look like? What does paying rent look like? What are the laws around paying rent? How about getting a credit card or opening a bank account? I have a bank account, but I don't even know the technical details of what it is or the

rules around it, like interest rates. Interest rates, for example, I don't know a clue about interest rates. Alden is not alone. Universities and colleges notice that many of their students need help with the basics, and so they started to offer so-called adulting courses for things like basic finance and how to cook for yourself.

On the other side of the quad is Hannah Goldberg with a few of her friends. Hannah is in third year. For me, cooking, no. No, me and my sister do not know how to cook whatsoever. I know a lot of people do not know how to cook either. I have my friend, she lives down here for school. She like buys only like dumplings

and like cookable like burgers. Like I've seen like a huge deal. And I'm kind of thinking, wow, my mom doesn't cook really well. Like when does that come around to me? And as I got older, I never showed interest in it. I think we were able to, me and my sister both, were able to get away with it because we can say, oh, we're studying.

Because we're both kind of, we both want to go down that STEM route. So we kind of got away with that. But it seems like across the board, no one really likes cooking anymore. It's not as prevalent now. I feel like every mother knows how to cook. Now, I know like three people who can cook. And now it's not as like prevalent now. I feel like every mother knows how to cook now And no one knows I know like three people who can cook and now it's so much spending I spend a lot of money eating out I know and I know a lot of people do on the west side of the quad is Bella Hudson

She shares an adulting mishap when I was driving my parents car at one point I got a flat tire and my parents were out of town and I had no idea and so I was just driving on it for Like a few days because I did not realize that it was flat at all because they didn't know how to check the tire pressure so I'm just like yeah stuff like that there's a lot of things that are missed in education about like when you actually become an adult like I had one class about taxes in my health class. I do wish that they had classes that taught how to manage yourself and manage your life. Austin Community College in Austin, Texas

started teaching these kinds of classes. They offer 15 workshops with a focus on life skills. They call it Adulting 101. We're going to get started real quick, everyone. So my name is Ruben Amides. You guys know I work in the advanced manufacturing department. skills they call it adulting 101. We're going to get started real quick everyone. So my name is Ruben Almitas. You guys know I work in the advanced manufacturing department. So this is basic adulting 101.

I chose this. Learn how to use your tools when changing a tire in case of emergency. What I want to do here is to make this soup healthy. You don't have to start with oil. You don't have to start with butter. Just start with the vegetables. The vegetables have enough liquid in it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with this tiny bit of carrots.

Tanks are fairly easy to repair. This is your number one culprit. Check the water over. Loretta E. Dillon has been with Austin Community College for over 40 years and she helped launch this event for the Gen Z students. We have different categories that we focus on a career track, self-care and care for others, financial track and kind of rights and advocacy that range from areas like self-care and basic first aid for yourself. The interesting one that seemed

to catch a lot of support surprisingly this year was just how to sew something instead of throwing it away. How to get that job. How to do your taxes. How to protect yourself. How to work out a personal training plan. How to fix a nutritious meal on a budget. Many Canadian universities and colleges, it turns out, also offer adulting courses and programs,

including the University of Waterloo in Ontario. It has a bunch of online courses in things like healthy eating, how to do laundry, and basic home maintenance. Hey warriors, I'm here with Adrian, campus wellness counselor, who is here to share some wellness programs that are offered this term and why you might want to join me. So first question for you, Adrian.

I didn't see you here. Let's talk shower issues. First, we're going to talk about COV North. Today, we're going to be talking about vacuums. Talking about vacuums. Why are so many young adults clueless about this sort of stuff? Does it actually matter that they don't know how to fix a tire or cook for themselves or use a vacuum cleaner? Jean Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who researches generational differences. She is the author of Generations, The Real Differences Between Gen Z, or Zed,

Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silence, and What They Mean for America's Future. She is in San Diego, California. Jean, good morning. Good morning. You surprised by what you heard from those young adults? Not at all. This is what we see, you know, on average

and all the big surveys that, you know, kids are growing up less independent teens are just less likely to learn how to do all of these adult things as high school students. And then they get to university and they still don't know how to do these things. And so I actually think it's a great idea that, better late than never have these classes

and then they can learn these things before they graduate. The classes are targeted specifically at Gen Z or Gen Zed depending on which side of the border you happen to be on. Just remind us who that generation is. So I define Gen Zed as those born between 1995 and 2012. They're the first generation to have spent their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone and they also are the generation that has really been next level in terms of this what's called a slow life strategy. They are just taking

longer to grow up compared to previous generations. What does that mean, the slow life strategy? So it's a term used in psychology that at times and places, when people live longer, when healthcare is better, and when education takes longer to finish, parents tend to make the choice to have fewer children and nurture them more carefully. And then kids grow to independence later. So that's true when they're eight or nine years old and their parents are dropping them off at school instead of them walking or biking on their own as used to be the norm. It's true in high school when they are less likely to get their driver's

license or go out on dates or go out of the house without their parents or have a paid job at that age. And then in young adulthood, it often means at 18, you're not independent anymore. You're more likely to go to university or college. You are just more likely to be financially dependent on your parents for longer. And as a result of that, people get married later. They have children later. They settle into careers later. And that goes throughout the whole lifespan because middle-aged people look and feel younger than their parents and grandparents did at the same age, and older people enjoy longer lives and more years of good health. How does that play out? I mean, we heard from some of those students at Toronto Metropolitan University in the quad there. You give talks on college campuses. How does that slow life strategy play out among the students that you

meet and maybe from, you know, the staff that's working with those students. So what I hear from staff everywhere I go and university campuses across North America, they will say, I have more and more students who can't make even simple decisions without texting their parents. So it's not all bad. It's nice that I, you know, young adults are close to their parents. On the other hand, if they're not learning how to make decisions on their own and solve problems on their own, that can be challenging. So what I hear is, oh, they have a problem with their roommate, the parent calls. Or I've even heard stories of, oh, they get a bad grade and the parent will call the faculty member.

So this is a problem for a bunch of reasons. First of all, they're adults and parents are not supposed to have access to their grades. Also if they don't learn those problem solving skills at 18 or 19, then they're missing kind of a critical period for learning those skills. And I really like hearing the interviews of the students because what I've noticed is that Gen Z is very self-aware. They're self-aware of a lot of trends and they are self-aware of this. They recognize that they often don't have these life skills that previous generations learned during high school. And they, you know, are sometimes feel out of depth with that. They realize that they just didn't have

the same amount of independence. They were often, for example, not asked to cook or do laundry at home. Their parents did it for them much longer than previous generations had that done for them. And then they get to university and they don't know how to do these things. You mentioned earlier that this is a generation that has grown up in a digital age. They grew up with smartphones put into their hands very, very early on.

Does that play a role in what we're talking about here? It does. So it's more than likely from what we can see, smartphones and social media are not the origin of these trends with the slow life strategy, but they go hand in hand as time went on. So these trends of say teens being less likely to get their driver's license or go out on dates or have a job, those trends started in the 90s.

That's when those numbers started to go down of teens doing those adult activities. So the trends started before smartphones and social media were on the scene. But those technologies helped accelerate these trends in many ways because some of those adult activities, like getting a driver's license or going out of the house involve seeing friends in person. And some Gen Z deans don't see that as necessary, or they just have fewer opportunities to do it, but they also maybe don't feel as much of an urge to see friends in person if the party is on Instagram or Snapchat. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA

and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the GTA, the news you got to know and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. That can lead to all sorts of things. It's not, and we'll get to, you know, whether you need to fix a tire or not, but it also leads to what we see in this generation that maybe they date less, maybe they drink less alcohol, which might be a good thing, but also

can have an impact on, on, you know, behavior when they are out. Does that matter? So if you're asking if it's bad or good, it's both. Um, I think a lot of times in the discussions of these types of generational trends, it's both. I think a lot of times in the discussions of these types of generational trends, there's admittedly a natural human tendency to say, well, but is that bad or is that good? And who

do we blame? And I think that's kind of counterproductive, not to mention inaccurate, because these are big cultural changes. They're affecting all generations in one way or another. You know, we're all in this together. Finger pointing is not really going to get us anywhere. Plus, there are absolutely some good things about this. You know, most parents and educators and public health experts are pretty thrilled that not as many teens are drinking alcohol or having sex, for example, which is also true. But it's not all good because as one example, there's some research to suggest that when young people are trying alcohol for the first time, when they're away from home for the first time, and maybe haven't had any experience

with it, and then they go to college or university, and then they're zero to 60 in a very short period of time. And that can maybe lead to some issues here and there with binge drinking among at least, usually not the majority, but among some people because they just haven't learned how to do it. That's not as common or as big of a concern, I think, as the general lack of experience with independence and decision-making and these practical aspects of life like laundry and cooking and driving and changing a flat tire and just in general what you learn from Doing things without your parents around what you learn doing things when you don't Have that instant? Ability to text your parents and ask for help, that you learn on your own

how to handle these situations. And that these are, I mean, again, I'm not talking about getting under the hood of your car and replacing something in the motor that's not working, but to a lot of people, these are basic aspects of life. Doing your laundry, being able to cook for yourself, being able to vacuum, knowing how a vacuum works and being able to vacuum up the mess in your home or being able to figure out how to ensure that you aren't spending all the money that you have. We use the phrase delayed adulthood.

How concerned are you that there's a generation that doesn't seem to be able to or doesn't have the ability to do those basic skills that a lot of people in past generations just thought that's just part of getting older. Right, and I think that is a concern. And it's even broader than that actually, because I give a lot of talks on generations in the workplace and talk to a lot of managers. And this is what they're seeing at work as well.

It's not just this stuff, this practical stuff in the rest of life and growing up and adulting. It's also that managers tell me all the time, I have to spell things out for my young employees and tell them step by step exactly what to do. I didn't have to do that 10 years ago or 20 years ago. It used to be I could say, okay, we're going to do this project and figure it out. And that this generation says, whoa, I can't do that. You have to tell me exactly what to do step by step. So that lack of independence has these really broad ranging implications. And, you know, again, I do think it's a great idea that universities

have these classes, but ideally we should be starting younger. We should, we could potentially start really young with moving away from this idea that's become so common that parents do everything for children. And that our job as parents is to, you know, take care of kids and all of their needs so we can cultivate them, you know, into these, you know, perfect beings who are going to get into the best university or so on. We're doing them a disservice if we send them off to adulthood without these other skills, like independence, decision-making, practical skills. We as parents. We as parents, yeah. Yes, is what I'm referring to. I have three teenage kids. So sometimes when I say we,

it kind of automatically becomes, you know, parents. And there's a lot of attention paid to this recently, which I think is great. So some parenting books are now saying, hey, you know, even when your kids are pretty young, have them help you cook. They can learn how to do their laundry went by the time they're 10. That by the time they're nine or 10, you can give them a credit card and send them into a store and have them buy a few things on their own. You wait in the parking lot or outside and they can come back to you. Just doing these types of things on their own. And by the time they're teenagers, they should absolutely be doing their own laundry and they should cook. So we've started this in

our house. I've got three teen kids, two of them are still at home. And the younger two, they cook on Saturdays. So they trade off. And so they've learned how to make some meals. And then they have that experience of, oh, I forgot to make the veg and I forgot to put in the rice. Oh, now we're going to eat, you know, a half an hour later, because they didn't do that planning. That was last Saturday. But now I'm guessing next time, my 15 year old is going to be like, wait, I got to put all those things in at the same time so we can eat. You could imagine that there are a lot of people

listening of a different generation who would, I mean, part of this is when I was young, I had to do this and I, and this is, but they would say that this younger generation doesn't understand what it means to be an adult in some ways. Do you worry that there is an older generation that is imposing its idea of what adult it is

on a younger generation and that that younger generation, it just, it doesn't recognize that and it doesn't square with the reality that it's living in? I don't think we heard that in those interviews. I mean, I feel that we heard, and this is certainly what I've seen too in giving talks at universities and at high schools and at middle schools across North

America is that self-awareness is absolutely there with this generation. They know that they've missed out on something. They can't always say exactly what it is until they get to university and they're like, wait a second, I have to cook. How do I do that? I have to do my laundry. Why are my socks pink? I got a flat tire. I had no idea what to do. They know that they have missed out on developing some of these skills. And I will absolutely acknowledge that we have more resources for some of these things now compared to previously., when, when, uh, now compared to, compared to previously, but a lot of the, a lot of times those resources are expensive.

So cooking is a fantastic example of that. Sure. We can order from Uber eats, but if you're living on the university students' budget or even just an entry level employee's budget, that's not a good idea. You're, you're going to end up spending a lot of your discretionary income extremely quickly if you're ordering out all the time. Do you worry about the next generation, generation alpha? The oldest of those folks are in their teens right now. I just wonder what signals they're getting about how this generation is approaching adulthood,

whether there's a similar delay or whether they're approaching it differently. At least so far, it looks like the trends are not turning around. Kids are still very overprotected. Teens are not doing all of the adult things. We don't have a lot of data yet on alphas. It depends on where you have the birth year cutoff. If you do the cutoff at 2012, like I do in 2013,

is the first year for Alphas, then we really don't have much of anything on them yet outside of what their parents are saying. But what their parents are saying is as children, they are not playing outside as much. And that's probably because they're on screens more. So online, Gen Z has decided to call Alpha's crusty iPad kit. That's their name for them. And it's true, Alpha's are the first generation to not know a world without the iPad. Apparently they don't wash their hands before they use it. That's how it becomes crusty, according to Gen Z.

But still, that captures something because they have often grown up with that tablet taking over their childhood. What then would you say just finally, and we've talked about the courses and the courses can be a correction in some ways for adulting, but what would you say to those generations, Alpha and Gen Z, but also their parents, about how to approach adulthood in a way that will allow them to thrive, that will allow them to address a number of the things that you've raised?

Yeah. So my next book is about this. So it's called 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. Rule eight is about real-world freedom, exactly the stuff that we've been talking about, because the rest of the rules are primarily about introducing technology later and then having concrete rules about it when you do. But the real-world freedom part is really crucial. For one thing, if your kids aren't on their phone all the time, what are they going to

do? Well, one of the best things that they can do is all the stuff we've been talking about. They can learn how to cook, they can do their own laundry, they can ride their bike to a friend's house. They can learn independence by doing things like going into a store by themselves or going to camp or You know walking to school or to the park or to a friend's house on their own Just anything that they can do to learn, you know, a degree of independence is is really good and What I often recommend to parents as well is to check out the resources of an organization called let grow

parents as well as to check out the resources of an organization called Let Grow because they have a bunch of suggested activities for both children and teens about how to build a dependence. Are you optimistic for that generation? It feels, I mean, this is a side conversation, but the conversation around technology and the phones has changed certainly this year and it feels like there's momentum behind that but beyond that, are you optimistic for those generations that they will that they will embrace and inhabit all that adulthood Offers and presents. I mean yes and no so I Think you know things usually work themselves out, you know, I think I think Jed's Edges is learning some of those things later

They will learn them eventually It's just you know, there'll be a bunch of money spent on eventually. It's just, you know, there'll be a bunch of money spent on Uber Eats and some pink socks and, you know, lack of independence and so on along the way, maybe even a couple of jobs that didn't go so well because they didn't have those decision-making abilities, you know, maybe a little bit of a tougher road in young adulthood for that reason. But I think, you know, they will eventually work it out in terms of those things. I think my biggest concern is the enormous rise in depression that has impacted both teens and young adults. Clinical level depression has doubled and it did that before the pandemic. This isn't

just a pandemic problem that then is going to go away. It started eight years before the pandemic, which means it has other causes, which also means it's going to be still with us. And that is a really, really, really big concern, very serious mental health issues. And the earlier that someone experiences their first episode of depression, the more likely it is to reoccur throughout adulthood. So that's my biggest fear for GenCed. We'll look for the book in the fall with those steps

as to how to get kids off their devices and out into that real world and all the things that the real world has to offer. In the meantime, Jean, thank you very much for this. Thank you. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.

I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.