The Decibel - Why Gen Z is lonely and what they’re doing about it

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

What does it mean to be connected in the world today? Gen Z – the cohort born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s – has been inundated by social media and smartphones, but they’ve also been hampered by years of social distancing in the pandemic. So, what effect has that had on them in terms of their social connections? The Decibel spoke to several Gen Zers, including Globe reporter Pippa Norman on what life is like – their hopes, anxieties and the way they want to push back against stereotypes. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

If you had to sum up your generation in just a few words, what would you say? Recently, reporter Pippa Norman looked into how academics who study generations describe young adults born after 1996, also known as Gen Z. I found kind of a cacophony of terms. We had chronically online, anxious, diverse, pragmatic, woke. And it's not just researchers who have applied these labels. Gen Z themselves feel these stereotypes. You know, when you talk to people about the Gen Z, you know, you instantly just refer back, oh, there's the social media kids. That's Sean Burke. He's 27. You know, those are the ones that do everything virtually. It's online. You know, they're kind of lazy in that sense.

They don't want to have to push themselves into those realms of being uncomfortable where you have to meet new people and, you know, be in a situation that, you know, it's not just you in your room playing video games or whatever. Here's Veronica Korchagina, who's 25. I think people think of, when they think of Gen Z, they think of Greta Thunberg. Equality, equity, gender rights, fighting against sexism, racism. It's very queer. It's, I feel like, very loud, very free. And for 23-year-old Grenville Almeida, he's sick of other generations assuming that Gen Z is only here for one thing. The common stereotype that I come across is, oh, you're a Gen Z, you like clubbing.

I'm like, no. Yes, I like going out, but I would rather prefer going out hiking or biking or, you know, for like more adventurous things. But there's one more common descriptor that has people really worried about today's young adults. Here's Pippa again. And kind of the big one that headlined the article, lonely. But is that actually the case? Is Gen Z really the loneliest generation? And if it is, what's behind that? So Pippa is here to explain what exactly the research says around Gen Z and loneliness, and how people like Sean, Veronica, and Grenville

are finding creative ways of meeting people in a post-pandemic society. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Pippa, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me, Mainika. So normally we don't start interviews by asking such personal questions, but I do want to start this one because I think it's important. I want to start it with this question. How old are you, Pippa? I am 22 years old. Okay. So you are kind of right in the middle of the Gen Z or the Gen Z, we should say. I guess either one works, but you're in the middle of that generation. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's get

right into the research on Gen Z. Now, Pippa, I know that you spoke to Stanford University researcher Roberta Katz, who for the record is not part of Gen Z, but she did decide to study this generation. What did her research find? Yeah, so Roberta surveyed 2,000 people between ages 18 and 25 from the UK and the US, and she interviewed 120 of them. The ones that she interviewed were on college campuses in those countries. Kind of the most interesting revelation and surprising one to herself and also me was that of the 120 Gen Z, all but one said that their favorite form of communication was in person. That kind of seems to go opposite as to what the stereotypes you were talking about before, right? About chronically online.

Yeah, yeah, which is kind of where this all gets really interesting. And then there was a few other interesting things she found. She found that Gen Z tends to be very social. We're bonded by humor. We are fairly committed to our laptops in university, we still like to be together and in person. So even if we're not talking to each other or looking at each other, just being with another person in that space is nice. We talked about the idea of loneliness before and the idea of Gen Z being the loneliest generation. Where does that idea come from? Yeah. So what I've seen is it comes from, like I said, that sense of us being digital natives and this, I think, perception that we are always on our phones or always online or on social media, which isn't necessarily untrue. I think we are on our screens a lot more than generations before us.

But I think where it gets a little bit off track is that people think that that isolates us. And I think that's where we're seeing that's not necessarily the case. And what it is actually doing is it's fatiguing us of these screens and it's kind of empowering us to get off of them and connect in ways that aren't online. And do we have any numbers, like any stats, I guess, to back up this idea of loneliness? Yeah, yeah, we do.

So in 2021, a study report by StatsCan said that people aged 15 to 24 reported the highest percentage of loneliness felt by any group. And it is important to note that that was still kind of pandemic times. So I guess the big question, like, what causes this level of loneliness? If, you know, if we're saying this is and the pandemic happened at a time that has sent us all into like a working from home mode or a hybrid mode. That's also a factor. Yeah. So I think what's key with Gen Z here is that the pandemic and lockdowns and this isolating period happened at a time when a lot of us were in high school or university, usually kind of the most social times of your lives. You know, you're in residence at university, you're in a high school. I know for me, like I missed my second year of university,

which was my first year of living in a student house with, I had like five other roommates and I pretty much only lived with them for a couple of months before we all got sick of working from the house and we all went home to, you know, wherever we were in Canada. These lockdowns happened for us in Gen Z at a very formative time in our lives. And that's kind of how we're seeing this play out. Yeah. So even though lockdowns, of course, were difficult for everybody, maybe, you know, slightly different challenges, I guess, for this generation. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, what does loneliness look like then for people in this generation? I think for Gen Z, we have this loneliness happening at a time when a lot of us are going from either school to school or school to work.

And that pipeline these days is a lot different. So when I chatted with Roberta, she... This is the researcher at Stanford. Yes, the Stanford researcher. When I chatted with her, she said that for her, it was kind of a given, like you went from school and you knew you were going into work. And so you went from a community to a community. And now we often see maybe you're even taking some time off after high school, or maybe you are going into a job, but it's remote or yeah, it's a hybrid workplace. So you don't, you're not necessarily going from community to community anymore in such a straightforward way. And I think that is

something that's playing into Gen Z's loneliness. And I know personally, I've also moved cities twice in about the span of a year. And so landing in those cities, not necessarily being in school or being in a specific job means that when you land, you really don't have any automatic community. And I think it's that loss of an automatic community at every stage of your life that really can make you feel lonely. And what about like the individuals you spoke to who are also in Gen Z? Can I ask, like, what did they say about their experiences with this kind of thing? Yeah, they all had really interesting stories in the sense that, like, Veronica was leaving school at the time of the pandemic, so going not necessarily into work or another school

degree, but kind of just going into this, this lonely state, I wasn't initially intending to do my master's in the States, but COVID changed my plan, travel was not as accessible as before. So I decided to stay in Toronto, I continued living at home. So it was like, it was a difficult time for sure. Sean moved cities during this lonely time. So that was, you know, it's difficult to make friends in a new city without a pandemic going on. So I remember it being, you know, tough sometimes where, you know, again, I'd get to a weekend and for the first time in my life, I'd be sitting there and being like, I don't know what I'm going to do for the next two days. You know, I don't have, you know, my friends, you know,

they can't just drive up four hours and I didn't know who to reach out to. And I couldn't just, you know, text my friends to come up. And then Grenville moved countries. For me personally, 2020 and 2021 was a bigger change because me as a person, I'm, I have a lot of friends. I'm very extroverted. And I used to go out to meet my friends like literally every day after work. And when that suddenly stopped, it was like I was in a prison for like a year, just between my four walls. And I didn't know what to do. So like you said, meeting new people, finding community, those are kind of always things that are difficult. But it seems like there's kind of the circumstances for Gen Z to do this at this point in time.

And, you know, in the last few years are actually more difficult maybe than before. Yeah. Yeah. I think circumstances are key. We'll be right back. So Pippa, Gen Z had a very interrupted social start to their adulthood because of the pandemic and all the changes that came as a result of that. So what are people doing about that? What are Gen Zers that you've talked to? What are they doing? Yeah, I think this is where this is my favorite part of it because we get to get into like the creativity that Gen Z has and how we're bringing that to this. So what we're seeking out are these third spaces. The idea of a third space is a term that was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s.

When I kind of bring that term up, I like to give examples like Central Perk and Friends or Luke's and Gilmore Girls. This idea of a space that'sk and Friends or Luke's and Gilmore Girls. This idea of a space that's outside of work or home. Those are great millennial references. I appreciate those. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. And so they're a place outside of work and home where we can find community and connect with each other. And so do we have some examples of that? Like currently, like what are those third spaces that people are finding? For Veronica, who I chatted with, she goes to arts events. She's big in the arts community. I found out about these life drawing art classes through my colleague who runs them.

And so I whenever I attended them, I would attend them with my friend And we would kind of have that as a hangout time for the two of us, but also as a nice opportunity to meet new people. And I'm always looking for those. And there's a social aspect there as well with she described how they would sometimes like rotate canvases to as a drawing exercise and stuff like that. Everyone was started by sketching the head of the model, and then you pass it along. And then the next person will sketch the upper part of the body of your drawing. So it becomes kind of like this group portrait of this model, which is really interesting. And then you get to start having conversations with people meeting new individuals, as you know, sharing your experience of art, things like that. I find sports are a really big one for Gen Z.

So Sean was a great example of that. He started a volleyball team in a recreational league in Toronto. Eventually, some friends got together and said, hey, let's put together a team. And I was like, yes, 100%. One, I love volleyball. I love the whole idea of beach volleyball too. It's way more fun.

It was nice to bring people from both my work, but then also they extend invites to their friends that would come out and, you know, sub in when needed. And then you get to meet them and, you know, you get to see the relationship that, you know, a close coworker friend of yours has with someone that they grew up with. And then Grenville is like such a good Gen Z example because his supper club event, which is already very Gen Z, he found through Instagram, which is even more Gen Z. While scrolling through Instagram, I came across a palette project, and they were hosting a supper club. So coming from India, supper club as a term was very new to me. So firstly, what intrigued me was like, what is supper club? So I started

googling that what is supper club and how much it is and what happens and suddenly i realized that supper club is a place where everyone meets eat food random people you meet and i think the best way to i think have a conversation with anyone is through food and i attended it and the best part was like it was great food the hosts were really nice it was they were really friendly I'm still in touch with so many all of them and I met three guys who are my age and while eating food we started talking about okay from where are you where you've come from which college you study but little did I realize that that one conversation is going to get me stuck with these guys for the rest of my life I guess right now the fun fact that I like about that one that didn't make it into the article is that he chose it because it was on Super Bowl Sunday and he didn't know anything about the Super Bowl. So it was his way

of going to a space where he could learn something. There was a topic of conversation and he also got to make some really good friends. Can we linger on this idea of the third space for just another minute here? Because I think this is interesting. It's a space that's not home and not, you know, work, I guess, or school. Why is it important to have this other space that you can be into, especially like for this, when you're at this point in your life? Yeah, yeah. I think for Gen Z in particular, like there's been some literature on the decline of third spaces. They cite things like the rising cost of real estate and living, and also the migration of

people outside of urban centers, which might make it more difficult to get together with people. For Gen Z in particular, you know, a lot of us are living with our parents for longer, just to save money on rent and save costs in general. A lot of us also have more roommates for longer, perhaps, you know, you might be in your 30s and still living with some roommates. And so in order to get away from that space and make friends with people that you're not necessarily living with or working with is just becoming really, really important for us. Yeah. So what exactly, though, is motivating the drive for in-person interactions, like as opposed to more online interactions? Why is the in-person important? So when I spoke with Roberta, the researcher from Stanford, she said that there

was a few things that Gen Z particularly likes about in-person interactions. One is that we can read body language and other cues that we might not get online or through social media. We can also tell if our conversation partner is multitasking, which might be important, you know, to have somebody's full attention. And we can also really get to know that person and understand them on a deeper level that you might not ever get on social media or by just meeting somebody online. We've been talking about these third spaces. Of course, these have existed for ages though, right? So what is different about how Gen Z is using them?

What makes it different is the use of social media to kind of cultivate these spaces. So for Sean, for example, within his volleyball team, there's group chats. And those group chats with those team members has led to other in-prison hangouts outside of volleyball entirely. Anytime any plans get made, group chat's made instantly. Whether it's a vacation, whether it's at a bachelor party, or it's our volleyball. We have a volleyball team group chat on iMessage, I think it is. And in theory, yes, that's used to,

hey guys, this is the time of the game, make sure to get there. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't text flying in that group chat every day of the week about different things going on. You know, it's a Friday night and saying, hey guys, like, you know, me and X person, we're going out here tonight, you know, come by to swing by and let's catch up. Let's, you know, do something fun. Oh, hey, like I found some free time out of all about card this weekend. You know, if you guys are interested, come through here. And then it kind of the domino effect is it leads to those other opportunities to get to, you know, connect with people and plan events and meet all their friends. So that's kind of an example of like this one

third space morphing into other third spaces through the means of social media or the internet, which is pretty cool. And Veronica also said how she met people through these art classes. I personally really enjoy those small interactions that don't necessarily lead to anything, but in some cases they do. And I have met this one person actually who works in finance at a bank

and we've exchanged contacts and we follow each other on social media and we still stay in touch. It's other on social media and like we still stay in touch. It's like I feel like one way to stay in touch in 2024 is by, you know, liking each other's Instagram stories or commenting on them. So just before I let you go here, Pippa, we started by talking about how other generations have defined you, have defined Gen Z, but I want to know what you think. How would you define yourself? That sounds like a very deep question. It does sound like a deep question, doesn't it? Yeah, I think I would define my generation in

general. Some of the things I thought of was, I think we're pretty forward thinking. I think that's something we kind of have to be at the moment. I think we're creative, like I said, also very like self-organizing and self-aware. And one of the things that comes to mind is when I was chatting with Roberta, the Stanford researcher, she said that Gen Z has one foot in the future more than other generations. And I think, you know, whether you work with or you're a parent of a Gen Z, this is something that is worth kind of noting and recognizing. How do you understand that, one foot in the future? What does that mean to you? We're very forward looking. Like we know that climate change and other factors are like our world is changing and it's changing quite quickly, I think, compared to perhaps other times. And I think we're all very conscious of that and trying to plan for that and figure out how we can make it the best version of itself for us.

Peppa, it's been so great to have you here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.