Gen Z feels alone in their struggles—what they need to hear: Harvard psychologist
As a developmental psychologist at Harvard, I study the experience of growing up across generations and I’ve heard every variation on this theme. To be sure, Gen Z is struggling: Research shows that they’re more likely to report mental health challenges and face greater obstacles to job security than previous generations.
But I’ve also documented how narratives about generational differences can be wildly exaggerated. While conducting research with my co-author Nancy Hill, we studied interviews with college students from the class of 1975. We then re-interviewed those participants, now in their seventies. What we discovered stunned us.
Fifty years later, they remembered triumphal narratives of their experiences navigating college and career. They told stories about the certainty they felt in their choice of profession. They described how they navigated obstacles with confidence and recalled the warmth of friendship and community they felt when they struggled. But listening to the tapes, it turns out that, at the time, they felt just as uncertain and lonely as students today.
This gap between our memory of lived events and reality is a predictable human phenomenon. According to the peak-end rule, we recall the most emotionally intense moments and the endings of experiences, while the messy middle fades.
Forgetting the messy middle — the hard, confusing parts of our experiences — isn’t a problem in itself. It becomes an issue when we leave out the parts young people most need to hear. Each time we tell these incomplete stories, we risk building barriers, leaving them thinking: I guess I’m the only one struggling. Everyone else had it figured out.
There’s a better way to help when we’re talking with young people. Try these four things:
1. Resist the ‘kids these days’ framing
Instead, ask yourself: How did I feel the first time I met a roadblock — before I had it all figured out? What was it like to fail for the first time? The first heartbreak or rejection letter lands harder when you don’t have the lived experience to put it into a broader context.
By tapping into the emotion of those experiences, you can enter the conversation with empathy instead of judgement.
2. Listen more, talk less
Don’t assume that your outcome or your uncertainties mirror those of the Gen Zer you’re talking to. Ask questions before you jump in with advice. Probe for emotional details of what they are going through by asking: “What are you most worried about?”
Help them identify the emotions behind those concerns, like embarrassment over failure, fear of the future, or grief over the loss of what they had hoped for.
Then give them the space to process those feelings. Each of those emotions calls for a very different kind of response, and you can meet them where they are by allowing them to frame the conversation.
3. Share your current challenges
It’s tempting to tell stories about the past when we want to help inspire young people. But we can also connect with them based on our current experiences. Rather than telling a story from when you were their age, lean into stories about the present day.
Share a more recent challenge at home or work that relates to what they’re experiencing and how you’re thinking about solving it. It’s helpful for them to see the emotion of a puzzle still in process and to know that you can relate to what they’re going through.
4. Remember the messy middle
If you do have a good example to share from the past, you can overcome the peak-end framing so that it can genuinely help.
Before sharing your own story about the class you barely passed in college or the job you had your heart set on that didn’t work out, take some time to think back and tap back into the emotions you felt.
Lead with that part of the experience to connect with what young people are feeling in the moment. You can still tell them how everything worked out in the end, if that’s the case, but make sure your story doesn’t make the answer seem quick and easy — since it’s unlikely to have been either.
By sharing a more authentic version of our own stories, we’re far more likely to build connections with young people and help them develop the skills they need to overcome obstacles on their own journeys. In fact, that’s the part young people most need to hear when they’re struggling and doing the hard work of trying to figure things out.
Alexis Redding is a developmental psychologist and leading expert on young adulthood. She is faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she runs the Transition to Adulthood Lab and is the Faculty Director of the Mental Health in Higher Education program. She is coauthor of “The End of Adolescence” and the editor of “Mental Health in College.”
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