Why it's wrong to paint Generation Z as unpatriotic snowflakes

Recent weeks have witnessed a fresh episode of national hand-wringing about the state of Generation Z. It follows two polls that have brought the mood of those born between 1997 and 2012 back to the top of the public eye.

More than half of young people between the ages of 13 and 27 are in favour of turning the UK into a dictatorship, a poll for Channel 4 declared in January. Thirty-three per per cent agreed the UK would be better off “if the army was in charge”, it also concluded.

That was followed last week by a YouGov poll for the Times which concluded that half of Gen Z see Britain as a racist country and only a tenth would risk their lives to defend it in a war. This, the survey concluded, “revealed a deep erosion of faith in Britain”.

Cue commentariat woe, right-wing attacks on the 'woke' institutions – from schools to universities – which are supposedly to blame for it all, and general criticism from older generations of young people for their snowflakery, self-love and constant whinging.

Culturally, the UK seems to have returned to the late 1960s when war-era parents looked at the hippy movement and similarly concluded that the world was going to hell (Picture: Robert Blomfield Photography) | Getty Images

Back to the late 60s

As is often the case, it is the reaction to the evidence that is as revealing as the thing itself. My conclusion is that while Gen Z may indeed be the ‘anxious generation’, it doesn’t come close to the anxiety that older generations now seem to hold towards the young.

Culturally, it seems we have returned to the late 1960s – another era of uncertainty and radical social change – when war-era parents looked at the hippy movement and their long-haired offspring and similarly concluded that the world was going to hell.

Or perhaps it’s just guilt. How to sum up the world that boomers handed onto their children and grandchildren? It’s characterised by an economy that leaves them worse off than their parents, global uncertainty and war in Europe, a pandemic that cancelled their schooling, and a social media revolution which ensures that all this chaos is delivered personally to the palm of their hands 24 hours a day.

Listening to young people

With that as our inheritance, no wonder many of us in older age cohorts end up blaming young people themselves for their failure to cope rather than take responsibility ourselves. But panic, guilt and condemnation will only get us so far. A better response might be to listen to young people and understand what’s at the root of their views.

We at the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow have been doing just that in recent months. It will culminate later this spring in the publication of our Youth Poll, based on more than 200 interviews with young people which has produced a series of questions based on their concerns.

There’s no single generational view that comes across from these interviews and polling; Gen Z is a heterodox group, perhaps reflecting the splintered and fractured media it’s swamped by. But the more we’ve listened to this generation, the more it’s been possible to see big themes emerge.

One was encapsulated at a public event we held last month at the university which brought together Michael Gove and Humza Yousaf to talk about their lives in politics. Both men spoke intelligently and frankly about the challenges they had faced from their different perspectives but, as is often the case, it was a question from a student in the audience that stuck with me most.

"We see across the globe so many awful humanitarian crises and it feels to people like me that you're just powerless. What are the actionable steps we can take to make a difference?" he asked.

Sense of fatalism

It’s a comment that, I think, speaks to a wider mood among Gen Z: a sense of powerlessness and, at its most extreme, a genuine hopelessness about both the trajectory of their own lives and the world around them.

At a personal level, this is the consequence of the financial insecurity which so many young people are facing in the UK today. Stagnating wages, employment insecurity, and a housing market that is totally out of reach together create a sense of fatalism. “It’s making us settle for less, or delay big dreams,” one 20-something interviewee told us. “A lot of people just focus on getting by, not on what they really want.”

And events across the world don’t help either. We asked young people whether they’d like to get involved in public life and politics. As another interviewee declared: “I think there's a real feeling of hopelessness and frustration amongst young people… I'm not really involved and I don't want to be. The world already feels hopeless enough and, for me, it's easier to stick my head in the sand and ignore it.”

Introspection not the answer

If your personal future seems so uncertain and the world you live in seems so fragile, what’s the point of spending time planning for it or seeking to change what’s so out of control? Better, Gen Z reasons, to focus on what you can control: your own life right now. It sounds pretty rational and reasonable to me.

Gen Zers are aware that introspection isn’t an answer to the great challenges the country and the world faces. As the student at our event a few weeks ago said, what they’re looking for are tangible, practical, actionable ideas that can start to make a difference.

And that’s the challenge for our political leaders. The way to respond to Gen Z’s complaints about the country isn’t to criticise their supposed lack of patriotism or order up lessons on how to be British. It’s to give them a present and a future they can believe in again.

Eddie Barnes is the director of the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow