The answer to GenZ's struggles: Socialization
Camaraderie, shared interests and personal discipline
Reprinted from
The Baltimore Sun / Thursday, December 5th 2024
GUEST COMMENTARY by Jeff Nelligan
Photo above: Shoes and towels sit on the porch of a cabin, Thursday, June 20, 2024, at YMCA Camp Kern in
Oregonia, Ohio. As the first heat wave of the season ripples across the U.S., summer camps are
working to keep their children cool while still letting the kids enjoy being outside with nature.
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Some time ago, I dropped off my two sons, 11 and 10 years old, at a dormitory for kids playing in
a summer lacrosse tourney in New Jersey.
“You’re going to live the barracks life and you need to get used to it,” I told my sons, alluding to
the tales I told them about my Army experiences as an enlisted infantry soldier at Fort Benning.
Ah, the good old days: 80 guys snoring on cots in an open bay, communal shower area, shrieking
sergeants in a frenetic chow hall.
For my two young sons, this tourney was an initial preview of
that kind of socialization — sharing of sleeping quarters and bathrooms, the nonstop give-and-
take of conversation with strangers, and oh yes, the fun of unceasing physical activity led by
hard-nosed coaches with failure and success in old-fashioned competitions where yes, trophies
went only to the winners.
My sons loved it and from then on through adolescence and beyond they never ceased to seek out
these types of close-in interactions.
I recount this past of social assimilation in an immediate present when two recent works —
“Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt and “Generations” by Jean Twenge — have
documented Generation Z’s struggles fueled by digital addiction, accelerated by COVID-19
school closures and lockdowns and characterized by record levels of depression, anxiety and
loneliness.
The cold, hard statistics are troubling. A Gallup survey found that almost half of Gen Z-ers ages
12 to 26 often or always feel anxious and more than one in five often or always feel
depressed; one in three surveyed are taking anxiety medication to try to find relief. According
to McKinsey & Company, over half (55%) of Gen Z-ers report having either been diagnosed or
received treatment for a mental health condition. Beyond the troubled minds is the physical
deterioration: About 56% of Gen Z-ers ages 18 to 25 are obese or overweight. All of this has led
to the cohort’s relative non-assimilation into the normal functions of social, civic and professional
life.
Hence, as a Dad who’s been around Gen Z and their parents for a quarter century, I use the
“barracks life” as a metaphor for socialization with peers in which camaraderie is established and
sustained, shared interests are pursued toward a goal and personal discipline and self-control
developed so as to overcome or at least ameliorate adversity.
These circumstances conducive to socialization are most obviously available for young people on
athletic teams, but the sports simile is easily applicable to young people in marching band, theater
productions, student council, volunteer and community settings and the robotics club.
Gen Z’s lack of social integration is having a real-world impact; the oldest cohort is entering the
workforce and the early dispatches are not good.
A widely publicized survey by Intelligent.com,
an online magazine focused on student life, of 800 managers, directors and executives involved in
the hiring process revealed that 52% of employers say Gen Z-ers have poor communication skills,
57% say they lack professionalism. Additionally, more than half of employers believe Gen Z-ers
deliver poor-quality work and can’t manage their workload. Another recent survey found that an
astounding 26% of Gen Z-ers said they have taken a parent to an interview.
But it’s not just fed-up managers with angst. According to Gallup, only 31% of Gen Z-ers and
young Millennials say they’re engaged at work and 54% say they’re not engaged, while 15% say
they’re actively disengaged. It’s no wonder that 6 in 10 employers had already fired college
graduates who were hired this year.
My three boys are Gen Z-ers and because of their upbringing in team sports — and minimum
screen time per the wisdom of Haidt and Twenge — perhaps took the barracks life to the extreme.
All three are military officers and two graduated from service academies, the ultimate in barracks
life. One son is a military recruiter on the front lines of seeing Gen Z every day and what he tells
me fits with the alarming statistics above.
How do we reverse this trend? It’s simple, but not easy: parent engagement. Parents must make
sustained efforts to push — yes, push — their children to embrace the life of teams and groups
and develop that social confidence. Equally important, parents must also severely limit their
children’s screen time, starting with a social media contract.
An ideal model is found in the
example of Lenore Skenazy, dubbed “America’s Worst Mom” for letting her nine-year-old son
ride the New York subway alone. She has had tremendous nationwide success with her Let
Grow movement, where parents step back and “give kids the independence they need to grow
into capable, confident and happy adults.”
My once-upon-a-time “barracks life” observation underscores that an engaged kid is a resilient,
confident kid, one whose parents have taught him or her to build strong relationships with the
world outside the front door. If that doesn’t occur, Mom may find herself sitting next to her kid as
she stares across a desk at a bewildered hiring manager, wondering when it all went south.
Jeff Nelligan (jeff@resilientsons.com) is a public affairs executive in Washington, D.C.
