Generation Death

How many times have you heard or said something along the lines of, “Okay, I’m going to go kill myself now?” For any other generation, this statement might seem very concerning. For us, this seems like a perfectly normal reaction.

Why is this? Why has Gen Z become so casual about death?

We are a generation that is constantly surrounded by death and violence. While we may not have been around for major wars like the World Wars or Vietnam, death has surrounded us in other ways; terror attacks, school shootings, mass murders, and the growing influence of media. Occurrences such as the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando have become so horrifically normal that we are rarely fazed by death anymore. So to make sense of it all we make it into a joke.

We also grew up during the recession, so we didn’t grow up with the innocent mindset that nothing bad would ever happen - we watched a lot of our parents lose their jobs or suffer in some way. Therefore, we have not grown up to be the most optimistic generation. Our levels of stress don’t help either. According to a study, the current high school student has the same amount of stress as a mental patient in the 1950s (Leahy). See a problem there? If we are constantly under this amount of stress and are expected to handle it with no problem, of course we are going to say self-deprecating things.

Although the importance of mental health has become more mainstream, adults still seem to want to blame our stress on technology rather than pressures placed on us by society. With the growing cost of college, the growing amount of college debt, and the decreasing chance of getting a job without a degree, smartphones are the least of our worries. In 2015, more than 3 million teens have had a major depressive episode and 6.3 million have some type of anxiety disorder (Schrobsdorif). Just in recent years, school systems have begun to realize the need for increased mental health support. So maybe these statements about death have just become a part of our rhetoric, or maybe they stem from our generation’s declining mental health and our observations about the precarious state of the world around us. We need some way to express it.

Work Cited

Leahy, Robert L. “How Big a Problem Is Anxiety?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 30 Apr. 2008, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anxiety-files/200804/how-big-problem-is-anxiety.

Schrobsdorif, Susanna. “The Kids Are Not Alright - Anxiety & Depression at All Time High.” D. Knight Marketing & Consulting Group, 6 June 2017, dknightmarketing.com/kids-not-alright-anxiety-depression-time-high/.