| Many things could sum up the Gen Z experience. There's "CHICKEN JOCKEY," the Minecraft movie stunt that, to the relief of AMC employees around the country, seems to have died down. There's Ballerina Cappuccina, an Italian "brainrot animal" you have no business knowing about. There's Benson Boone and his wide array of haters. But none of those things captures Gen Z's crippling anxiety quite like the TikTok at the bottom of Casey Lewis's Substack today:  "I was too anxious when the maintenance man came over so I made a fake work document for a fake company." Her rationale for faking an entire e-commerce content strategy? "I wanted to look gainfully employed 😞💯," reads the caption. And she's not alone, if this comment is any indication: "For anyone else who needs this in the future, there's a fake zoom meeting on YouTube you can play to act like you're attending an important meeting." Some people may say this kind of antisocial behavior could very well be the downfall of modern civilization. But it's kind of genius? Like, Gen Z's capacity for human interaction may be small, sure, but their ability to navigate the craziness of the world — and find humor in it — shows a level of intellect we ought to be appreciating more. It's not as if they don't want jobs! Heck, they're willing to making up fake ones to avoid awkward conversation with the electrician. But Justin Fox says a lot of young Americans who graduated school during the Covid era are still stuck in career limbo, feeling like they haven't yet reached adulthood. Statisticians often refer to these people as NEETs, or "not in employment, education or training." No wonder Business Insider recently declared, "25 is the new 21," which means 30 is the new 25 and so forth. Major personal and professional milestones — promotions, marriage, homeownership, parenthood — might be not just delayed, but postponed indefinitely. Even something as simple as getting a driver's license becomes a burden: Justin says a decline in mental health is partly to blame. In 2024, McKinsey & Co. surveyed a group of job seekers ages 18 through 24, and 14% of them felt that mental health was a barrier to employment. In a similar trend, Harvard researchers found that Gen Zers are flattening the traditionally U-shaped happiness curve. Panic-inducing headlines about Gen Zers "ditching doom spending, ordering Happy Meals, and using ChatGPT for free therapy" to ward off the coming recession certainly don't help. In the UK, where the number of NEETs has jumped by more than 300,000 since 2021, "the phenomenon is particularly pronounced in economically deprived regions — 16% of 16- to 24-year-olds in the northeast of England and 15% in Wales are NEETs, versus a mere 9% in London — and is more prevalent the lower the level of education," Matthew Brooker notes. Similar to what Justin sees in the US, Matthew also found a correlation with deteriorating health: But the generation is far from alone in its struggles. In fact, Matthew says, "Gen Zers share many of the comorbidities of the British state." The UK economy is bracing for a tariff slowdown. The NHS is a mess. School funding is stagnant. Infrastructure is crumbling. Housing is nowhere to be found. And then, as Matthew says, there's the "toxic embrace of social media, whose damaging effects on mental health by now are well documented." The internet has always been a pixelated highway to extreme insecurity, but the rise of short-form video has taken beauty anxiety to a new level. On TikTok, there are 672.9K posts tagged with #plasticsurgery, and Erin Lowry says young Gen Zers are paying inordinate sums of money — on their parent's dime, perhaps! — on cosmetic injectables to "stay youthful," despite still being in their teens: "Between 2019 and 2022, the number of people ages 18 and 19 receiving neuromodulator injections (such as Botox) increased 75% and those getting hyaluronic acid fillers (such as Juvéderm Ultra) jumped 71%," she writes. What's worse, those injectables are often gateways to more dramatic — and expensive — procedures. Hate your hooded eyes? There's upper blepharoplasty for that. Want a baby face forever? Fat grafting — using liposuction to steal fat from one area of your body and injecting it into another — can rejuvenate your cheeks in no time. Want an entirely new, unrecognizable face? The omakase facelift — six hours worth of pain-free surgery! — may be for you. As if the economic and social burden of these unrealistic cosmetic standards weren't enough, David M. Drucker says Gen Z is also having to grapple with an ideological gender split that's never been seen before at such a young age. David says this type of gender polarization "typically characterizes older voters," evidence that "Gen Z has aged prematurely — politically, at least." Some of that shift can be chalked up to media diets — last year, young men were hyped on Joe Rogan while young women were doing the Apple dance, but the divide predated Brat Summer: "It's been almost 10 years since [Trump] came down that escalator, and so for young people, this is the only brand of politics that they know," said Meredith Shiner, a communications consultant in Chicago, told David. All this means is that it's getting harder and harder for men and women to find common ground. "Dating apps are a nightmare" is a common refrain I hear at dinner with my girlfriends. But it might be an even worse hellscape for men: "Young men and young women's experiences through the pandemic have been different. It seems like young women have bounced back a little bit better, they have stronger social networks," Melissa Deckman, author of The Politics of Gen Z, told David. "For some young men, the studies show that they're more socially isolated than young women." In Gen Z's looks-obsessed, anxiety-inducing, politically divergent world, it's hard to form a sentence, let alone a loving relationship. Bonus Economic Anxiety Reading: America's economic weakness is being exaggerated by sentiment surveys – for now. — Conor Sen | 
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