Gen Z’s behavioral caution hid a deep cultural cynicism about meaning

Evidence

Gen Z didn’t spark much worry among parents about being reckless youth. They drank less, smoked less, avoided drugs, and experienced teenage pregnancy at one third the rate of millennials. In fact, they were hard to quite define: tech savvy and environmentally conscious, yet quite cynical. In The New York Times, essayist Stephen Marche described his Gen Z son’s world as “a dark one—full of corporate triumph and the defeat of public spirit, where systems of meaning are decaying and a lack of clarity is spreading.” But they had a sense of humor about it. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 662

Categorization

• XREF: Marche’s ‘decay of systems of meaning’ echoes the book’s earlier discussion of the death of the sellout and the loss of coherent subcultural reference points.