There’s always a fraction of every generation who insist they were born in the wrong era, romanticizing some mostly imagined past where everything was simpler, better. Usually, those people are idiots. Right now, though, given the state of things, I totally understand where people who think that way are coming from, even if the past they’re romanticizing was more or less the same kind of trash with a different set of causes and villains. I say all of this because, according to a recent NBC News survey, a massive number of Gen Z young adults would genuinely prefer to live in the past rather than deal with the present.
Nearly half, 47 percent, of Americans aged 18 to 29 said they’d choose the past if given the option, according to NBC News. Only 38 percent would stay in the present, and a small minority are willing to risk looking forward to what the future holds. The report says that 62 percent of Gen Z believe their life will be worse than those of the previous generations, while 80 percent think the country is on the wrong track.
Technology plays a big role in all of this. Gen Z is the first generation to grow up fully submerged in the internet, while millennials like myself can remember a defining line drawn between pre- and post-internet American life, though, admittedly, a lot of those pre-internet memories are clouded by the haziness of an increasingly distant childhood.
The NBC news survey shows these Gen Z young adults describing smartphones and constant connectivity as draining and isolating, with their pre-smart phone romanticized fantasy of the past not stretching back several decades but maybe just stopping at the 90s, when things felt modern, lightly cutting edge but not edgelord-y, and optimistic instead of this dull, cynical cyberpunk dystopia we’re in now.
Gen Z Just Want the Simplicity of a Walkman, Even If it Skips
That goes some way to explaining why so much of Gen Z culture is built upon retro trends like cassette tapes, baggy jeans, and a fascination with pre-social media life, both online and offline.
There are, of course, boundaries to all of this that are reflected in the survey. Only 33 percent of young black adults say they prefer to live in the past compared to higher numbers among white and Hispanic respondents, which all combine to paint a picture of a simpler times narrative that maybe wasn’t as simple for some as it was for others.
At the core of all of this is a yearning for something that feels more human, where personal one-on-one connections with real people you can see in front of you are prioritized over our current digitized, ultra-processed form of human interaction. The real test of this yearning will come once Gen Z young adults come of age and start cropping up in positions of power. Will they govern like they grew up in a world that they seem to fully understand is inherently toxic and inhuman? Or will they, by that time, have become one with the cynicism and govern exactly the same way everyone else has, and just foster more of this increasingly inhuman world?
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