Gen Z's Mental Health in a Pandemic
Note from Malick: Hi there! It’s so good to see you. I haven’t blogged in a month of Sunday’s as my grandma would say😂. But! I am back…and for good reason. My Social Media + Mobile Journalism class at Ithaca College is requiring we post blog posts to our websites. My blogs will sometimes be centered on the evolution of the media industry as that will relate to readings for homework. Other times, like for this post, I’ll be focusing on my class beat: Gen Z meets innovation. Innovation being everything from creating a new world in a pandemic, to calls to defunding the police following a refreshed fight for racial justice; and how our lives take increasingly involve new technologies. I’ll try to keep it personal, but I’m going to have to throw some facts in for school purposes. I’m so excited to begin this ride with you! Here’s my first blog for class:
Earlier today in Target I heard someone yelling, “Excuse me is the word! In case no one ever taught you that, it’s excuse me!” Less than an hour later at the Apple Store, in a completely different scenario, things began to escalate between a customer and an employee attempting to direct them to a socially distant line. Thankfully, he listened but not before frustrating the employee. Seeing this today helps me confirm what I’ve heard time and time again since the pandemic began -- everyone just feels so much more on the brink of bad. It’s as if people have been brought to a place by the pandemic, its effects, and the highlighting of racial divisions in this country, so much so that the smallest thing can push them over the edge.
For Gen Z, my generation, and the youngest generation of our time -- we have been dealing with the economic effects as well as the physical and mental health effects that this moment in time has placed on us.
Mental health awareness has been something our generation has championed and valued in ways unlike the ones that come before us. In Snap, Inc.’s Snap Partner Summit this year the brand’s Global Head of Consumer Insights, Lauryl Schraedly shared important findings. Snapchat’s population is made up of mostly young community members and they found that “six in ten [snapchatters] say that mental health is the cause they care most about.” I feel like it’s really telling that more than half of the community members care about mental health the most of any cause and see it as an issue of not just high priority, but the highest priority. Schraedly also explained that among caring about our friends, our family, and our community “eighty percent of snapchatters are concerned about COVID-19.” These two statistics together -- found from a reliable source that Gen Z lives on -- are really telling because one has clearly affected the other. The coronavirus pandemic has made it so that we have an additional hazard that could keep the people we care about the most from being healthy - whether that is physically, emotionally, mentally; or all of the above.
KGO-TV in San Francisco, CA in connection with a mental health town hall they held to have a conversation for their viewers on the topic at hand, found that 18-39 year olds “say the pandemic has caused a mental health decline” and that the highest percentage reporting a decline was thirty-seven percent and that was among Gen Z. This was compared to twenty-seven percent of millennials.
Call me crazy, but what if our generation cares about mental health so much -- because we’re suffering so much from poor mental health? As someone who speaks openly about my experiences with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety I feel like that is the truth. No matter the assessment, the current health crisis has clearly compounded the issue.