Is Gen Z Touting Mental Illness To Be Trendy Or Are They Just The Most Unhealthy Generation Yet?

Gen Z has been named the most depressed generation, with the highest rates of suicide and diagnosed anxiety of any generation yet. I’m an early-born Gen Zer, and my generation is complicated, to say the least, but it has also gone through a gauntlet that wasn’t of its own making. Gen Z has lived through a debilitating time period, and disaster and negativity always seem to distract the minds of youth from nurturing positivity, lifestyle balance, and closeness with loved ones.

The war in Iraq, terrorist attacks like 9/11 and ISIS, riots and mass school shootings in the U.S., and the war outbreak between Russia and Ukraine have all been terrible tragedies. And those who aren’t physically affected by violent events can still be triggered emotionally and develop anxiety from them, especially from disturbing news updates, and even more so if they have family members in the military or police force. Kids are often now afraid to go to school, and many people are worried we’ve seen the start of World War III. Then there’s the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, an event that shook the entire world’s population.

Given the state of the world, it’s easy to assume that Gen Z’s mental health is just the victim of circumstances, but there is also a trend on social media to publicize, romanticize, and even fake mental health disorders. So which is it? Is Gen Z legitimately the most depressed generation, or is that depression self-imposed? Or is it a mix? To sort it out, let’s take a closer look at the significant cultural and historical influences working on Gen Z.

The Covid-19 Pandemic

The historical era of the Covid-19 global pandemic and international lockdown was plagued by a fear of the unknown surrounding a new virus, causing many to panic for their life and the lives of their loved ones. The isolation and work insecurity with worry about their future pushed the youth especially into the deep end of anxiety and depression. The National Survey of Children’s Health found that the rates of anxiety and depression in minors soared by more than 1.5 million in 2020 (9% -12%). A study from Boston University saw the biggest jump in depression and anxiety rates in the ages 20 to 24 by nearly 33% in 2021 (1 in every 3 Americans age 18 or older).

Covid was especially hard for young people, who should have been at the stage of living new experiences, forming new relationships, and preparing for their professional life. Instead, they were stuck with Skype calls for personal interactions and sharing toilet paper memes for fun. Moreover, the rise in domestic abuse made home life even harder for the youth; although some families benefited from spending more quality time together, others had a more difficult experience with the stress of work loss. And any pre-existing dysfunction was only exacerbated by having less room to blow off steam during lockdowns. Adolescent suicides and drug/alcohol problems increased. Political tension around major debates such as the Covid vaccine only added to the confusion and division (read more articles on the vax here).

A Cultural Darkness

Additionally, Gen Z has been nurtured in a culture of death, where euthanasia has been made a legalized choice in many areas, death by alcohol and drug overdose is not uncommon, and legalized abortion has been in practice for decades. Although the overturn of Roe vs. Wade in 2022 changed things for the abortion industry, abortion is still widespread throughout individual states.

Gen Z has been nurtured in a culture of death.

Besides the fact that it is a crime against basic human rights and the natural law to kill a baby in the womb, abortion has been shown to cause mental illness, including anxiety, depression, and abortion-specific post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or post-abortion stress syndrome. A 2008 report by the American Psychological Association concluded that “it is clear that some women do experience sadness, grief, and feelings of loss following termination of a pregnancy, and some experience clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety” (read more articles on abortion here).

Entertainment’s Promotion of Hookup Culture

Moreover, the entertainment industry doesn’t prioritize a culture of truth, beauty, or mental peace for the youth. Graphic sex scenes have become normalized on TV and show unnecessarily explicit content and lots of it, such as in Outlander, 50 Shades of Grey, Euphoria, Bridgerton, and White Lotus. Casual sex is normalized in movies and even romcoms, such as Wedding Crashers and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Shows like Gilmore Girls and Gossip Girl (as classic as they may be) or newbies like Ginny & Georgia indicate it’s the norm for teens to sleep around, making casual hookups seem either funny or just “part of the maturing process.” 

With hookup culture normalized, kids have grown up accepting it and suffering the consequences. Infidelity and casual sex are more common than rare and contribute to feelings of guilt, abandonment, emptiness, depression, and regret, especially among young women. Sometimes women do take advantage of guys being available; guys aren’t always casual womanizers. However, it’s a scientific fact that women’s physiology is wired to become more attached after sexual interaction than men’s, even with just kissing outside of sex, because they have higher oxytocin levels than men. So, young women who are letting young men casually hook up with them in order to feel valued and accepted are setting themselves up for heartbreak and insecurities. Sadly, this isn’t explained in sex-ed classes. In 2017, a National Health Statistics report showed that over half of U.S. teens have had sex by age 18. 

Social Media Connection – or Depression?

According to the Mental Health Foundation, loneliness is strongly linked to symptoms of mental health and can affect boys and girls differently, associated with elevated depression in girls and elevated social anxiety in boys. Gen Z is the most digitalized generation yet, and the youth are often very tech-savvy and independent. However, the majority of young people are in fact feeling more alone than before social media, even though it seems that people are more closely connected than ever. Covid definitely contributed to the widespread loneliness and isolation, but there was a concern even before the pandemic’s lockdown, and social media is the guilty culprit.

Studies show that social media can be responsible for feelings of insecurity, isolation, loneliness, depression, and even suicide. The youth are easily influenced and want to feel like they are part of a community; they want to feel “cool” and want things that other people enjoy. Instagram is the digital form of rose-rimmed glasses, and TikTok has created concerns on multiple levels. With filters and highlight reels creating a romanticized vision of experiences, young people can easily become depressed and even anxious by comparing themselves to others and their digital lives.

With the comparison factor and publicized appearances, body dysmorphia and eating disorder rates have soared. Not to mention, cyberbullying has become a serious concern and has been shown to be linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and mental health issues – and this goes beyond angry Facebook moms. A JAMA Network study showed that the suicide rate in ages 15 to 19 years and 20 to 24 years peaked in 2017, with a main contributing factor being increased social media use. 

Social media isn’t bad in itself – it’s a tool, and its effect depends on how you use it. Sure, it’s a convenient and fun way to bond, especially with friends and family who live far away, but social media should be used to enhance existing relationships and form new ones (besides using it for work purposes), instead of as an escape from the present and a socializing substitute. For many, it’s the primary means of communication and has made intentional interactions a rarity. 

Not to say other ages haven’t been affected by this issue, but Gen Z has encountered this rising digital phenomenon at a crucial stage in emotional maturity development. Parents should monitor their young children’s activity (have access to the account/set a time limit for app use) and encourage personal activities with friends over being online. This also serves as important prevention for porn exposure. 

Porn – Not a Question of If, but When

Porn is just a virtual channel of hookup culture, and pornographic content is more easily accessible than it ever has been, especially online. In 2019, PornHub recorded 42 billion visits, which is an average of 155 million a day, and that’s just one source. Porn watching creates a spiked dopamine rush in the brain, making it extremely pleasurable and addictive. Adult users concede it can be as addictive and destructive as alcohol or drugs, which is even more of a concern for minors. The industry actually targets youth between the ages of 11 and 14 because their developing brains lack maturity and they’re very easily influenced and are susceptible to addiction. 

Porn is non-contact sexual abuse for a child and graphically strips them of their innocence.

It’s not if, but when a child is exposed. Age 13 is when the average person watches pornography for the first time, with some starting as young as 8 years old; for many, it’s the beginning of a lifelong habit. Porn is non-contact sexual abuse for a child and graphically strips them of their innocence. Youth who are exposed to porn and develop an addiction can have problems later on with self-esteem, romantic relationships, erectile dysfunction, keeping a job, and more (read more articles on porn effects here). 

We live in an extremely sexualized culture, where boundaries are consistently being pushed. Even media channels like Instagram and TikTok have borderline soft porn with highly sexualized and revealing content, making it harder for men especially to overcome their porn addiction.

Digital Prostitution

Enter the next big digital addition to Z’s generation: OnlyFans. OnlyFans is essentially online prostitution and social media porn. It hurts young adult females (the majority of the app’s creators) because it cheapens women and is a gateway to the mental health issues involved with sex work. 

A 2021 report by The Avery Center showed that a large percentage of OnlyFans creators experienced feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and burnout from pressure to achieve success, as well as depression, shame, and low self-esteem. Forbes cautions that, as social media merged with pornography, OnlyFans could present loaded psychological impacts on the creators and society as a whole. Even suicide and trafficking have been a result of the site (read more here). And yet, Gen Zers populate the app along with millennials. 

The Modern Agenda Against Femininity and Masculinity

Many young people struggle with self-confidence and self-esteem because of poor parent figures and/or past abuse, and they’ve been confused and brainwashed by the media into having warped ideas of femininity and masculinity. The progressive society of today constantly pushes agendas like radical feminism and transgenderism, both of which emasculate men and hurt women by pushing them to be more masculine and fighting their natural biology.

Radical feminism claims to want gender equality, but it actually just attempts to turn each gender against itself by making women more masculine (and sexist towards men) and making men more effeminate. The natural order of humanity for centuries has been for men to build society and for women to nurture it; feminism hurts women by pushing them to ditch their natural nurturing instincts to be power-driven career women who end up belittling men and cycling through toxic relationship habits.

Women don’t need to have masculine energy to be strong; they have a different kind of strength, a kind the world can’t do without.

I’ve seen this first-hand in several marriages, where the career wife is bossy, controlling, demanding, and makes the decisions, while the husband is a beta male who is effeminate, self-deprecating, and doesn’t have a backbone or authority. If the marriage survives, it’s riddled with sarcasm, bitterness, and disrespect. In turn, the kids absorb the dysfunction and think this type of relationship is fine and/or rebel, which carries over into their future relationships.

These days, girls grow up being told to think they “don’t need a man” and to be a tough “girl boss” and “strong and independent woman,” most of the time never learning to embrace their nature or femininity. Many don’t have strong father figures, so they don’t learn what true masculinity is like, and then, later on, they wonder why they’re miserable. I’m not saying women should be “chained to the stove” or never pursue a professional skill; society has benefited enormously from women’s contributions to medicine, literature, psychology, etc. Nonetheless, women don’t need to have masculine energy to be strong; they have a different kind of strength than men, a kind the world can’t do without. 

The Negative Effects of Birth Control

Feminists actually lead the push for birth control and hailed the pill as part of the “women’s liberation” movement, though it’s actually helped send women into a frustrating rollercoaster of health problems. Most girls have been put on birth control by doctors and/or parents at a young age, without knowing what it meant for their body or mental health, which means many women have been on birth control since they first menstruated. Research shows that birth control disrupts the feminine cycle and exacerbates PMS, often causing depression, heightened cortisol, anxiety, neurotic symptoms, weight gain, and menstrual problems. It even triples the risk of suicide in young women! 

Immunologist V. J. Hamilton explains a bidirectional link between hormonal imbalance and autoimmune disease, stating hormonal imbalances can trigger the onset of autoimmune diseases, and vice versa. We’ve seen how birth control disturbs the cycle’s functions and causes hormonal imbalance, which in turn results in anxiety, mood swings, depression, increased cortisol levels, and now, autoimmune disease. Small wonder why autoimmune diseases are more prevalent than ever. 

Thankfully, holistic medicine holds more influence than just a decade ago, though many medical doctors still prescribe routine antibiotics and steroids rather than find root causes and treat the whole picture. After suffering from rampant autoimmune and hormonal problems, people have been forced to do their own research and find holistic options and alternative physicians who actually want to heal the issue. 

There’s been a surge in health and wellness recently, where young women are now adopting a more feminine energy and practicing a wellness lifestyle to naturally align with their hormones. This also helps improve their mental health by being in touch with their true nature. Women are now learning more about how their hormones work so that they can finally be in control of their well-being and know what’s happening to their body, instead of just feeling like they’re on a rollercoaster blindfolded and randomly feeling irritable and sick. We’re now learning how women should eat and exercise differently from men and how cooperating with their cycle improves their performance, and trends like the hashtag #CycleSyncing are dominating the natural wellness arena as the new women’s empowerment.

In this enlightened revolution against birth control, women are now embracing a type of counter-feminism that simply entails enjoying their natural femininity. This might even bring some light to the sexual identity confusion in Gen Z’s society; research indicates that one of the numerous effects birth control wreaks on women is a change in sexual preferences because of the hormone influence on sexual inclinations.

The Trans Debate

Gen Z has seen a huge increase in “gender fluidity.” Recent poll numbers show that approximately one in five Gen Z members, roughly 21% of Gen Z, identify as LGBTQ+. These individuals have experienced poorer mental health than their heterosexual peers; a study showed approximately a 40% rate of lifetime suicide attempts and similar rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. 

Progressive publications such as The Hill, Center for American Progress, and Mental Health America consistently say that transgender youth suffer from increased mental health problems because of social stigma, but they completely overlook the scientific consequences of trying to alter anatomy and physiology. When linking lifestyle and mental health, we can just connect the dots. The Endocrine Society states that hormonal disruptors cause health problems and hormonal imbalances. Research shows that hormonal imbalance can cause emotional disturbance and mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and irritability. Therefore, if hormonal disruption causes mental health issues, then hormonal drugs and sex change operations directly contribute to mental health problems because they contradict the natural hormonal functions. 

Youth, including children, are being manipulated by the media to disrespect their nature and and are even encouraged to try to change themselves into someone they’re not. It’s a form of abuse for parents to permit a sex change in a child, who lacks the maturity to know what the operation entails for their hormones and bodily functions, not to mention their mental health, for the rest of their life. In 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a legal order that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services must investigate parents for child abuse who allow their transgender identifying minors to receive medical treatment for sex-change operations, sterilization, hormonal drugs, and/or puberty blockers. This action doesn’t “violate the rights” of transgender adolescents, but it rather protects them against abusive and harmful procedures that alter their natural physiology and could induce various mental health concerns. 

If Plato lived in the 21st century, he would declare that transgenderism is evil because it is contrary to nature.

Regarding the question of “rights,” the term “right” indicates a code of ethics, a moral order of right and wrong. Transgender treatments simply contradict concrete biology and attack the natural order of life. The ancient philosopher Plato taught that the main thesis of the natural law is based on the foundational doctrine that “all good is in accordance with nature, all evil is contrary to nature.” So, if Plato lived in the 21st century, he would declare that transgenderism (and any sex-change treatment) is evil because it is contrary to nature.

Acting contrary to our nature always causes an imbalance in the mind as well as the body because the two are intertwined. The Mental Health Foundation states that poor physical health greatly increases the risk of developing mental health issues, and vice versa; almost one in three people with prolonged physical health conditions also suffers from a mental health problem, usually depression or anxiety. A sex-change operation creates such disruption in the body that it is essentially an endocrine disruptor on steroids, and as we’ve seen, endocrine disruptors cause illness in the body and affect both the physical and mental health of the victim.

You can look to natural science to see reality: You won’t see anything other than male and female sexes among animals, and they act according to their nature and sex. Archeologists only identify skeletons as “male” or “female,” and expecting parents only receive ultrasound test results that indicate the baby’s sex as either “boy” or “girl.” This isn’t sexist – it’s natural biology, and how we were born is how we were meant to live our lives.

Fake, Exaggerated, or Real Mental Illness? 

From all the above, we can see that Gen Z has and is suffering mentally. According to a 2017 study by the WHO, Gen Z has seen a 13% rise in mental health conditions and substance use disorders, with depression being one of the leading causes of disability and suicide being the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds. A 2022 survey showed 42% of Gen Z has received a mental health diagnosis. 

Granted, there is now more openness and less of a stigma surrounding mental health. Gen Z is more ready than previous generations to share their emotional and mental health issues and is more likely to seek professional help. With this growing awareness of healthy communication and self-healing, it’s also become a trend to be ever more “vulnerable” with the world and share personal life details on social media. Some might say this often leads to oversharing sensitive details, but what has really been troubling is the phony mental illness and exaggerated self-diagnoses on social media (especially on TikTok). But, you might ask, why would anyone want to feign illness?

Medical professionals have been concerned about the rising trend of faking mental health issues online among young people, also known as digital factitious disorder. Psychiatrist Dr. Marc D. Feldman first coined the term “Munchausen by Internet” (MBI) in 2000 for the medical deception and social contagion that has arisen online, which Feldman stated in 2022 appeared to be due largely to TikTok. In 2014, the Australian blogger Belle Gibson was exposed for faking cancer, and the trend has become an online epidemic since then, especially after Covid-19. If not outright faking, many often exaggerate and/or self-diagnose their “ailment” to a status of a mental health condition. These “illnesses” range from autoimmune deficiencies to cancer, Tourette’s syndrome, and even dissociative identity disorder. A 2021 study found the majority of individuals with MBI are in their teens, with an average age of 18 years old. In other words, Gen Z.

Mental illness is not a joke, a competition, or a special freak show.

Factitious disorder, or faking illness, has been around for a long time; it usually stems from an ulterior motive to get something, to avoid something, or just to gain attention. For MBI, maybe some do this to feel like part of a community (since so many people now share about mental health) and/or to gain more followers in the search for fame (because other people became famous online after sharing their struggles). And of course, many celebrities share their very real mental health issues, which some observers might just regard as part of their special persona that gets them even more attention. But you shouldn’t feel a need to flaunt or exaggerate mental health issues to be “interesting” or “unique.” 

There’s a big problem if any of the young generation is so bored, depressed, and/or lonely to make such a dramatic grasp for attention and validation, basically becoming puppets in order to feel “special.” It also goes to show how social media can feed narcissism and how selfish youth can be, where they want the spotlight on themselves without having a thought for those who are actually affected. Mental illness is not a joke, a competition, or a special freak show. Those who actually have a diagnosed condition or have to be on medication wouldn’t choose to be in that situation, and they do suffer. If you feel unhappy, find a way to help others to get the focus off yourself. If you feel like your mental health is actually declining, seek professional help in counseling.

So, from all the above, we can see that Gen Z's current situation is indeed a mixture of being “trendy” as well as the most unhealthy generation. With all the issues present in society and negative cultural influences, it’s not surprising this is the outcome. However, people still make personal choices, and Gen Z can either keep self-destructing or learn from past problems.

Closing Thoughts

Hardships inspire strength, and illness helps us appreciate health. Gen Z has been through the wringer, but it’s that very factor that can make it a resilient member of society. It is a complicated generation and does include those who have increased mental health issues, not just online phonies. Thankfully, an increasing mentality is seeking professional assistance in your healing journey.

Everyone has issues, but it’s how we deal with those issues and learn from them that matters, not focusing on what created them in the first place. Given the growing mindfulness towards a balanced lifestyle, positive mental health focus, and proper nutrition needed for optimal vitality, there is hope that Gen Z could actually emerge as a more self-aware and enlightened generation than those previously.

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