Gen Z and anxiety

February 10, 2024•3 min read

Have you ever felt the need to fact-check your vicar?

I did...

A couple of weeks ago I went to church and listened to the sermon which was part of a series of talks called "the questions Jesus asked".

Now, bear with me because I don't do the religious thing very often but this was quite interesting.

So... our vicar started off a series of questions with, “why do we worry?” At this point my daughter and I looked at each other with knowing glances. My mind flashed back to one of the first times that she expressed her worries aged 9, when her teacher called me to ask me to come into school that afternoon so we could talk about the list of worries she had written and placed in the “worry box” that the teacher had introduced to the class that day.

What did the vicar say?

Back to our thought provoking vicar… who continued to talk about how he believed that we are currently living in one of the most anxiety ridden generations of our time.

This resonated with me.

All the things he said...

Resonated with me and my daughter.

We kept looking at each other with raised eyebrows, nodding in agreement mentally checking off all the things we recognised.

A bit of singing and a few prayers later the service was over, but I couldn't just leave it at that. I had to go and do some fact checking. Because if Reverend Simon was saying this stuff, I wanted to find some evidence. "Belief" and "Thoughts" are one thing but is there evidence behind his statements?

Are young people more anxious?

Now, I do know that anxiety is highly prevalent in younger generations right now. That's what I talk about pretty much all of the time. In fact, a big chunk of training I deliver is about understanding anxiety and why we react to different things in different ways, particularly if you're neurodivergent.

I wanted some facts and to read what is currently being reported about anxiety and young people (generation z and generation alpha were my targets) and yes, he's pretty much right. Here is one of the reports I found on this exact topic.

It turns out, he's not pretty much right. He's bang on the money.

We are living in a generation of high anxiety and there's a whole range of reasons for this.

One of them is being online.

Other reasons are climate change, current world events, finance and money worries. All of these things combined mean that actually younger generations are feeling more and more anxious than ever before.

So what can we do about this?

Well, I'm the founder of Inclusive Change at Work. a community interest company and social enterprise based in Bristol in the southwest of England. And we have joined forces with Digital Safety, a social enterprise based up in the northeast of England.

We're combining our expertise, our knowledge and our skills to bring a conference in to Bristol.

The Castle Conference: Digital Wellbeing for young people

The Castle Conference and it's all about digital wellbeing for young people. So, if you feel the need to fact check or if you feel the need to delve a bit deeper into those things people are talking about and ask… “is this really the case?” The Castle Conference is the place for you.

You can find more information icaw-cic.com. All the information is on there.

But just in case you haven't got time to get that far, it's on the 25th of April, 2024. It's at Leigh Court in just outside Bristol. Our delegate tickets are, wait for this, £9.

So for just £9, you can join me to fact check those statements around anxiety, being online and the digital wellbeing of young people.