Why Every Generation Thinks the Next One Is Doomed

Headlines regularly describe Gen Z as lazy, entitled, lonely, or unemployable. Similar criticisms were once directed at Millennials, Gen X, and even Baby Boomers. Why do older generations consistently misunderstand younger ones, and what can history teach us about generational stereotypes? It appears that Gen Z lacks discipline. Entitled, some critics claim. And reputedly hates work.

One viral Wall Street Journal essay went so far as to suggest that this entire generation was potentially “unemployable.” According to a 2024 survey, one in every six business leaders is unwilling to hire Gen Z, and 75% of recent college graduates they hired were “unsatisfactory.”

Sound familiar?

It should. Because Millennials were originally portrayed as lazy, entitled, delusional, arrogant, and unreliable, too. Many of the same criticisms are now directed toward Gen Z.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Ancient Art of Complaining About Youth

The phenomenon of adults blaming the younger generation is a repeated and exhausting subject throughout history.

The ancient Greeks were doing it. A quote typically credited to Socrates, though its exact provenance is contested, laments: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”

Aristotle also joined in, arguing that young people “think they know everything, and are always quite certain about it.”

In 1624, English minister Thomas Barnes moaned that the “youth were never more sawcie...the ancient are scorned, the honourable are condemned.”

Humanity has been complaining about “kids these days” for at least 2,600 years. It’s the same complaints time after time: they’re disrespectful, they don’t listen to their elders, and they don’t enjoy working.

The Psychology of the “Kids These Days” Effect

So why do we keep doing this?

UC Santa Barbara psychologist John Protzko refers to it as the “kids these days” effect. “It’s the exact same complaints time after time,” he says. “They’re disrespectful, they don’t listen to their elders, and they don’t like to work.”

Participants were asked how children now would assess three traits: respect for authority, intelligence, and enjoyment of reading, in comparison to themselves as kids. Participants with higher self-esteem were more likely to criticize children with similar characteristics.

“The more you respect authority as an adult, the more you believe children no longer respect their elders; the smarter you are, the more you believe today’s children are becoming dumber,” Protzko stated.

Here’s the kicker: objective evidence indicates the opposite. Youth do better on intelligence tests due to the Flynn effect, which is a measurable improvement in IQ scores from generation to generation. “So, it can’t be the case that the participants are picking up on objective truth,” Protzko added.

Who is the true culprit? Our own faulty, biased memories. “We tend to think our memories are really good for the past, but they aren’t,” Protzko said.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, puts it simply: “We tend to compare the younger generation to our own selves, which is a mistake because most people are more narcissistic and self-centered at age 20 than at age 40. That is part of growth and maturity.”

The Myth of the “Snowflake Generation”

In 2016, the term “snowflake generation” was added to the Collins Dictionary to describe the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offense than previous generations.

The term emerged after a 2015 debate at Yale University, in which students objected to culturally inappropriate Halloween costumes. Claire Fox’s 2016 novel, I Find That Offensive!, popularized the term.

By 2016, “snowflake” had become a common slur.

But here’s the thing: the Snowflake Generation was Millennials, not Gen Z.

According to Wharton Magazine, the same generation that some now hail as “the most educated generation in history” was formerly regarded as weak and incapable of coping.

Millennials have seen an intriguing progression of stereotypes. They started out being characterized as lazy, entitled, and basement-dwelling. Then, in the 2020s, Millennials were mocked by Gen Z for things like side parts and skinny jeans.

The Economic Reality Behind the Stereotypes

Stereotypes about entitlement and laziness frequently overlook the financial realities that young people must deal with.

Millennials are the most educated generation in history, but they earn less and have a far higher cost of living than previous generations at the same age.

According to a 2019 Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality analysis from the Stanford Report, Millennials who have just completed high school or less make significantly less money than their counterparts from previous generations. The typical annual salary for 25-year-old Millennial men with only a high school education was $29,000, which is almost $2,600 less than that of Gen Xers and almost $10,000 less than that of Baby Boomers. According to sociologist David Grusky of Stanford, “Millennials are the first generation to experience in a full-throttled way the social and economic problems of our time.”

In 2017, Australian real estate entrepreneur Tim Gurner claimed that young people couldn’t buy homes because they spent too much money on avocado toast, despite the fact that house prices in many parts of Australia had doubled in the previous ten years and earnings had only increased by 30%.

The accusation of laziness often conceals a deeper truth: young people are working hard in an economy that no longer values hard effort in the same way it once did.

The Frustration Gap

Another thing to consider is the difference between expectations and reality.

According to research from the London School of Economics and the World Economic Forum, while different generations generally regard each other positively, they also believe that they are disliked by the other.

According to The Print, Michael Bruter, professor of political science at the London School of Economics, said that “frustration comes when there is a mismatch between what you want, what you hope from a system, and what you get. Young people tend to be a lot more idealistic about society and democracy than older people are... and therefore they are not willing to accept the lesser evil when they think that none of the options they are given are optimal to them.”

Bruter also mentions that we often frame questions in the wrong way. “If we solely focus on policies and substance, we are asking questions that do not resonate and do not address young people’s primary concerns. As a result, we misread young people.”

The Cycle of Generational Blame

The pattern is always the same. Each generation enters the workplace under scrutiny. Each generation is blamed for being lazy, entitled, and unprepared. Each generation eventually proves its critics wrong.

In The Guardian, Adam Grant put it this way: “Every generation complains about the one next to us. Everyone used to despise Millennials; now it’s Gen Z.”

Older generations often compare their strengths to the weaknesses of younger generations, accentuating the disparity and portraying the youth in an unfavorable light. Grant states that “we tend to compare the younger generation to our current selves, which is a mistake because most people are more narcissistic and self-centred at age 20 than at age 40. That is part of growth and maturation.”

According to the BBC, “The tendency for adults to disparage the character of youth has been happening for centuries,” says Peter O’Connor, a management professor at the Queensland Institute of Technology. “Looking down on the generation that comes after you could simply be human nature.”

The specifics of the criticisms may differ, from avocado toast to Netflix subscriptions to gym memberships, but the pattern is continuous: a cycle of generational blame that reflects cultural progress while also serving as a reminder of the difficulties that come with bridging the gap between different stages of life.

Going Forward

Every generation has been the “bad” generation. Every generation has been the “lazy” generation. Every generation has been the “entitled” generation.

And every generation has also made mistakes.

Despite being written off as passive and conformist, the Silent Generation gave rise to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem, Bob Dylan, and Martin Luther King Jr. Baby Boomers used to be the disobedient young people who were ruining society. Gen X was the slacker generation. Millennials were the snowflakes.

It is now the turn of Gen Z.

August co-founder Nadya Okamoto, 27, sums it up nicely when she says, “Gen Z gets a bad rep for entitlement, for wanting certain expectations, like work-life balance.” However, wishing to be compensated decently and avoid burnout is not entitlement. It’s survival.

Jahnavi Shah, 25, who secured her first full-time job after a seven-month search and nearly a thousand applications, says: “The generations before us were all about work, and then life would take a back seat. We are a very smart generation that hustles, but we also do not want to burn out and want to be compensated fairly for the value that we bring in.”

Maybe the problem isn’t with young people. Perhaps the problem is that the world no longer works for them.

As Adam Grant wrote on LinkedIn: “Dear leaders: don’t label an entire generation lazy because the systems that allowed you to benefit from hard work have all but disappeared.”

The next time you hear someone complain about “kids these days,” remember that they’ve been saying the same thing for so many years. And guess what? They’ve been wrong every time.

The kids are OK. They always have been.