Gen Z putting the ‘I’ in TEAM, short for isolation
I’m a very lucky sports fan at the moment. My Detroit Lions are in the playoffs, the Red Wings are looking like a promising young team, and this Monday the University of Michigan Wolverines will be competing for a national championship.
The Detroit sports community is thriving, and even in Chicago it feels right at home whenever I run into a fellow fan of one of my childhood teams. All week, I’ve been looking forward to heading over to the local Michigan bar Monday night to watch the big game with my fellow fans.
However, I’m not your typical member of Gen Z, spanning from 1997 to 2012. We are a generation of social isolation. First, it was music festivals, then it was after-work drinks. Now up on the no-fun generation’s chopping block is sports fandom.
According to a 2021 study, only 23% of Generation Z describe themselves as passionate sports fans, as opposed to 42% of millennials, 33% of Generation X and 31% of baby boomers.
Further, a sizable 27% of Gen Z describe themselves as “anti-sports,” compared with single-digit percentages from other generations saying the same.
Sure, you can find plenty of sports-obsessed Gen Zers all around, some people like myself are as eager to passionately follow the same teams that our parents grew up watching as they were. However, an increasing percentage view sports fandom as a pointless pastime.
“Part of the lack of Generation Z fandom is due to younger individuals having less intense feelings of group belonging in general,” said Emory professor Michael Lewis in his report on the topic.
My generation’s isolation is real – and it’s not great
Sports is just another cultural institution that Gen Z shows little interest in preserving. Alongside churchgoing, traditional office structures and other sorts of community association, Gen Z is far less involved civically than previous generations.
More than a quarter of those under 40 don’t even know a single one of their neighbors’ names.
But why are we so isolated? After all, it should be easier than ever for us to connect through our very digital lives.
Gen Z spends an average of 7.2 hours in front of screens – higher than the 6.3 average for Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980.
Unlike older generations, Gen Z’s social capital is primarily generated online rather than in person. Our networking is done via social media, and most of our communication with others is, too.
Unique to our generation, platforms like TikTok have even replaced the personal relationships of platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with mindless scrolling through algorithm recommendations.
Despite being interconnected and the ability to be constantly plugged into one another’s lives, Gen Z continues to be the loneliest generation. As the New York Post’s Rikki Schlott puts it, we have been conned into thinking we are connected when in reality we are the most distant generation there is.
These trends had begun long before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns crippled our social lives, but these shutdowns accelerated and accentuated what was already happening.
How can sports teams get Gen Z interested?
The gradual loss of interest in sports is a symptom of a larger problem, which is that Gen Z lacks both civic involvement and any interest in attaining it. This has been a significant factor in the erosion of the community fabric where Gen Z lives.
As we spend an increasing amount of time tuned into our digital lives, many of us lose sight of the traditional forms of community that previous generations relied on.
While professional sports leagues have leaned into marketing strategies to appeal to Gen Z, such as the NFL’s newfound obsession with Travis Kelce’s girlfriend Taylor Swift, it’s unlikely that these strategies will fix the diminishing interest younger generations have in their product.
Instead, the solution to the problem is far more radical, which is to solve the social blight that plagues Gen Z.
There’s another article to be written about how to fix that, but for today, I recommend lonely Zoomers arm themselves with some sports knowledge, head down to your local bar and make some friends on game day. The shared experience of watching a game with other fans is a great way not to feel so alone. Even in a city I didn’t grow up in, I’ve found sports to be one way to get a little feeling of home.
Dace Potas is an Opinion fellow for USA TODAY. A graduate from DePaul University with a degree in political science, he’s also president of the Lone Conservative, the largest conservative student-run publication in the country.