Gen Z kids are alright. Just ask a Gen Xer raising one

I’VE heard a lot of handwringing lately about Generation Z.

As the first generation entirely composed of digital natives, Gen Z, I am told, is destined for myopia due to excessive screen time and inadequate time outdoors.

They’re mired in a mental health crisis. Climate change activists have so effectively beat the drum of doom that many Gen Zers don’t want to become parents.

They also aren’t angling for a summer job or a driver’s license, sidestepping milestones we once held as firm markers of growing up.

Ralph Nader, at 88 a Silent Generation man himself, recently cautioned of ‘the harmful, grasping tentacles by corporations around the bodies and minds’ of Gen Z tweens, and a society mostly failing to protect them.

As a Generation X parent who is actually raising a Gen Z tween, that’s the sort of thing that makes me bristle through my trademarked ironic detachment.

Yes, I’m biased. But I find it to be an honor to parent a Gen Z tween - and I am far less fearful about their future.

For my money, they are the most diverse, engaged, socialjustice-minded, purpose-driven generation yet, and we have every reason to anticipate their success, or at least not to presume their failure.

My tween and I trade TikTok videos, analyze GachaTube creations and have a running game of guessing which 40-yearold dude is behind every ‘tween’ online.

My kid, who uses they/them pronouns, mock eye-rolls my explanations of life in the 90s; I mock eye-roll their lack of lived experience of the era they love to co-opt.

Then we play each other songs. Most of the time, I’m doing most of the learning.

I know I’m supposed to be irritated and alarmed by the modern tween. I’m supposed to complain that walking them into school is now ‘cringe’.

That they can’t be pulled from their bedrooms unless it’s a medical emergency, like the need for boba.

That they are identity-fluid; that they twerk; that they say ‘bruh’ too much; that they cannot be pried from their videos without a market competitive bribe.

But I’m not alarmed; I’m fascinated. Gen Z is wickedly funny, extremely vulnerable, and emotionally and socially a uned to a level it took my entire life to cultivate.

Sure, they’re growing up slower, but when I consider that they have never not known right-wing madness, climate disaster, economic uncertainty and an erosion of civil rights, I cannot blame them. If anything, I share their cynicism.

Gen Z consultant Jason Dorsey told Bloomberg News in 2019 that to understand Gen Z, you have to look at the ‘hidden driver’ that is their Gen X parents, who shape their disposition about the world.

We grew up under a divorce boom in the ‘70s and were deeply familiar with crooked presidents, financial scandals, looming water wars and pandemics.

“Boomers really wanted it to be easier for their children, and they succeeded,” Dorsey said.

“When we interview Gen X, they tell us they don’t want our kids to end up like entitled millennials.”

What does that mean? Well, Gen X parents are trying to impart resilience, emotional intelligence, mental health support and a sober acceptance of the hand the world deals to produce a be er generation, one capable of continuing to change our circumstances.

I think we have, whether it appears that way on the surface or not.

It’s not that I’m not upset about the concerns they are facing.

I’m anxious and angry about gun violence, sexual assault, racism, reproductive and trans rights, bullying, mental health, long covid and the increasing pressure on tweens to age up.

Screen time generates a constant conversation about identifying sources and interrogating content.

But growing up Gen X came with its own version of these issues, and it makes us uniquely qualified to usher this generation through it with the appropriate humility, humor, cynicism and hope.

Growing up glued to video games and television while being told this would rot my brain only taught me that it’s not the medium that’s bad - it’s lacking someone to help you scrutinize the message.

I am not the all-knowing authority my generation’s parents pretended to be.

I’m a guidance counselor, trying to help my kid be their best self, and I’m okay with that.

The Gen Zers in our care are not only the most diverse generation of Americans, but set to be the most well-educated one in history, too, according to Pew Research Center.

More of their cohort identify as LGBTQ than any before them, comfortable with a variety of self-expression a er decades of activism about identity existing on a spectrum.

All this might result in a generation with greater cynicism than millennials, but it also might just mean they have the personal resources and self-knowledge to right the wrongs we are leaving for them.

As one Gen Xer tweeted, “I’m a Gen X raising a Gen Z and let me tell you . . . they understand the assignment. They are diverse, inclusive, and amazing.”

In the words of my own tween, ‘Bruh - same’. — The Washington Post