It was a gray, blustery afternoon in Manhattan, the kind where the wind cuts through your coat and makes everyone huddle a little closer together. I was waiting for the crosstown bus, resigned to the usual delay, when a young woman sat down next to me on the bench. We didn’t exchange the usual polite nods. Instead, she was talking with her friend.
It wasn’t small talk. It was a heavy, unprompted confession. She told her friend that she was depressed—deeply, relentlessly depressed. She spoke about smoking pot to numb it, taking pills to fix it, and seeing a therapist to understand it. Nothing seemed to help. She had even tried changing her ways, forcing herself to the gym to “sweat out the stress.” It helped a little, she admitted with a shrug, but the dark cloud always came back.
Listening to her conversation, I felt a profound sense of sadness. Here was a young person, likely in her early twenties, who should be full of optimism and energy. Instead, she was exhausted. As the bus finally wheezed to a halt in front of us, I couldn’t shake the conversation. It started me thinking about how incredibly hard it is for Gen Z right now.
A Different Kind of Struggle
It is easy for my generation—the Baby Boomers—to dismiss the complaints of the youth. We look back at our own history and see Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, and economic recessions. We think, “We survived hard times, so why can’t they?”
But sitting there on that bus, listening to that young woman, I realized that while the ingredients of the struggle might be similar, the flavor is entirely different.
The pressure facing Gen Z is real. It isn’t just one crisis; it is a convergence of them. They are navigating a polarized political landscape that seems to have lost the ability to compromise. They are entering an economy where the cost of living has skyrocketed, homeownership feels like a pipe dream, and student debt is a crushing weight before their careers even begin.
When I look at my own students in class, I see the same pattern. It isn’t just the stranger at the bus stop. My students frequently talk about the overwhelming stress of modern life. They speak about a lack of direction, not because they are lazy, but because the path forward seems blocked by obstacles at every turn.
The Loss of Work-Life Balance
One of the most striking differences I notice is the erosion of boundaries. For my generation, work was a place you went to, and home was a place you returned to. (You may have brought work home or talked about it with your partner, but the real work happened at work.) Today, thanks to the technology that was supposed to liberate us, work follows these young people everywhere.
They face stressful jobs with demands that never seem to sleep. The “hustle culture” they’ve been sold tells them that if they aren’t working, they aren’t valuable. There is little to no work-life balance because “life” has been cannibalized by the need to survive in a high-pressure corporate environment.
The young woman at the bus stop mentioned the gym as a remedy, a way to “work off the stress.” It struck me as a frantic attempt to regain control over a body and mind that feel constantly under siege. When self-care becomes just another item on a to-do list—another thing you have to do to remain functional—it loses its restorative power.
Empathy Over Judgment
Sometimes, older generations perceive this vocalizing of pain as entitlement. We hear them say “I’m depressed” or “I’m anxious,” and some of us might think they just need to toughen up. But perhaps it isn’t entitlement. Perhaps it is just honesty.
The feeling of the struggle today is different because the world is louder. Social media amplifies every tragedy, every economic downturn, and every political failure. They are processing global trauma in real-time, all while trying to figure out who they are.
As I watched that young woman board the bus and disappear into the crowd, I didn’t feel judgment. I just felt sad, sad that they are going through all of this right now. And, sad that the world we are handing over to them feels so heavy.
We need to stop comparing our scars to theirs and start listening. If a stranger at a bus stop is hurting enough to spill her soul to her friend while eavesdroppers listen in, it’s a sign that the burden is too heavy to carry alone.