The Gen X – Gen Z resilience gap

Let’s talk ‘resilience’. But, with a generational twist.

A while ago I shared my thoughts on the new corporate buzzword of ‘resilience’ in a post. I tried to write down my thoughts on what the call from corporates to be ‘resilient’ might be masking and what consequences it might bring to the workplace and the professionals being pushed in this direction. You can find that article here.

But today, I got to considering resilience from a generational perspective. How do Gen X-ers, Millennials, and Gen Z-ers differ in resilience, if at all?

Faulty misconceptions and biases

I’m a Gen X-er. No feelings about it either way. It just defines the period during which I was born. But I’ll admit that I sometimes fall into the trap of viewing Gen Z as less resilient than my generation. Less tough. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve fallen into the trap of perceiving how Gen Z-ers think and behave based on limited instances on social media. Maybe I’m also biased because I’m making deductions based on extrapolations from conversations I’ve had with some Gen Z-ers. After all, it’s so easy to sit back, observe, and judge, based on what I know and understand about the world.

But I know I’m wrong. So, what about resilience? Is it something we have and they don’t possess? But this kind of thinking just feeds into stereotypes; us Vs. them. And this is not how we should think about it, because nothing in this world is the same as it used to be when I was growing up and gaining experiences and absorbing information.

My argument: Gen Z is as resilient as any other generation; it’s just ‘resilience’ that’s visible in ways that older generations don’t quite understand. And will never have to, I hope.

Today, is a tough place to survive in

Just imagine, being born into a digital world with smartphone in hand and access to the world’s information at your fingertips. Anything you want, when you want it. Today’s world is evolving so dramatically and tech breakthroughs skyrocket daily.

Imagine growing up in a world where public judgment and praise is always just right around the corner. Reviews, ratings, feedback, comments, likes, follows, etc. Everyone has an opinion nowadays, and is entitled to have an opinion, on everything. It’s a world where you have to persevere to weed out an overload of misinformation just to get to a version of a truth. I’m not even going to bring up inflation and such, since there is much more that Gen Z-ers will have to endure and suffer through.

Now, if I’m not mistaken, everything just mentioned, requires resilience to battle through, doesn’t it? It requires a particular kind of mental toughness and lots of perseverance. But, it might be a slightly different version of the ‘resilience’ us other generations can identify with.

Hell, I’m writing all this at the moment and realizing that, despite my empathy and willingness to truly understand how the younger generations must feel, I still don’t understand shit about what it means to be that age in today’s world. The pressures, the stress, the bleak perceptions about what a ‘future’ might mean to them, the survival and internal struggle that needs to take place to ensure they find a place for themselves.

“It is, what it is”

The resilience I know, shared by most Gen X-ers and some Millennials, is the resilience of silent suffering. Don’t complain. Be stoic. Just get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going until you’re out of the shit. After all, “it is, what it is”. Nothing we can do about it but just accept it and deal with it. It’s the hand we were dealt.

So, whereas Gen X and Millennials were taught to endure and suffer through pain by pushing forward in silence, Gen Z is criticizing this notion and demanding more. But, we tend to link this to our perception of them as ‘entitled’. But, it’s not entitlement really, is it? Gen Z is just more demanding and vocal about their rights and about what is fair and what is not. They’re not enduring in silence. They’re being vocal about it and trying to adapt and change the situation they’re in.

So, in ‘surviving’ today’s world, Gen Z have developed a resilience that is less about keeping your mouth shut and pushing on, and more about adaptability and vocal advocacy. It might not look like the resilience familiar to Gen X and Millennials, but it is no less significant in managing the pressures of today's fast-paced and interconnected world.

“Why is it?”

Remind me, please, why we must endure pain for the pursuit of that damned carrot being dangled in front of us? Why must we accept certain predicaments and trudge through them, all the while suffering in silence? And why is resilience in this sense, such a romantic image we struggle to identify with, lest we be called failures or ‘less of’ something?