Has Gen-Z forgotten how to rebel?

What are the memories that stand out most from your adolescence? Is it the times you did as your parents or teachers told you or the times where you took a risk, broke the rules and lived in the moment? Being a teenager is all about rebellion — you stray from the rules, make mistakes and learn from the consequences.

But for the children and teenagers coming of age now, their hormone-filled years have been accompanied by draconian Covid-19 rules that all but knocked the rebelliousness right out of them. 

Not only have their formative years been defined by restrictions dictating their social lives and education, but they have been trapped at home with little opportunity to rebel past not turning up to online school, even if they wanted to.

At the peak of the pandemic, these rules served a public service and helped protect the health of our country. But what are the lasting effects on the country’s youth? 

In an Op-Ed for Bloomberg this week, Allison Schrager, columnist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote of her surprise when schools reopened but the young, vaccinated and fairly risk-free, demonstrated no rebellion towards the stringent Covid rules. “What happened to youth pushing back against authority and being a little selfish?” she writes. 

Adolescence should be a fleeting, liminal time where a person is old enough to go out and experience the world but young enough to have very few responsibilities; a perfect melting pot for freedom and rebellion. Past generations spent their teenage years as groupies for bands, joining hippy movements and living in the moment before coming back to earth for adulthood. Of course, I’m romanticising things a little and this kind of living requires a certain level of affluence but compared to my boomerang generation who can’t afford to move out of their parents’ house — being a teenager way back when sounds like a dream.

There are benefits to a lack of rebellion, in theory; less teen pregnancy, perhaps a reduction in addiction and overdoses and peace of mind for parents. In reality, however, if young people don’t rebel, how will they shake things up enough to come up with the ideas of the future by looking beyond the ideals of their parents. The world cannot become a better place without constant questioning of, and rebellion from, the status quo.

Pre-pandemic Gen-Z was already found to be less rebellious than other generations. A 2018 study by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service found that those born after 1996 were drinking less and having less sex than their older generational counterparts. Social media certainly has a part to play. Terms like “sober-curiosity” and “voluntary celibacy” are rife on TikTok with young people choosing “wellness” and “self-work” over the usual youthful pursuits of hedonism. 

Perhaps this is why the HBO series Euphoria has proven so popular amongst my generation; rather than living rebellion, Gen-Z is getting its dose by forming parasocial relationships with characters on the television. Euphoria follows the life of a group of American High Schoolers navigating love, lust and, in one character’s case, a pretty serious drug addiction. With endless hysteria and constant dismissal towards adults and parents, the show offers a dramatised version of teenhood with rebellion in excess, but watching is no replacement for living. 

All of us need to remember the thrills of rebellion and start questioning the rules once more, rather than following them out of fear — it’s what makes for a working democracy. But it’s particularly important for the youth of today to retain that defiant flair, otherwise, a post-pandemic aversion to risk or rebellion could lead to untapped potential in the adults of tomorrow. 

The kids are not alright, they’ve forgotten how to be young and selfish. It’s time for teenagers to get back to doing what they do best; acting with reckless rebellion.