Generational Discontent
By Jacob Anderson, management consultant and freelance writer on public policy, culture and the Church.
Our generation is a sad one. Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – are twice as likely as other age groups to report feelings of hopelessness or depression, but the issue extends beyond reported feelings: Gen Z report fewer close friends, higher rates of loneliness, more time spent at home, and are less extroverted and more neurotic than previous generations, even those born just a few years earlier. [1]
More broadly, Gen Z lack a zest for life: we are less prone to drinking, volunteering, and pursuing romantic relationships, but prefer early nights, staying at home all day, and bailing on plans. [2]
Some of the culprits are obvious: social media, phones, and the steady fallout from the pandemic. Others less so: economic stagnation, declining Western confidence, and the increasing mediation of life through technology. Through our increasingly remote and atomised existences, a type of ennui sets in that drains us of passion and proactivity. The economic benefits of working from home are discussed with little consideration for the social and spiritual dimension. The Church promises and exhibits life and must not be silent about the enduring goodness of creational patterns for work, rest, and in-person relationships.
Our generation began our professional careers, in most cases, working from home. For older generations who have built families and careers, working from home is a luxury, as they are already bought into the real world. For our generation, working from home is a poisoned chalice; certainly it is comfortable and easy. In one sense professional life has never been better. Commuting time and expenses are down, and employers have less oversight of employee working patterns. Employees in turn report higher levels of satisfaction and productivity working from home.
However, the self-reported data obscures generational differences and practical considerations, such as Gen Z employees seeking in-person work more than other generations. [3] There are self-evident consequences of remote working too, in the form of institutional wisdom lost, dwindling habits of discipline and punctuality, and the relational cost of engaging with colleagues through a screen every day.
Working from home does not necessarily create problems of detachment and loneliness, but it has catalysed everything our generation already struggles with. It shrinks our horizons, so that the idea of a long working day followed by drinks, or of a spontaneous disruption to routine, becomes unthinkable. Going into the office is a small act of discipline which, without use, atrophies our muscles of duty, repetition and responsibility.
There is a whole class of young men in America who are ‘ghost soldiers’ in the words of economist Nicholas Eberstadt - lacking work, purpose or energy, slowly disappearing from mainstream society. [4] Legions of young men simply drop out of education or the labour force, at which point it is hard to track them further. Many are on benefits, medication and/or drugs. Our digital society does nothing to solve this, but remote working can exacerbate lives of meaninglessness.
Particularly when a lot of remote work relies on individual discipline, working from home will widen the gulf between the rich and poor, sociable and lonely, and the entrepreneurial and ineffective. We are creating winners and losers without consideration of how we can support the left-behind.
A few weeks ago, my friend handed in his resignation from a promising role in mergers and acquisitions. After working from home for three years on a graduate scheme, he had become entirely disenchanted with his role. Spreadsheets, graphs and speculative models replaced relationships and severed the link between work and reality. Work done only in the service of client and profit is uniquely unfulfilling, when detached from positive impact. He was under-utilised, limiting even the satisfaction of working hard or improving at a skill. Collectively, these issues compounded to a point where although he did not suffer burnout, or face an acute ethical dilemma, the ennui of empty work forced him to resign. He now hopes to retrain as a police officer, because for him that is the antidote to his previous role. Challenging, rewarding, relational work embedded in the world.
Similarly, I have friends who chose teaching to avoid the drudgery of office life. Their hours are long and they work hard in those hours, but again their payment is in life satisfaction. One friend teaching in a boarding school is mentally, emotionally and physically drained, but he finds great contentment in this all-consuming work. Relationships, students’ development, school trips, sports days, and the other mundane joys make for stories and memories in years to come and leave one satisfied.
Whilst these are anecdotes, I believe they reflect a growing divide between digital and material work. Digital work is becoming increasingly seamless – see how many organisations fled central city locations during and after the pandemic without plans to return – while material work is stubbornly present. [5] Despite the trajectory towards automation, certain jobs either cannot or should not be taken by machines. The question is how we negotiate this stratified world where some jobs are increasingly removed from their material impact, and offer flexibility at the expense of satisfaction, while others are more rewarding but take a greater toll on time and energy.
Part of the answer, as the Church, is to remind the world that we are embodied, not as souls in a temporary vessel or brains with fingers to type; we exist in and through our bodies, which are influenced by our material surroundings. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when we feel detached through remote working; it is unnatural only to use a part of ourselves in the day. We will not flourish in that environment.
The Church demonstrates embodiment each week as it gathers to worship, when we lift our hands in prayer, kneel in confession, or sing in praise. The interest in High Anglicanism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and charismatic Christianity amongst young people today points to this truth: that churches which acknowledge and celebrate the whole body in their routines of worship tap into our deep human desire to experience the world, not mediated through technology but as a mystical, wonderful, God-filled reality.
The work of the Church involves our heart, soul, mind and strength, as we minister to one another and the community. The commands of God are deeply embodied: the Sabbath Day suggests God expects us to forget our embodied limits at times. Similarly, fasting remind us we are creatures needing rest and nourishment. It may not seem radical, but when the Church does what it has always done it preaches vivid life through common sense.
Christians should also promote communities which provide solace to the weary souls of modern life. Monasteries are the traditional counter-communities, which Protestants have neglected at their own expense sometimes. However, even within Protestantism there are institutions like the anabaptist Bruderhof, or Presbyterian L’Abri centres, which offer a tangible alternative to the prevailing culture. In these monastic-style communities, guests work with their hands, break bread at one table, and engage thoughtfully with technology like phones and laptops.
A Guardian journalist challenged herself to ‘become a Christian in a year’. [6] In her creative pursuit of God she made her way to an abbey on the Scottish island Iona, to spend a week among an intentional community. It wasn’t arguments for or against God’s existence that opened her eyes, but working with her hands and experiencing the rhythms of life which quieten the soul and lift it towards God.
She writes movingly about how on her last night,
“After the service, we all came out to stand in the abbey gardens where we’d spent the week pulling weeds and planting herbs. It was so dark we could make out the dusty meshwork of stars behind stars. The head gardener pointed up into the sky, directing us to the bright stars that make up Orion: Betelgeuse, Rigel, Saiph, Bellatrix. A satellite floated by, and we felt the size of the space between us and the machines orbiting our Earth. I looked up at the sky over the Thin Place. I thought about my home, the city. I wondered if it was possible to live there as if it were a sacred place, too.”
The Church preaches reality, truth and goodness to a digital, disconnected and sad world. It demonstrates a better and more human way forward. In rituals, routines, and alternative communities, life is lived in a very different way to our isolated, online existences we are told are normal. The Church must celebrate this and lean into it to preach Christ to a new generation.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.
[1] See, for instance, here and here.
[3] See Fact No.14 in this collection.
[4] See here.
[5] This paper found a 39% decrease in New York City office value after Covid-19
[6] ‘Could I become a Christian in one year?’, Lamorna Ash, The Guardian (20th April 2025)
