Gen Z, one year on

They say it’s the hope that kills you. I think we have it backwards. It isn’t hope that does the damage. It’s the lack of it.

A year ago, I wrote about the world through the eyes of Gen Z. Twelve months on, here’s the update.

Look at what we’re handed. Housing is out of reach. AI will take your job. A recession is coming. Whether or not each of those holds up, that is the steady message, and it arrives through a feed that worked out who you are in minutes and has been feeding you outrage ever since. Division isn’t a side effect of that system. It’s the product.

Left against right. Generation against generation. Men vs women. All of it monetised at scale, on every phone in the country, and then read back to us as though it were simply what Australians now believe.

Put a bleak forecast on top of a feed that rewards conflict and you get exactly what we have. A generation with plenty to be angry about and nothing to aim at.

That second part is the real problem. In my opinion, anger with a direction is just energy we can put towards a different outlet.

Democracy works when everyone shares the same objective – a better Australia. We can disagree about the route, not the destination. That argument is useful. It’s how a country tests its own ideas before it commits to them. But when the only thing everyone agrees on is that the other side is the problem, the disagreement stops leading anywhere. We’ve kept the fighting and lost the point of it.

And we can’t afford it. This year has shown us how far removed we are from the supply chains we depend on, and how quickly allies can turn their backs. If the world outside is going to be that uncertain, we need a generation building something here, not one turning on itself.

So here’s what I want. Not reassurance, and not someone telling us it’ll be fine. Something to work towards.

Give us a reason to believe. I believe we need to discuss the things that make us proud to be Australian, and you’ll find a generation that wants in. I don’t believe Gen Z is asking to be protected from a hard decade. We’re asking for one worth the effort.

Because pride isn’t nostalgia. It’s the feeling that what you’re doing adds up to something, and that the place you’re doing it in is going somewhere. Give people that and the rest follows. Pride gives us something in common to point at. Something in common gives us one objective. And one objective is what turns a difference into a debate.

My generation is not short of energy. We’re short of a destination. Give us one and you’ll be surprised how fast the anger turns into work.

Because it was never the hope that killed us. It’s what happens when the hope runs out.