CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

first up

Welcome back! This week, we’re talking about social media’s impact on Gen Z’s mental health. 

There is a familiar cycle of download and delete that Gen Z has come to understand all too well in its relationship with social media. It goes like this: 

Maybe you get sick of the constant scrolling on your go-to social-media feed. Maybe your screen time soars to four hours or more a day. You vow you’re done with social media. You deactivate your accounts ... for a few days, or a few weeks if you’ve really hit your limit. Before long, you may have reactivated them, but you’ll only access the desktop versions. Then you give in and redownload the apps. But this time is different; you’re going to be mindful about your use, so you set a timer limiting how much time you spend on them. You ignore the timer. Rinse. Repeat. 

Why do Gen Zers do this? It’s likely because they feel social media is bad for them in some way, whether it makes them less productive, less focused, or more morose about their own lives. Even the apps that purport to make them more real—and, theoretically, make them feel less bad—are falling out of favor. 

But how much does social media impact Gen Z’s mental health, really?

That was one of the questions researchers sought to answer as part of a new McKinsey Health Institute survey that asked questions about the mental, physical, social, and spiritual health of more than 42,000 people across generations in 26 countries. 

According to McKinsey Health Institute global director of brain health Kana Enomoto and coauthors, Gen Zers are most likely to cite negative feelings about social-media platforms and to have poor mental health, but the correlation between the two does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. 

The survey finds that time spent may be key: negative effects on mental health have a bigger impact on Gen Zers who spend more than two hours a day on social media. Female Gen Zers are almost twice as likely to report poor mental health as their male counterparts. Gen Z respondents from Europe and Oceania are most likely to report negative effects from social media, while respondents from Asia are least likely.

The survey data also reveals details about how everyone from Gen Z to boomers interacts with social media: boomers in eight of the 26 countries surveyed say they spend as much time on social media as Gen Z. As much time! Talk about shattering a stereotype. Yet, boomers don’t report feeling worse about themselves nearly as much as Gen Zers do, suggesting that there are other factors besides social-media use alone that contribute to Gen Z’s struggles with mental health. As for millennials, they are most likely to post on social media. And across all age groups, more than 50 percent of respondents say social media helps them express themselves and connect socially. 

That last bit hardly squares with the simplistic equation that social media = bad. In Gen Z’s case, the truth is more nuanced. 

The good news: when social media is used to access digital wellness apps and digital mental-health programs, it can have positive mental-health benefits, Enomoto and her coauthors find. Fifty percent more Gen Z respondents report using digital mental-health programs than Gen Xers or boomers. (Note to employers: you might lean into this fact and offer more digital mental-health resources to attract young talent.) 

Urging Gen Z to log off forever may not be the solution, especially when some Gen Zers feel that digital connections can be as satisfying as in-person ones. It’s a lonely world when your friends are in the DMs, sharing memes and socializing without you. 

But as younger Gen Zers are showing, logging off more often can offer the best of both worlds. You won’t know until you try.

VISUALIZE IT

How people enter and exit homelessness is a complicated and varied journey, as demonstrated by how 20,000 individuals in San Francisco experienced homelessness in 2022.

WAIT, DON’T SCROLL

Net zero, nature positive. Those are the two areas of focus in our new series, Voices on Nature, featuring interviews with CEOs like Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, who reflects on how companies are responsible for the planet and its people.

America’s boomtown. The population of Austin, Texas, has grown by 36 percent, and its GDP has nearly doubled since 2010. But the tech and innovation capital is experiencing growing pains along the way. 

Use it or lose it. The US federal government released billions of dollars in relief money to state and local governments to improve their healthcare systems in response to the pandemic. But their window to take advantage of the funding is closing.

NOT US; STILL GREAT

Certificates of disappointment. In search of higher salaries and social status, students seeking higher education in India are being scammed, paying thousands for what are ultimately “worthless” degrees that leave them ill-prepared for jobs. [Bloomberg]

Reaching retirement. Countries such as China, Indonesia, and Russia have some of the youngest retirement ages across the world. But living a life of leisure sooner leaves governments with a complicated economic conundrum. [Quartz]

CROSSWORD

— Edited by Alexandra Mondalek, editor, New York