Topics of Extreme High Importance deserve long posts. This will be worth your time.
The new Generation, the one they are calling the GenerationZ or GenZ, they are the ones who are supposed to be more intellectually, socially and technologically aware as they will grow up and are growing up in the technological age that the generations before them built. They are the latest generation sect, after the Lost Generation, G.I. Generation, Silent Generation, Baby boomers, Generation X, Millennials and finally GenerationZ. (Source, Wikipedia)
A presentation at my workplace got me thinking about the GenZ. Some stats about the GenZ are awe-inspiring as well as cringe-worthy. Here are some cringe-worthy facts about the “future” generation, the GenZ population:
- On an average, the Generation Z population has an attention span of just 8 Seconds. Hmm.. Maybe they won’t be able to read this long text in one go.
- 79% percent of Generation Z consumers display symptoms of emotional distress when kept away from their personal electronic devices. Unsettling.
- 60% of Gen Zs say “a lot of money” is a sign of success. Materialism is on the rise.
But most importantly, GenZ is suffering from high levels of FOMO and social anxiety.
But they are not all bad. Here are some positive facts:
- 42% plan to start their own businesses and 3% currently run their own business. Entrepreneurship rises.
- 76% are concerned about man’s impact on the planet. Saviors!
- 77% of Gen Z’s are either extremely or very interested in volunteering to gain work experience. Increasing Practicality, very good.
My generation, the transition between the Millennials and the Generation Z, The Transitionals, I think that we got the best of both worlds, we got the best of the Millennial age, and we transformed it into the good qualities that are seen in the GenZ. But at the same time, bred a new and deadly monster. The undying feeling of wanting to be part of something else. The feeling that whatever we have accomplished, will never be good enough. This stems from the everlasting human greed and Low Self Esteem which in turn makes us susceptible. Makes us susceptible to the notion that If most of the people are doing it, then it must be the right thing. I don’t know any better than them. It makes us susceptible to large corporations that take advantage of this very thought structure. For more on this, keep reading.
We gave birth to Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).
FOMO stems from two things. One, Emotional States. Namely: Jealousy and Inability to handle piercing jokes (a.k.a. Immaturity). And Two, Lack of Trust.
Why Jealousy and Immaturity? It is just human nature that they prefer to have fun than work their ass off 40-48 hours a week. We don’t want others to have fun when they have to work. We feel why should others get to have all the fun and why not us? This feeling compels us to feel that fear. In addition to this, We act on the fact that if others have fun without us being around, then our peers might feel that they don’t need this person (US) around them to have fun. So we force ourselves to be part of everything, just to ensure that we aren’t left alone. The fear of being forgotten makes us do things we wouldn’t usually do. This often comes out as Attention Seeking Behavior, wherein an individual does uncanny things just to be memorable. And this almost always backfires as we didn’t want someone to forget us, but because of that uncanny doing, that thing becomes our identity, that thing is what everyone remembers about you, which we now wish everyone would forget.
This Fear of being Forgotten leads to the next point, Lack of Trust.
Why Lack of Trust? We see how people are enjoying when someone misses out. Maybe, we see that the group makes fun of the people that are missing out. And we are amongst the people who are enjoying, while someone else misses out. And naturally, we don’t want to suffer the same fate, if and when we have to miss out on something. We don’t trust our peers to be loyal to us. We don’t trust them enough to assure ourselves that even if they make jokes about us, their opinion about us, and our bond, will never change. And most importantly, we fear that they will not miss us, we fear we would fade into the past, just as someone they used to know. And hence we give into the FEAR.
People also develop the FEAR, due to the uncontrollable need to fit into the “trending” part in Social Media. People spend hours and hours scrolling through social media, and they gather up so much bullshit information in their minds like This is trending, I should be a part of it. We are imprisoned in invisible prisons that we built ourselves. In times like these, we often find ourselves doing things not because we want to, but because others want us to. These other people won’t explicitly tell us to do those things, neither will they force us, but unknowingly we will volunteer to be a part of those things. This is one of the types of Peer Pressure.
While others were: DON’T Ask Me A Question anymore
A few weeks back, Instagram introduced a ASK ME A QUESTION feature, and the result was.
Why? We have heard the saying, “Just go with the flow”. Well, this has been overused so insanely much that it has now been rephrased and branded into the people’s minds as “DON’T YOU DARE GO AGAINST THE FLOW”
So as opposed to enjoying your time right now with the people you are with and the life you have right now, you are constantly checking and seeing what others are up to because you feel that otherwise, you may be missing out.
FOMO is not just limited to social media usage. It can affect us in all walks of life, including academic. I’ve seen people take up subjects or streams, make important career choices etc. etc.. just because their peers were doing so. I’ve seen people who ignore what they knew was the truth and agree to some random, albeit false, rumor. I have seen first-hand someone doing something that even they knew they were going to be bad at, but yet chose to do it just because 50% of their peer circle were doing it. For your own sake, Respect your Timeline.
I ask you, Is this correct? Are we so weak to bend to untold and probably non-existent peer pressure? Are we so afraid to be alone? Are we so dependent on others that we lose ourselves? And naively enough, when the person on whom you were dependent on does leave, we blame them for not caring about us. But our idiotic self always forgets that it is us who projected our insecurities on them, not the other way around.
Why is this?
This happens because people tend to have an external locus of identity. They evaluate their self-worth based on how other people, the people who don’t really care about them, think about them. They evaluate themselves to be much less than or much greater than what the truth is. This leads to depression or a humongous ego, respectively. Check this out for information on self-evaluation and what it leads to.
People could be living their day as laymen, essentially doing mundane activities — as with most people living their lives.
Most of the things they’re doing will be mundane and usual, nothing to shout about, and one action, single solitary completely unrelated to their lives action, makes some exciting story, activity, which will break the aura of mundane-ness and then they will take some pictures of that and edit that, make them perfect, add filters, and so on, essentially making that moment not their own, but of a false version of themselves.
Phew! That’s a Big Sentence. But so is its meaning and relevance. Take a pause, Think about it for a minute. Leave your learnings from that, down below.
And by just highlighting those moments, mindless beings begin to gather behind them.
When you have people everywhere doing this online, it creates this impression of, Oh this is what’s happening in everybody’s life all the time. So I’m missing out! My life is not good enough! This creates a really skewed and warped sense of reality and gives birth to depression or helplessness.
Before doing whatever that you intend on doing, imagine you are looking the most beloved person in your life, or the person whose opinion you hold in high regard, straight in the eye, and explain your actions, why did you choose to do this thing and not the thing you really wanted to do, tell them the whole truth, and nothing short of it.
Can you really do that without any sort of white lies or embarrassment?
Getting Rid of FOMO
We know what FOMO is and how it is transmitted and how it takes over our lives. Yes, I am comparing FOMO to an infectious disease or even an inhuman possession.
How to scare FOMO away? If Sam Winchester can scare a ghost to death, you can surely cast FOMO out.
- STOP COMPARING. This is, by far, the worst thing that you can do. You don’t know what is going on in other people’s lives apart from what they show you. The grass is always greener on the other side. What you see on the social media, is just a mirage, it’s just an illusion, a concocted side of their lives that does not exist, a side that never existed. You see an individual going to clubs and partying multiple times in a week/month. Whereas You are doing something meaningful in your life, you are working to make yourself financially stable and independent. Party life is seductive, but it is not something that will give you inner peace and satisfaction at the end of the day.
- Keep yourself as busy as possible. Perform meaningful activities throughout your day. Do things that you can be proud of. Do things that you can be proud to flaunt. But make sure that you don’t miss out on the word things. If you do one thing and flaunt it, then you’re no better than the people you should be avoiding.
- Reduce social media. What I mean is, you can check what is going on in other’s lives, but NEVER forget point number 1. You can check up on other people, but don’t FOLLOW them. You can see what people are up to. They show what they are doing at that moment, but do you really know what they did all day? Do you know whether they have done anything productive, while you were at work? Take social media as something you just see and pass on, don’t fixate on it.
- Consume information in a targeted way. In today’s age, there is an insane amount of information cropping up on the internet every second. As we consult our virtual God, the internet, about everything, it is quite easy to get drowned in the plethora of information. You don’t need to store and process what some celebrity did on some vacation. You know what you want, what information you really want to know. Trust your gut, and once you find an answer you were looking for, stop searching. Stop thinking that there might be a better choice out there.
- Upgrade the opinion of yourself. So what if you miss out on something. Ask yourself, will undertaking that task really make you happy? Is it really something that you want to do and something that you will enjoy? Why are you doing it? Is it solely because someone around you is preaching that activity? Believe in yourself. Believe in the fact that whatever you have right now, whatever you are doing, that’s the fruit of all the hard work and long hours put in by you. You have the sense of satisfaction that the other class won’t. Sure they might feel good after partying but at the end of the day, guilt will prevail over them. The party people are partying not with their own money or hard work.
Maybe the Transitionals started it, maybe they didn’t. But it is our responsibility, humanity as a whole, that we nip FOMO in the bud and prevent the world from living by the will of someone else.
I know you guys are pretty wisdomous. So, What are your thoughts on GenZ and FOMO? Do you have any other ways to beat FOMO? Spread your knowledge.
For more facts on GenZ, you can refer this link: Most Interesting Facts about Generation Z
