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Facing the Biggest Challenges of Our Generation

• In Analysis
• December 18, 2018
• 85246 Views

By Gabriel Bichet, Eve Cassavoy, Maddie Hunt, Jasmine Sebastian, and Emma Turner (ENG1100Q), edited by Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr

In September, I took on teaching three sections of ENG1100: Workshop in Essay Writing, a required course for first-year students at the University of Ottawa. Facing 200 students every week really keeps you on your toes, so I like to challenge them in return. Their first assignment was to write, in groups of five, an essay answering the question “What is the biggest challenge facing your generation?” An overwhelming number of students pointed to technology as the biggest challenge, specifically how cell phones run — and ruin — their lives via social isolation, distraction, cyberbullying, and eroding relationships. Some pointed to environmental issues, lack of respect from older generations, or mental health as the biggest challenges. Some looked to the wider world, pointing to “society’s new-found ignorance” and apathy regarding Indigenous issues, rights issues, the news cycle, politics, and “peaceful co-existence.” The following essay touches on many of these issues, and I would like to share it with you as an end-of-year message to all generations. — Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, Senior Editor, CIPS

Living in the information age, we are often overwhelmed by the tragic content we find while trying to relax in front of our screens. It can be exhausting to discern which news is real, which is fake, and which is so terrible that it makes us numb to the outside world. Finding meaning and purpose in these articles is not our first response; it is much more convenient to post wishful thoughts and prayers rather than attempt to do anything to remedy the situation. Today with social media, our safety bubble, conversing about the world’s biggest issues has become not only a fad, but also a sedative to replace action. Many people convince themselves they have done their part by making a Facebook post, or retweeting something intolerant Donald Trump said, adding only a petty remark in the comment section.

The real solutions to global issues, however, must be concrete, not virtual. Any problem can be solved if people co-operate. Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead put it this way: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The main obstacle to progress, however, is the general apathy of Generation Z (those born since 1999) and trusting that someone else will take care of it. In order to solve problems such as education, climate change, and social equality, one must join the call to arms and take action, rather than join the talk about it. Effective activism can motivate people to take part in change and create sustainable movements.

Lack of Education

Education is a topic that many feel strongly about, especially since most people in Generation Z are currently in school or post-secondary. Lack of quality education is one of the world’s most persistent issues. This problem is not isolated to developing countries where equitable education systems may not yet be in place; North American education systems also have flaws. Activism in developing new schools, or fortifying existing ones, is effective because people have personal ties to the issue, perhaps suffering themselves in various ways from poor schooling. It is in the best interests of Generation Z, therefore, to resist the persistent flaws in education by joining a protest or doing something proactive about education issues. Harnessing our passion and turning it into activism can help mobilize people to change education systems at home and abroad.

Deterioration of the Environment

One of the biggest threats to our generation (and future generations) is the deterioration of the environment. Since this issue affects everyone, there must be more urgency in our communities to help the environment. This is an enormous problem for one person to change, so working in community is essential. Our generation must help educate and involve our communities in environmental issues like pollution and climate change. We can create online information sources, put up posters, and host events to promote environmental awareness and action. The community could start a garden or plants trees for everyone to enjoy. If every household just changed some little things — for example, car sharing, unplugging devices, and changing to energy efficient lightbulbs — it would add up to a big difference for our environment.

Lack of Equality

Lack of equality between races and genders is something that is learned, not natural. Or as Nelson Mandela once said, “No one is born hating another person.” The lack of equality globally requires real-world action rather than online thoughts and prayers. Worldwide, women are still fighting for equal representation, credibility, and even the right to their own bodies. We don’t mean in the developing world; all those statements ring true for the USA, which is supposedly the most powerful country in the world. Women still fight tough battles every day, and where do we hear about it? On social media of course. We see so much on Twitter or Instagram about how people of colour or the LGBTQ+ community are treated unfairly, and yet we fail to act outside of our comments and hashtags. But Instagram is neither a credible source nor a useful response. A repost is not good enough. Real issues like these need real awareness.

Moving Forward

Discussions at school, writing open letters to organizations that can make a difference, and speaking your mind when witnessing inequality first hand are all solutions to our lack of action. Generation Z talks a good game about being socially aware and progressive, but that attitude needs to carry over into real life. Bringing your views to your workplace is a good a start, since it can be a breeding ground for inequality. Calling attention to double standards and working to achieve a safe and equal work environment are all ways to enact change. Social change happens one person at a time, so we need to be those people.

In order to solve a problem, one must first be aware of it. The greatest challenges of Generation Z begin with awareness in order to act on a global scale. We understand right from wrong because our parents and teachers taught us so. The same concept applies to world issues, but it is time to teach ourselves. We must learn about global problems in order to take knowledgeable, calculated, appropriate steps to solve them. Logical insight must undo the arrogant hatred embedded so deeply in so many societies, including our own. Awareness and action offer a way forward on the issues of education, climate change, and lack of equality.

What does it mean to take action on these problems? It means not being distracted, restless, self-absorbed, and plugged in to social media. It means plugging in to the world itself. It means interaction .

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Teens Today Are Different from Past Generations

Every generation of teens is shaped by the social, political, and economic events of the day. Today’s teenagers are no different—and they’re the first generation whose lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media.

In her new book, psychologist Jean Twenge uses large-scale surveys to draw a detailed portrait of ten qualities that make today’s teens unique and the cultural forces shaping them. Her findings are by turn alarming, informative, surprising, and insightful, making the book— iGen:Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us —an important read for anyone interested in teens’ lives.

Who are the iGens?

Twenge names the generation born between 1995 and 2012 “iGens” for their ubiquitous use of the iPhone, their valuing of individualism, their economic context of income inequality, their inclusiveness, and more.

She identifies their unique qualities by analyzing four nationally representative surveys of 11 million teens since the 1960s. Those surveys, which have asked the same questions (and some new ones) of teens year after year, allow comparisons among Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and iGens at exactly the same ages. In addition to identifying cross-generational trends in these surveys, Twenge tests her inferences against her own follow-up surveys, interviews with teens, and findings from smaller experimental studies. Here are just a few of her conclusions.

iGens have poorer emotional health thanks to new media. Twenge finds that new media is making teens more lonely, anxious, and depressed, and is undermining their social skills and even their sleep.

iGens “grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet,” writes Twenge. They spend five to six hours a day texting, chatting, gaming, web surfing, streaming and sharing videos, and hanging out online. While other observers have equivocated about the impact, Twenge is clear: More than two hours a day raises the risk for serious mental health problems.

She draws these conclusions by showing how the national rise in teen mental health problems mirrors the market penetration of iPhones—both take an upswing around 2012. This is correlational data, but competing explanations like rising academic pressure or the Great Recession don’t seem to explain teens’ mental health issues. And experimental studies suggest that when teens give up Facebook for a period or spend time in nature without their phones, for example, they become happier.

The mental health consequences are especially acute for younger teens, she writes. This makes sense developmentally, since the onset of puberty triggers a cascade of changes in the brain that make teens more emotional and more sensitive to their social world.

Social media use, Twenge explains, means teens are spending less time with their friends in person. At the same time, online content creates unrealistic expectations (about happiness, body image, and more) and more opportunities for feeling left out—which scientists now know has similar effects as physical pain . Girls may be especially vulnerable, since they use social media more, report feeling left out more often than boys, and report twice the rate of cyberbullying as boys do.

Social media is creating an “epidemic of anguish,” Twenge says.

iGens grow up more slowly. iGens also appear more reluctant to grow up. They are more likely than previous generations to hang out with their parents, postpone sex, and decline driver’s licenses.

Twenge floats a fascinating hypothesis to explain this—one that is well-known in social science but seldom discussed outside academia. Life history theory argues that how fast teens grow up depends on their perceptions of their environment: When the environment is perceived as hostile and competitive, teens take a “fast life strategy,” growing up quickly, making larger families earlier, and focusing on survival. A “slow life strategy,” in contrast, occurs in safer environments and allows a greater investment in fewer children—more time for preschool soccer and kindergarten violin lessons.

“Youths of every racial group, region, and class are growing up more slowly,” says Twenge—a phenomenon she neither champions nor judges. However, employers and college administrators have complained about today’s teens’ lack of preparation for adulthood. In her popular book, How to Raise an Adult , Julie Lythcott-Haims writes that students entering college have been over-parented and as a result are timid about exploration, afraid to make mistakes, and unable to advocate for themselves.

Twenge suggests that the reality is more complicated. Today’s teens are legitimately closer to their parents than previous generations, but their life course has also been shaped by income inequality that demoralizes their hopes for the future. Compared to previous generations, iGens believe they have less control over how their lives turn out. Instead, they think that the system is already rigged against them—a dispiriting finding about a segment of the lifespan that is designed for creatively reimagining the future.

iGens exhibit more care for others. iGens, more than other generations, are respectful and inclusive of diversity of many kinds. Yet as a result, they reject offensive speech more than any earlier generation, and they are derided for their “fragility” and need for “ trigger warnings ” and “safe spaces.” (Trigger warnings are notifications that material to be covered may be distressing to some. A safe space is a zone that is absent of triggering rhetoric.)

Today’s colleges are tied in knots trying to reconcile their students’ increasing care for others with the importance of having open dialogue about difficult subjects. Dis-invitations to campus speakers are at an all-time high, more students believe the First Amendment is “outdated,” and some faculty have been fired for discussing race in their classrooms. Comedians are steering clear of college campuses, Twenge reports, afraid to offend.

The future of teen well-being

Social scientists will discuss Twenge’s data and conclusions for some time to come, and there is so much information—much of it correlational—there is bound to be a dropped stitch somewhere. For example, life history theory is a useful macro explanation for teens’ slow growth, but I wonder how income inequality or rising rates of insecure attachments among teens and their parents are contributing to this phenomenon. And Twenge claims that childhood has lengthened, but that runs counter to data showing earlier onset of puberty.

So what can we take away from Twenge’s thoughtful macro-analysis? The implicit lesson for parents is that we need more nuanced parenting. We can be close to our children and still foster self-reliance. We can allow some screen time for our teens and make sure the priority is still on in-person relationships. We can teach empathy and respect but also how to engage in hard discussions with people who disagree with us. We should not shirk from teaching skills for adulthood, or we risk raising unprepared children. And we can—and must—teach teens that marketing of new media is always to the benefit of the seller, not necessarily the buyer.

Yet it’s not all about parenting. The cross-generational analysis that Twenge offers is an important reminder that lives are shaped by historical shifts in culture, economy, and technology. Therefore, if we as a society truly care about human outcomes, we must carefully nurture the conditions in which the next generation can flourish.

We can’t market technologies that capture dopamine, hijack attention, and tether people to a screen, and then wonder why they are lonely and hurting. We can’t promote social movements that improve empathy, respect, and kindness toward others and then become frustrated that our kids are so sensitive. We can’t vote for politicians who stall upward mobility and then wonder why teens are not motivated. Society challenges teens and parents to improve; but can society take on the tough responsibility of making decisions with teens’ well-being in mind?

The good news is that iGens are less entitled, narcissistic, and over-confident than earlier generations, and they are ready to work hard. They are inclusive and concerned about social justice. And they are increasingly more diverse and less partisan, which means they may eventually insist on more cooperative, more just, and more egalitarian systems.

Social media will likely play a role in that revolution—if it doesn’t sink our kids with anxiety and depression first.

About the Author

Diana Divecha

Diana Divecha, Ph.D. , is a developmental psychologist, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and on the advisory board of the Greater Good Science Center. Her blog is developmentalscience.com .

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Why Won’t Your Teen Talk To You?

What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Australian Catholic University

Disclosure statement

Michael Noetel receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Sport Australia. He is a Director of Effective Altruism Australia.

Australian Catholic University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Your great grandchildren are powerless in today’s society. As Oxford philosopher William MacAskill says:

They cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market, And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

But the things we do now influence them: for better or worse. We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back. So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?

Review: What We Owe the Future – William MacAskill (OneWorld)

This is the key question in What We Owe the Future . It argues for what MacAskill calls longtermism: “the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.” He describes it as an extension of civil rights and women’s suffrage; as humanity marches on, we strive to consider a wider circle of people when making decisions about how to structure our societies.

MacAskill makes a compelling case that we should consider how to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of their children. In short, MacAskill argues that “future people count, there could be a lot of them, and we can make their lives go better.”

Read more: Friday essay: 'I feel my heart breaking today' – a climate scientist's path through grief towards hope

Future people count

It’s hard to feel for future people. We are bad enough at feeling for our future selves. As The Simpsons puts it: “That’s a problem for future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy.”

We all know we should protect our health for our own future. In a similar vein, MacAskill argues that we all “know” future people count.

Concern for future generations is common sense across diverse intellectual traditions […] When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don’t say, “Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now?” Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today. We build museums and parks and bridges that we hope will last for generations; we invest in schools and longterm scientific projects; we preserve paintings, traditions, languages; we protect beautiful places.

There could be a lot of future people

Future people count, and MacAskill counts those people. The sheer number of future people might make their wellbeing a key moral priority. According to MacAskill and others, humanity’s future could be vast : much, much more than the 8 billion alive today.

While it’s hard to feel the gravitas, our actions may affect a dizzying number of people. Even if we last just 1 million years, as long as the average mammal – and even if the global population fell to 1 billion people – then there would be 9.1 trillion people in the future.

We might struggle to care, because these numbers can be hard to feel . Our emotions don’t track well against large numbers. If I said a nuclear war would kill 500 million people, you might see that as a “huge problem”. If I instead said that the number is actually closer to 5 billion , it still feels like a “huge problem”. It does not emotionally feel 10 times worse. If we risk the trillions of people who could live in the future, that could be 1,000 times worse – but it doesn’t feel 1,000 times worse.

MacAskill does not argue we should give those people 1,000 times more concern than people alive today. Likewise, MacAskill does not say we should morally weight a person living a million years from now exactly the same as someone alive 10 or 100 years from now. Those distinctions won’t change what we can feasibly achieve now, given how hard change can be.

Instead, he shows if we care about future people at all, even those 100 years hence, we should simply be doing more . Fortunately, there are concrete things humanity can do.

Read more: Labor's climate change bill is set to become law – but 3 important measures are missing

We can make the lives of future people better

Another reason we struggle to be motivated by big problems is that they feel insurmountable. This is a particular concern with future generations. Does anything I do make a difference, or is it a drop in the bucket? How do we know what to do when the long-run effects are so uncertain ?

Even present-day problems can feel hard to tackle. At least for those problems we can get fast, reliable feedback on progress. Even with that advantage, we struggle. For the second year in a row, we did not make progress toward our sustainable development goals, like reducing war, poverty, and increasing growth. Globally, 4.3% of children still die before the age of five. COVID-19 has killed about 23 million people . Can we – and should we – justify focusing on future generations when we face these problems now?

MacAskill argues we can. Because the number of people is so large, he also argues we should. He identifies some areas where we could do things that protect the future while also helping people who are alive now. Many solutions are win-win.

For example, the current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. Yet, despite the recent pandemic, many governments have done little to set up more robust systems that could prevent the next pandemic. MacAskill outlines ways in which those future pandemics could be worse.

Most worrying are the threats from engineered pathogens, which

[…] could be much more destructive than natural pathogens because they can be modified to have dangerous new properties. Could someone design a pathogen with maximum destructive power—something with the lethality of Ebola and the contagiousness of measles?

He gives examples, like militaries and terrorist groups, that have tried to engineer pathogens in the past.

The risk of an engineered pandemic wiping us all out in the next 100 years is between 0.1% and 3%, according to estimates laid out in the book.

That might sound low, but MacAskill argues we would not step on a plane if you were told “it ‘only’ had a one-in-a-thousand chance of crashing and killing everyone on board”. These threaten not only future generations, but people reading this – and everyone they know.

MacAskill outlines ways in which we might be able to prevent engineered pandemics, like researching better personal protective equipment, cheaper and faster diagnostics, better infrastructure, or better governance of synthetic biology. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future.

The same win-wins might apply to decarbonisation , safe development of artificial intelligence , reducing risks from nuclear war , and other threats to humanity.

Read more: Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals

Things you can do to protect future generations

Some “longtermist” issues, like climate change, are already firmly in the public consciousness. As a result, some may find MacAskill’s book “common sense”. Others may find the speculation about the far future pretty wild (like all possible views of the longterm future).

MacAskill strikes an accessible balance between anchoring the arguments to concrete examples, while making modest extrapolations into the future. He helps us see how “common sense” principles can lead to novel or neglected conclusions.

For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation). It makes humanity look like an “imprudent teenager”, with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom:

Even if you think [the risk of extinction] is only a one-in-a-thousand, the risk to humanity this century is still ten times higher than the risk of your dying this year in a car crash. If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds around blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.

Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. But MacAskill makes a compelling case for longtermism through clear stories and good metaphors. He answers many questions I had about safeguarding the future. Will the future be good or bad? Would it really matter if humanity ended? And, importantly, is there anything I can actually do?

The short answer is yes, there is. Things you might already do help, like minimising your carbon footprint – but MacAskill argues “other things you can do are radically more impactful”. For example, reducing your meat consumption would address climate change, but donating money to the world’s most effective climate charities might be far more effective.

Beyond donations, three other personal decisions seem particularly high impact to me: political activism, spreading good ideas, and having children […] But by far the most important decision you will make, in terms of your lifetime impact, is your choice of career.

MacAskill points to a range of resources – many of which he founded – that guide people in these areas. For those who might have flexibility in their career, MacAskill founded 80,000 Hours , which helps people find impactful, satisfying careers. For those trying to donate more impactfully, he founded Giving What We Can. And, for spreading good ideas, he started a social movement called Effective Altruism .

Longtermism is one of those good ideas. It helps us better place our present in humanity’s bigger story. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren. MasAskill clearly shows that we owe it to them.

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• Future generations
• Effective altruism
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Key Issues Facing Our Generation, Essay Example

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I have been fortunate enough during my educational career to have been exposed to a vast array of pedagogies that have fully enticed and engaged me in the learning process. These pedagogies have included project-based, inquiry-based, and problem-based approaches, all of which motivated me form a unique approach. These various methods represent different approaches—whether through problem-solving, direct discovery, collaborative efforts, and hands-on, empirical learning—utilized to maintain the embers of passion within me burning to learn more.  Indeed, I have had various instructors that exuded passion for their respective topics, which was infectious and cultivated an excitement in me for persistent learning.

Ultimately, I discovered that I am innately passionate about business and learning the intricacies of the business world. Education, to me, is not about school but a limitless curiosity and true fervor for knowledge. This passion for learning has propelled me to become more observant and cognizant of what is going on in the world around me. Being more attentive and observant of my surroundings has yielded a litany of tangible benefits, including an enhanced sense of creativity, a higher grade point average, and the ability to share new ideas and fresh insight in various contexts.

As I read about and follow current events on a quotidian basis, I feel as though I am a part of a very interesting and liminal generation defined by the advent of new technologies and mass education. During the Age of Information, technology has profoundly altered the way that people receive and digest information. The celeritous nature of the dissemination of a large volume of information vis-a-vis the internet and other digital interfaces has profoundly impacted the general population. In addition, the second Industrial Revolution spawned a mass education system which offered greatest access to education overall, which lifted the intellectual level within the general population. As a result, more people can engage in the international conversation about the challenges and problems the world continues to face while also enhancing how people communicate with one another.

Modern technology and mass education combined with information I gleaned from various current event stories and monographs I have recently read, I believe my generation faces four main challenges that must be addressed: illegal immigration in both Europe and the United States; the continued bifurcation of society due to socioeconomic issues, including the wealth gap between the rich and poor, a parity in wages between males and females, tax-related issues, and the minimum wage; social justice issues in relation to the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexual orientation issues; and technology and how these new technologies and technological advances have impacted the employment sector while also facilitating transportation in an increasingly busy and chaotic world.

Illegal immigration has emerged as a pressing yet politically divisive and controversial issue because rampant political instability and civil war has resulted in the dislocation of various peoples from their homes. In the Middle East and Africa, civil war has forced families from their home, while gangs have created rifts in Latin American countries such as Columbia, resulting in exiles searching for asylum in neighboring countries in the hope of living a better life outside of their motherlands. While these push factors have existed for centuries, illegal immigration is more pressing in the present day in large part because the Information Age has enabled people, even those living in Third World Countries, to have access to information. Moreover, mass education has granted people around the world have the opportunity to become literate and more informed. As a result, they are able to make wise decisions regarding whether or not they should migrate to another country for safety despite the known risks. In Europe, some countries are more willing and open to provide asylum to refugees, while others staunchly oppose it. In the United States, competing narratives about illegal immigration have germinated as a result of the upcoming presidential elections. There is a stark ideological divide between the Democrats and the Republicans, as the political climate has noticeably shifted towards the right on the political continuum. As a result, Republicans have articulated a highly conservative approach to illegal immigration. Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, touts a political agenda in which all illegal immigrants living in the United States would be deported en masse. Moreover, he supports the construction of a nine-hundred foot wall across the U.S./Mexican border to ensure that “illegal aliens” cannot cross the border into the United States. Such lexicon discursively frames immigrants as less than human, thereby raising questions about how our generation should proceed in dealing with illegal immigration and the political ramifications therein because it will persist for a very long time. Although politicians and citizens have engaged in an ongoing dialogue about illegal immigration, no consensus has been reached due to ideological rifts and differences. I believe that more countries should offer asylum to refugees who were forcibly uprooted from their homes due to religious and political persecution. With regards to the  United States and Mexico, the U.S. should embrace systematic reform of its immigration policy and take responsibility for perpetuating poverty in Mexico as a result of Structural Adjustment Programs it has implemented not only in Mexico but also in other developing countries in need of financial assistance. An open door policy commensurate with policies from the past should be one resolution that the United States and other European nations should take into consideration.

Since the twentieth century, humanitarian efforts have proliferated as a result of the ubiquity of genocides, ethnic cleansing, and civil wars that have caught the attention of the international community and underscored how social injustice persists at the micro and macro levels. From a national standpoint, countries such as the United States confront issues raised by minorities because they continue to be treated as second-class citizens. Despite the fact that official discourses claim that America was constructed on the pillars of liberty, democracy and freedom, it is unequivocal that it is a nation that was founded upon the pillars of capitalism and white hegemony. As a result, the notion of America as a cultural melting pot and a place where every has the opportunity to succeed if they work hard is purely mythical. The modal subject remains the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual male, and those who deviate from it are rendered subaltern and second-class citizens.

Gay rights has emerged as a politically divisive and contentious issue because of recent political decisions at the state and federal level to legalize gay marriage. This shift towards favoring gay rights has fomented a cultural conservative backlash, as those who are to the extreme right on the political continuum disagree with the decision to render gay marriage on par with the “traditional” definition of marriage according to the Bible. Ironically, America is a secular nation in which state and religion remain separate, yet conservatives time and again spew vitriol and hateful messages. One poignant example is Kim Davis, a county clerk who refused to comply with the Supreme Court Decision mandating that all county clerks administer marriage licenses to both heterosexual and homosexual couples. She was incarcerated for her resistance, which ignited a political controversy in the United States that persists. Many theocratic, conservative countries in the Middle East, the majority of African countries and some countries in Asia prohibit gay marriages, and the penalty for engaging in homosexual acts can be severe depending on national context.

Racial inequality also remains a prominent issues in countries across the world, as non-whites continue to be treated as second-class citizens. The legacy of racism, especially against African Americans, is still evident, especially in the prison-industrial complex that ironically has rendered America, the so-called most free country in the world, the most incarcerated. 1 out of every 3 persons in the prison population is a black male, and police brutality waged against unarmed black teenagers continues to make headlines on a quotidian basis. My generation must address this challenge immediately, as globalization has rendered the borders of many countries porous. Attitudes towards minorities in foreign places have a large bearing on who travels where. As the world becomes more interconnected as a result of globalization and new technologies, it is crucial that pejorative stereotypes and attitudes towards subaltern groups be done away with. Viewing non-white individuals as subhuman or predisposed to criminality merely sustains past prejudices and renders it impossible for tolerance and social justice to exist in modern contexts. Although laws have been passed to enact change, the implementation of such policies has hitherto failed to alter perceptions and attitudes towards perceived subaltern groups.

In addition to illegal immigration and social justice as significant challenges, economic inequality continues to hamper both developed and developing countries alike, especially because of the recent financial crisis that wracked the globalized economy for the past decade. The widening bifurcation of society because of socioeconomic dislocation continues to perpetuate a wealth gap between the rich and poor. As evident in  Capital,  the best-selling book by Thomas Piketty, the wealth gap continues to widen for a litany of reasons. One postulation is that poorer people, especially those in developing countries, invest less in their self-improvement and education, which is why anti-inequality measures put pressure on governments to invest in those arenas. Households that depend on non-standard labor experience higher poverty levels than those households that do not, thereby cultivated a wider chasm between the rich and the poor.

The inefficacy of tax and benefit systems in redistributing income also contributes to this socioeconomic bifurcation in both developed and developing countries. The United States and OECD have proposed various tax reforms that render tax systems more transparent and simplified. Currently, various business firms and wealthy families can avoid paying stiff taxes because of the existence of several loopholes and tax havens. Flawed taxation systems exacerbate economic inequality, so it is important that legislative correctives be implemented in order to abate the ever-increasing wealth gap. Political clout is intrinsically linked to economic agency, so the widening inequality renders the socioeconomically impoverished underrepresented in the political arena.

Another economic issue related to economic inequality is the debate over the minimum wage, and whether or not it should be raised in order to address endemic poverty in certain communities. Indeed, raising the minimum wage would provide families living at the poverty line with more income for subsistence. However, raising the minimum wage may result in firms laying off employees because they cannot afford to employ as many people without losing profits, thereby increasing unemployment rates. Policymakers must take this tradeoff into account prior to changing and implementing a new policy.

Finally, technological advancements during the Age of Information poses various issues that have tangible effects on society at-large. Technological progress manifests in greater automation, robotic technologies, and machine-learning, all of which may potentially replace humans in the employment sector, thereby resulting in higher rates of unemployment. Firms like Air B&B and Uber are disrupting traditional businesses including taxis and other hotel chains. As such, policymakers and consumers alike have engaged in a dialogue about whether these services should me offered and allowed since their presence has resulted in a loss of jobs for traditional businesses and other unforeseen problems. However, such innovations also carry a vast array of benefits, as they enable people to connect with one another more easily and efficiently. The emergence of Web 2.0 facilitates communication across the globe. In addition, new technologies have led to more jobs, environmentally-friendly solutions, and a shared economy.

Due to the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, and computers, people currently consume technology at an exponential and unprecedented rate. Technologies have facilitated the celeritous dissemination of information, thereby enhancing efforts made to have more informed citizens about current events and current issues. Unfortunately, new technologies pose some adverse ramifications, including a general decline in literacy rates. Text messaging is a phenomenon that has been embraced by citizens across the world, yet studies show that individuals who text message frequently demonstrate a decline in their literacy because of “text speak.” Thus, while technological advances enhance the quality of life for people in some respects, they also have downsides that my generation must confront, especially because of how dependent we have become on technology for our everyday lives.

I believe that the key challenges facing my generation are immigration, socioeconomic boundaries, minority acknowledgement, and technological progress. My generation is a part of a liminal period of transition towards a digitized and technologically structured world fabric. The world is a fast-paced, and dynamic environment that individuals must be able to adequately navigate in order to thrive. My limitless curiosity and fervor for knowledge has driven to pursue a career in business. I hope to gain the business acumen and ample knowledge in order to contribute significantly to society at-large and the international community.

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Young Generation’s Challenges in Life and Career Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
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The current youth are living in a hostile environment, unlike the one, our parents grew up in. Being the age of twenty-four years, I have encountered and seen the various challenges that many youths in this generation are experiencing. The list of challenges facing the youth in the current generation is endless with most of them having great impacts on the entire globe. Some of these challenges include; unemployment, drugs, violence, peer pressure, and divorce just to mention but a few. With the increasing global population, the youth have been faced with the challenge of getting employment on completion of their studies.

The youth have been faced with the difficulty of entering the labor market hence making most of them indulge in the informal sector even after spending years of formal training. This generation is also subject to the influence of peers because at this stage of life individuals lack self-confidence and mostly hold low self-esteem. As a result, the youth are influenced to indulge in immoral and irresponsible acts like drugs and alcohol taking.

Due to the reason that the current education system does not emphasize moral guidance for the youth to be able to choose the right course of action in situations of the moral dilemma it becomes a great challenge to them. In addition to this, the fact that the current world is competitive, many parents have resulted in spending more time at work while spending less time with their children hence making them raise themselves in the way they deem fit. The lack of guidance is a great challenge as they are forced to do things on their own whereby some may end up being irresponsible people in the future. Other challenges are those of cultural differences and the rampant cases of divorce.

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Essay on Generation Gap: 100, 200, 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Nov 29, 2023

Have you ever found it difficult to communicate your ideas and emotions to those who are either younger or older than you? Do you find it difficult to persuade your elders to take action? Do you ever feel that your priorities, perspective, and way of thinking are completely different from those of your own parents? Sounds relatable? You are not alone! This is what the generation gap looks like. The generation gap refers to the differences in our opinions, points of view, and perspectives about other people. The generation gap takes place due to developments and changes around the world. Adapting to a new environment has always been in human nature. In the beginning, we all struggle to adapt to new changes, but, with time we adapt ourselves and cope with the new conditions. Here are some sample essay on the generation gap for school students.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Generation Gap in 100 Words
• 2 Essay on Generation Gap in 200 Words
• 3 Essay on Generation Gap in 300 Words

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Essay on Generation Gap in 100 Words

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Ans: The generation gap is a natural phenomenon where people with different values and perspectives clash. What one views as good might not be the same for someone from a different age group. The generation gap is caused due to factors such as technological advancements, the evolution of societal values and cultural norms, changes in communication styles, and other factors. The generation gap is a broader concept and it is essential for us to embrace and bridge this gap.

The generation gap can be bridged by fostering mutual understanding, education, putting yourself in other’s shoes, and emphasizing common values of respect, trust, kindness, etc.

Ans: Older generations can teach the value of time and respecting elders. They can encourage us to follow our passion, take care of our health, not to sweat small stuff, not to judge people, etc.

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With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Most in the U.S. say young adults today face more challenges than their parents’ generation in some key areas

About seven-in-ten Americans think young adults today have a harder time than their parents’ generation when it comes to saving for the future (72%), paying for college (71%) and buying a home (70%), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2021. These findings come at a time when younger Americans are more likely than previous generations to have taken on student debt with tuition costs steadily rising, and to face an affordable housing crisis as rent and housing prices have grown markedly faster than incomes in the last decade.

To learn more about how Americans view the circumstances young adults face across various life measures compared with their parents’ generation, Pew Research Center surveyed 9,676 U.S. adults between Oct. 18-24, 2021. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and  its methodology .

There’s less consensus when it comes to assessing labor market outcomes for young people today compared with their parents’ generation. Similar shares say finding a job is easier (40%) as say it is harder (39%) for young adults today. A smaller share of U.S. adults (21%) say it’s about the same.

When it comes to finding a spouse or partner, Americans are more than twice as likely to say younger adults today have it harder than their parents’ generation (46%) than to say they have it easier (21%). Around a third (32%) say it’s about the same.

On some other measures, Americans are more positive in their assessments of young adults’ circumstances. A significant majority of U.S. adults (74%) say it is easier for younger generations today to stay in touch with family and friends. Only 14% say this is harder for young adults compared with their parents’ generation. A plurality (41%) says getting into college is easier for young adults today compared with their parents’ generation; 33% say it’s harder for young adults today and 26% say it’s about the same.

There are notable age differences when it comes to assessing the circumstances of young adults today.

While majorities across all age groups say young adults have it harder when it comes to buying a home, saving for the future and paying for college, Americans ages 18 to 29 are more likely than older age groups to say this. More than eight-in-ten adults younger than 30 (84%) say buying a home is harder for young adults today, while 80% say the same about saving for the future and paying for college. Among those ages 30 to 49, 72% say buying a home and paying for college is harder for young adults today, and 74% say this about saving for the future. Those 50 and older are the least likely to say these measures are harder for younger generations to reach, with 63% saying this about buying a home, 67% saying this about saving for the future, and 66% saying this about paying for college.

When it comes to finding a job, younger Americans are again the most likely to say this is harder for young adults today. Overall, 55% of 18- to 29-year-olds say finding a job is harder for young adults today than it was for their parents’ generation. About four-in-ten or less of those ages 30 to 49 and those 50 and older say this about young adults (39% and 33%, respectively). There are also double-digit differences between the views of adults younger than 30 and those ages 50 or older when it comes to finding a spouse or partner (52% of 18- to 29-year-olds say this is harder for young adults today vs. 42% in the older group) and getting into college (45% vs. 27%, respectively). In fact, a plurality of adults 50 and older say getting into college is easier today (44%). There are no large differences by age on the measure of staying in touch with family and friends.

Generally, these views differ only modestly by gender, with one exception. On finding a spouse or partner, about half of women (51%) – compared with 40% of men – say this is harder for young adults today than it was for their parents’ generation. This gap is only present among those ages 30 and older; roughly equal shares of women (53%) and men (52%) younger than 30 say this is harder for young adults today. Notably, women in older age groups give similar answers as younger women, while older men are less likely than their younger counterparts to say finding a spouse or partner is harder for young adults today (42% of men 30 to 49 and 34% of men 50 and older say this).

Finally, on most of these measures, there are no significant differences between adults who are parents of children ages 18 to 29 and those who are not. On a few items where such differences exist, they tend to disappear when looking at adults 50 and older. The only item where such differences persist among older adults is on assessments of finding a job. Interestingly, those 50 and older who are parents of adult children ages 18 to 29 are more likely than those in the same age group who do not have young adult children to say young adults today have it easier when it comes to finding a job (47% vs. 42%, respectively).

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and  its methodology .

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Stella Sechopoulos is a former research assistant focusing on social and demographic trends research at Pew Research Center .

Methodology: 2023 focus groups of Asian Americans

1 in 10: redefining the asian american dream (short film), the hardships and dreams of asian americans living in poverty, majority of americans prefer a community with big houses, even if local amenities are farther away, single women own more homes than single men in the u.s., but that edge is narrowing, most popular.

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A series of FT View editorials and daily online debates will make the case for a new deal for the young. Beginning on Monday 26 April, they will address housing, pensions, jobs, education, the climate and tax over the course of the week.  Click to register for the events and see all the other articles

Growing inequality between generations has been exacerbated by the pandemic and has left many people in their teens, twenties and thirties feeling like they have got a raw deal.

The Financial Times wanted to bring those young people into a discussion about shifts in asset prices, pensions, education and the world of work so we launched a global survey. We asked people aged between 16 and 35 to tell us what life has been like for them in the pandemic, and which problems need fixing most urgently.

The survey was only open for one week but we had a record number of responses, with 1,700 people replying to the callout and spending an average of 30 minutes each on their responses.

While the majority of respondents were from the UK and US, others who shared their views were from Europe, Brazil, Egypt, and Asia-Pacific. Many of the respondents, though not all, were graduates who worked in sectors such as law, banking, media, education, science and technology. Many did not want to share their full names or personal details for fear of professional and personal repercussions.

People spoke of the difficulties — and benefits — of being young in today’s difficult economic times compared with their parents’ generation, and about issues relating to housing, education, jobs, pensions and the environment.

The responses formed the starting point for an in-depth analysis of the problems faced by young people today by Sarah O’Connor, our employment columnist. It is the first article in an FT series on what policies would make the economy work better for today’s youth.

Here we highlight some of the many hundreds of comments we received from readers:

Cramped housing

I absolutely cannot relate to mid career professionals being glad to be at home in their leafy three bedroom houses with gardens, when I have to have mid afternoon calls with the sound of my flatmates frying fish for lunch in the background. — A 20-year-old female reader living in London

The burden of student loans

Student loans feel like a unique problem for our generation. I can’t think of a similarity in the past when youth had such large financial burdens that can’t be discharged in most cases. Not that cancellation is necessarily the right choice. I knew what I signed up for, but what was the alternative, work in a coffee shop while the rest of my generation bettered themselves?

Mortgages and car payments just aren’t comparable to the $100k in loans I’ve been forced to deal with since I was 22. The rest seems similar. We have climate change and equality, my parents generations had communist totalitarian governments, nuclear war and . . . equality. — Matt, who works in Chicago, US

Mismatched ideas

The older generation has never understood that while our pay has increased it has been wiped out by extortionate rise in property prices. The older generation also thinks young people only enjoy spending money on experiences rather than saving money, which is not true. — A 30-year-old engineer living in the UK

Living with uncertainty

Older generations don’t feel the uncertainty we younger generation live with. Now it is more common for us to have more temporary jobs, for example, the gig economy. This uncertainty makes planning for future harder and makes taking risks impossible. — Ahmed, a lecturer living in Egypt

Scrap stamp duty on housing

The government needs to sort out house prices and stop inflating them. It should also scrap stamp duty and introduce annual property taxes instead. — A 25-year-old investment banker living in London

Emotionally better off than my parents

I know I’ll be better off than my parents. My mom came from an Italian immigrant family with seven siblings. I’m one of the first people to graduate from college with a four-year degree and one of the only people employed. Neither of my parents really ‘did’ therapy through their adult lives despite needing it, whereas I’ve had a therapist since my second year in college.

I think a common misperception about being better off is the focus on wealth — being better off also means being more emotionally and mentally healthy, which I know I am already better off than many of my family members. — Alicia, a financial analyst living in America

London feels increasingly full of anxious, burnt out 20- and 30-something-year-olds who spend half their income on a cramped flat with a damp problem and spend their weekends in the foetal position on their landlord’s Ikea sofa, endlessly scrolling through the latest app.

We have so much more than our parents did at our age, but also so much less. — A 25-year-old woman from the UK

Artificially high property prices

Current policies like Help to Buy are making things worse for young people in Britain. The prices of new builds are artificially inflated as builders know HTB can only be used on new builds! £450,000 for a one bed flat in London? Jog on. It’s insane. — Chris, in his late twenties living in London

Gen X doesn’t understand Gen Y

Generation X, doesn’t understand Generation Y, who doesn’t understand Generation Z — Andreas, a young doctor from Bulgaria

Regulate financial markets

I also have a feeling that regulating the financial markets would create more stability which would reduce the constant fear of a market meltdown — Kasper from Finland

Who is accountable?

Sustainability (renewable energy, mindful meat consumption, plastic usage awareness, social responsibility, ESG) are utmost key, and older generations seem to miss this. It feels they have put us in a stage where there is no going back, and there is no accountability whatsoever. — Renato, a risk manager from Brazil

Soaring rents

Many items that are considered a luxury to older generations, holidays, clothes, going out to eat, for example, are cheaper these days, but buying a house or renting is so much more expensive compared to when my parents were young. A lot of young people can afford the former not the latter, but for many older generations it seems the opposite was true, which creates contrasting views from each side about who has it worse. — Sophie, in her mid-twenties, from London

Young vs old

A number of older people I know are relatively sympathetic to a lot of the issues we face. There is a young versus old narrative pushed by certain sections of the media which, at least for many older people with families, has rung hollow with me. Generally they do recognise that we live in a more competitive world than they grew up in, for university places, jobs, housing etc. If anything I feel older generations probably understand younger people better than we understand them — Alex, a student solicitor in London

Cannot afford to buy a house

There is no acceptance that working from home is not feasible for younger people where you’re in significantly smaller accommodation. My company released an internal communication informing us how to be more efficient working in shared accommodation or working from your bedroom at the same time as starting consultation on closing all offices and homeworking permanently. — Lewis, who is working and studying in Bristol, UK

I have a mildly dystopian view

I feel older generations don’t understand the value of money, and it feels strange because my parents have lived a frugal life and I am doing well enough for myself, yet, given the economy, I feel compelled to save, while they don’t understand why I think thrice before every purchase.

On the issue of non-renewable resources, I feel that my parents have a particularly different mindset compared to mine; I have a mild compulsion to turn off any running tap or switch if it’s not being used. They have this comfort and faith that there will be enough for the coming generations, while I have a mildly dystopian view of the future Water/Resource Wars — Pia, a woman in her twenties in India

Steep housing costs

At my age on an apprentice’s salary my dad owned his own house and was buying and flipping more houses. I’ve got a masters degree, earning about 40 per cent more than the national average and I’m still struggling to find anywhere. They just don’t seem to understand, my dad refused to believe me until I showed him the tiny studio flats selling in my area for almost £300k — A data scientist in his late twenties, working in the UK

My generation is worn out

In many ways I think I am better off than my parents were. I’ve been able to travel and live in different countries. I had more choices than women before me. Where I live, I can love whomever I want to love. I do not have a physical job that wears down my body. But I guess each generation faces different challenges.

My generation is perhaps more likely to be mentally worn out. Housing is less affordable and returns are relatively less certain and I don’t have a pension or a pensions saving account that is protected from double taxation. — Deborah from the Netherlands

Change the voting system

It is probably an unrealistic policy change, but I would like to see some kind of weighting system applied to future voting (be it elections or referendums). The older you are, the fewer years you have left to live and the less you will have to suffer from poor long-term choices.

Brexit is a good example of this. Foolish and impressionable members of the older generation selfishly voted to leave the EU — a decision which will cause long-term damage for my generation well after they are deceased. Older people’s votes should have counted for less in the referendum. — David, working in fintech in London

Introduce a ‘meat licence’

I would introduce a “meat license” which every adult in the UK would require before they purchase/consume meat. To get this license, once a year they would have to go to an abattoir and slaughter a cow or pig. Once they have done this, they are allowed to consume as much meat as they want during the year.

This would encourage others to switch to alternatives that are available or at least reduce meat waste which is a tragically growing issue in the rich world. — Dan, working in London, UK

Replace student fees

Instead of tuition fee loans and maintenance loans I would give all young people a lump sum at regular intervals for their first several years post 18. They could use this towards going to uni, getting training, buying a house, etc. It would help diversify the paths people take post 18 whilst redistributing wealth. — A man in his mid-twenties living in Sheffield, UK

*Comments have been edited for length, style and clarity

Feel free to join the conversation by sharing your thoughts and experiences in the comment section below.

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How Generation Z can help solve today's greatest challenges

Gitanjali rao, inventor and time kid of the year, beeline reader.

BeeLine Reader , a 2021 Digital Inclusion Solver team , uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently

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Inventor and TIME Kid of the Year Gitanjali Rao with Solver and Founder of Timeless Emma Yang at Virtual Solve at MIT 2020

A young boy in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya wakes up at 8am to go to school in the morning, and then walks 45 minutes to meet the rest of his classmates. After today’s lesson, he is planning to meet with an American technology company to discuss their latest developments in the industry. He brainstorms novel ideas around these new concepts, pitches them to the company, and eventually gets the opportunity to mass produce his products and receive real feedback from field testing. This is an example of the world in which we would all love to create and grow up.  

We have an opportunity for Gen Z students to approach modern issues more critically and creatively. I believe that Gen Z students can identify and tackle problems differently from previous generations. We are growing up in an era where massive, worldwide problems like climate change are occurring in real time. We’re experiencing them firsthand and viewing them through a student's perspective. Young people have the unique mindset to create solutions with more freedom than adults, but also face specific barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential.    While working with students in refugee camps in Kenya and schools in Ghana, I was inspired  to look more broadly at innovation and problem-solving. I recognized that even if partnerships can be formed and connections can be made, the lack of experience with particular skills is what continues to hold youth back, like knowing how to conduct a feasibility study with the latest technologies.    Many of the challenges that students face revolve around a lack of access to resources, a dearth of mentors and experts, and the scrutiny of age versus ability. The processes of design-thinking and problem-solving must be supported by technological resources, funding, and further tools for marketing. K-12 students, who do not have the advantage of higher education and industry experience, lack access to these resources to develop their ideas further, keeping them out of conversations where they could make a difference.    In addition, students do not have access to a network of established tech and business communities, such as experts in the field and mentors that can guide their path with direct feedback.    In order to support the younger generation who is looking to bring its ideas to reality, those with more experience in the workforce can make a lasting impact by mentoring students. Mentorship can come in many forms: encouraging youth to use the tech available to them to solve issues, breaking down barriers to access, or even taking a couple of hours to collaborate on ideas. Guidance and encouragement early on is critical.  Initiatives like MIT Solve, which helps social good tech entrepreneurs scale their solutions and its new program for budding entrepreneurs 24 and under, and Solv[ED] give youth the opportunity to design, build, and elevate their ideas for a chance to create meaningful change. With the support of educators and mentors in the MIT Solve community, youth are able to develop their own ideas from scratch, foster them using the latest technology, receive funding, and gain access to a platform to pitch their ideas to the real world. Investing in new technologies and partnerships for Gen Z will make real change for the future of our society.  Solv[ED] is investing in a unique set of talent, viewpoints, and skill sets and expanding opportunities for Gen Z to solve some of the most pressing issues facing society today. Often the best solutions start small and local. Once proven to work, these solutions can be adapted and scaled to solve similar problems in other parts of the world. That is what the youth are able to do — come up with creative approaches locally that can eventually help solve problems worldwide. I can’t wait to see our young generation realize their full potential as changemakers.

Related Challenge

Youth innovation, 2022 solv[ed] youth innovation challenge, related articles, using green nanotech to extend the shelf life of produce: a q&a with karpolax founders, menstrual product innovation for our generation, mit solve announces inaugural class of solv[ed] innovators, we use cookies.

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December 21, 2021

The Biggest Challenges Facing Millennials Going into 2022 and Beyond

Millennials: their drivers of happiness and their biggest challenges.

by Jamin Brazil

Chairman & CEO at HubUX

In December 2021, HubUX launched a quantitative and qualitative study among our panel with the main focus on what we are thankful for today and our biggest concerns for tomorrow.

This research was recruited through our panel that has participants were vetted via video auditions. Additional participants were sourced using social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. All research was handled internally by HubUX.

Overall, Millennials are happy!

Based on our research, happiness goes up with age. Millennials are happier than Gen Z but less happy than Gen X or their Boomer Parents.

Millennials are facing a lot of change in the middle of their career and family. Like all generations, their lives were upended with the Shelter-In-Place mandate. Over the last 18 months, they have created a totally new set of routines and support structures.

Today, many companies are requiring employees to return to the office either part-time or full-time. The transition back into office work is making Millennials rethink their lives.

What drives Millennial happiness?

Based on our driver analysis, Millennials’ happiness is largely driven by concerns around managing their career and the subsequent down-chain impact their finances have on their security, housing, and leisure options.

Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself what Millennials in our study said are their biggest concerns going into 2022…

Managing a career along with family obligations is a key concern.

Concerns around Covid-19 safety were a regular mention by participants.

Is it safe to go back to work? Who should I believe? In many cases, this uncertainty is the basis for not going back to work in an office.

Cost control is something Millennials are actively doing.

They saved a lot of money in 2021 and they want to ensure they are being financially responsible in the “post”-Covid normal.

Career transition is a reoccurring theme.

What is the impact?

How ai can help marketers reach the distracted generation.

At the onset of Covid-19, Millennials were forced to work from home. They were very reactionary and just trudged through it.

Today, they are being thoughtful about what their new normal will be and the tradeoffs they are willing to make relative to their families, their leisure time, their careers, and their overall happiness.

If you are trying to capture the hearts and minds of Millennials, here is what they are concerned about going into 2022:

• Career advancement
• Bills and savings
• Increased parenting responsibility
• Returning to work in the office

If you would like to learn more about how to effectively reach Millennials, you can find me on any social platform or email me directly .

Happy Researching! 😊

Jamin Brazil

21 articles

The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.

Comments are moderated to ensure respect towards the author and to prevent spam or self-promotion. Your comment may be edited, rejected, or approved based on these criteria. By commenting, you accept these terms and take responsibility for your contributions.

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10 Biggest Challenges Millennials Face Today

You have heard of the word millennials countless times but still not sure what it is. Millennial is a term used for those who were born between the years 1981 to 1996. Based on the latest statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau , there are now 83.1 million millennials.  

Older people considered the millennials as an entitled generation. But what they did not know is that they, too, face so many struggles and challenges every day. They need to withstand criticism and judgment just to show everyone that they deserve whatever success they have now.

What are the most common challenges among millennials?

Just like the generations before them, millennials are bombarded with so many problems that they have to face. In spite of how advanced and sophisticated society is, they constantly find ways to make a name for themselves. However, there will always be instances that test their sanity and strength.

1. Low-paying Jobs/ Unemployment

Sad to say, wages remain unmoved despite inflation. Millennials who work for minimum wage have to juggle two or three jobs to make ends meet. The cost of living, goods and services continue to rise but increasing the wage has not been the top priority.

2. Technology Addiction

They say that millennials are fortunate because they get to witness and experience how technology begins and makes life more convenient. Many millennials are hooked on every device or gadget that they are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to buy them.

3. Cancel Culture

This is a new concept to a lot of people. Cancel culture was conceived because millennials and younger generations have become bolder in making their stand about different social, political, etc. issues. It could also be that millennials are too sensitive now that they cannot bear seeing and listening to someone who opposes their beliefs.

4. College Debt

One of the most draining challenges among millennials is their college debts or student loans. Since college is expensive, many of them resort to taking out loans to study. They hope to get a good job once they graduate and immediately pay back all their loans. But it is not always the case.

5. Aging Parents

One survey showed that one in every 3 millennials is planning to take another job to be able to afford taking care of their parents. Many millennials include caring for their aging parents in their future plans and expenses. Some of them have chosen to move back into their parents’ home to look after them.

6. Discrimination

Discrimination comes in different forms – age, race, sexual orientation, status or religion. Eliminating discrimination is a long shot and what is worse is anyone can be a victim. Millennials persevere to have a comfortable life but they are often confronted with prejudice and unfair treatment in their workplace or in the community.

7. Substance/ Alcohol/ Sex Addiction

There is so much alcohol and illegal substances available now. Surprisingly, you can easily get access to whatever alcohol or drugs you are looking for. This same goes with sex. Everything is within reach and you will never have any trouble looking for a good time these days.

8. Violence/ Bullying

One of the most alarming problems among millennials is bullying and the ever presence of violence in the community. Cyber-bullying happens not just to students but also to adults. It becomes an entertainment to a number of individuals who wish ill to someone on the Internet. Violence against someone of different race and ethnicity is making headlines every now and then.

9. Less Human Interaction

Millennials are either too wrapped up with their work or just plainly shy that they do not give importance to socializing and meeting new people. If they are not working, they spend most of their time taking care of their family, watching television or using social media platforms.

10. Mental Health Issues

With all the challenges millennials face every single day – from financial to personal aspects, it is no wonder that they feel stressed out, anxious and depressed. A study found out that one in every 5 millennials struggle with depression.

What to do if you are struggling with depression?

If you are battling with depression or know someone who does, you need to act right away and seek professional help. It is hard to admit that you are suffering from mental stress but the moment you accept the problem it is one step closer to getting better.

Different problems and challenges among millennials are tough but they can be overcome. Mindshift Psychological Services lends a hand to those suffering from depression and other mental health issues.

We make sure that we accommodate and satisfy your needs for your health and wellness. Our qualified and excellent medical professionals are here to guide and assist you in managing your issues through our world-class therapies and counseling sessions.

Visit our website to learn more about our medical professionals and services. You may schedule an appointment online or through this number: (714)584-9700. 

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Social Issues That Matter to Generation Z

With tech­nol­o­gy at their fin­ger­tips — and a reg­u­lar tool in their grow­ing hands — Gen Zers have been able to con­nect to cul­tures around the world and learn about issues and news ear­li­er and more often than any gen­er­a­tion before them. This broad cul­tur­al expo­sure from an ear­ly age like­ly con­tributes to Gen­er­a­tion Z’s ten­den­cy towards open-mind­ed­ness, lib­er­al views and advo­ca­cy for the fair and equal treat­ment of others.

Eight Top Social Issues for Gen Z

Eight issues, in par­tic­u­lar, have com­mand­ed the atten­tion of Gen­er­a­tion Z so far. These are: 1 ) health care access; 2 ) men­tal health; 3 ) high­er edu­ca­tion; 4 ) eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty; 5 ) civic engage­ment; 6 ) racial equi­ty; 7 ) the envi­ron­ment; and 8 ) gun violence.

1 . Health Care Access

Health care is a core issue for Gen­er­a­tion Z. Almost nine in 10 Gen Zers ages 18 to 24 view access to health care as a human right , accord­ing to a nation­al poll in 2022 . In addi­tion to access, they see afford­abil­i­ty and qual­i­ty as key sys­tem issues to improve. As part of this issue, access to repro­duc­tive health care, specif­i­cal­ly, has emerged as a top pri­or­i­ty for Gen Z young adults.

When it comes to their own health care, near­ly one in five ( 17 %) Gen Zers ages 18 to 24 did not have ­health insur­ance  in the fall of 2022 , accord­ing to Cen­sus Bureau data. This high unin­sured rate is espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing giv­en that ado­les­cents and young adults gen­er­al­ly have low lev­els of health care access to begin with — and this is a vul­ner­a­ble phase of devel­op­ment in which sig­nif­i­cant phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes are tak­ing place. 

The age span of 14 through 24 , which cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents Gen Z (ages 12 to 27  in 2024 ), marks a for­ma­tive stage in the lifes­pan, when youth must nav­i­gate increas­ing auton­o­my while form­ing their iden­ti­ties and build­ing socioe­mo­tion­al and life skills. This emerg­ing inde­pen­dence is crit­i­cal in the health care con­text, as young peo­ple must learn to tra­verse the health care sys­tem, devel­op health lit­er­a­cy and take charge of their own health needs.

While young adults who have health insur­ance often are cov­ered by their par­ents’ plans, the old­est mem­bers of Gen Z have aged out of their par­ents’ plans and are invest­ing in their own insur­ance for the first time. Many can only afford cov­er­age through the Afford­able Care Act and Med­ic­aid expan­sion .

When it comes to health care, youth today gen­er­al­ly have a holis­tic view – believ­ing providers should screen for social deter­mi­nants of health such as food inse­cu­ri­ty and hous­ing needs – and they val­ue self-care, con­ve­nience and effi­cien­cy. Thanks to evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy, they are grow­ing up with­in a med­ical sys­tem offer­ing unprece­dent­ed online options for con­nect­ing with physi­cians, health coach­es , ther­a­pists and oth­ers — as well as self-mon­i­­tor­ing dig­i­tal tools — empow­er­ing them to gath­er infor­ma­tion, learn and man­age their health needs.

At the same time, Gen Zers are less like­ly to have pri­ma­ry care providers rel­a­tive to old­er Amer­i­cans, and they fre­quent­ly pre­fer telemed­i­cine to tra­di­tion­al in-per­­son vis­its, espe­cial­ly those with geo­graph­ic or trans­porta­tion bar­ri­ers . How­ev­er, main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in tele­health appoint­ments is a con­cern for some young peo­ple, espe­cial­ly when they still live at home or lack a pri­vate set­ting. Ado­les­cents and young adults often have unique and sen­si­tive health needs, such as repro­duc­tive or men­tal health issues, that require con­fi­den­tial care.

Gen Z also believes that racial inequities exist in the health care sys­tem , and many report their own expe­ri­ences of dis­crim­i­na­tion in health care set­tings. Med­ical providers can respond by ensur­ing that they pro­vide cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive ser­vices ground­ed in pos­i­tive youth devel­op­ment prin­ci­ples, whether vir­tu­al­ly or in person.

2 . Men­tal Health

Men­tal health is a cri­sis in Amer­i­ca, accord­ing to more than eight in 10 Gen Zers . This gen­er­a­tion is far more like­ly to report emo­tion­al health prob­lems than old­er age groups. A  2022 sur­vey of U.S. young adults ages 18 to 29 found that about half report­ed ​ “ always” or ​ “ often” feel­ing anx­ious in the past year, com­pared to one-third of adults over­all. In addi­tion, a  mul­ti-year Gen Z study found that they were 83 % more like­ly to report anx­i­ety issues and 86 % more like­ly to report depres­sion com­pared with oth­er gen­er­a­tions. Mem­bers of Gen Z are con­cerned about this cri­sis affect­ing their age group , but they tend to be prag­mat­ic about address­ing it and they are help­ing to des­tig­ma­tize the issue. They are more accept­ing of and open to talk­ing about depres­sion, anx­i­ety and oth­er emo­tion­al chal­lenges than old­er generations. 

While tech­nol­o­gy and social media can fos­ter crit­i­cal social sup­port and con­nec­tions for young peo­ple, they can also aug­ment anx­i­ety, depres­sion, low self-esteem and stress . Con­tribut­ing to this, trag­ic U.S. and world news is now deliv­ered faster than ever — and dif­fi­cult to avoid — via an assort­ment of apps and out­lets. Gen Zers report seri­ous con­cerns about home­less­ness, gun vio­lence, sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion, cli­mate change and more . Oth­er major stres­sors for Gen Z in recent years include the COVID- 19 pan­dem­ic, high hous­ing costs, and per­son­al finances.

For­tu­nate­ly, today’s young adults are more like­ly to seek treat­ment for their anx­i­ety and depres­sion than old­er age groups. Near­ly one in three ( 31 %) young adults ages 18 to 29 report­ed receiv­ing men­tal health care in the pre­vi­ous year, com­pared to one in four ( 25 %) adults ages 30 to 49 and less than one in five ( 18 %) ages 50 to 64 , accord­ing to the 2022 sur­vey not­ed above. Oth­er stud­ies note sim­i­lar trends. At the same time, young peo­ple who need treat­ment do not always get it. In 2022 , almost half ( 47 %) of young adults said they did not get men­tal health care when they thought they might need it in the pre­vi­ous year, with cost cit­ed among the top bar­ri­ers. Low­er-income and LGBTQ groups tend to be par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble, both in terms of access­ing treat­ment and expe­ri­enc­ing poor men­tal health outcomes.

Read more about Gen­er­a­tion Z and Men­tal Health

3 . High­er Education

High­er edu­ca­tion is one of the top issues Gen­er­a­tion Z cares about. The vast major­i­ty ( 83 %) of U.S. Gen Zers ages 12 to 26 believe a col­lege edu­ca­tion is ​ “ very impor­tant” or ​ “ fair­ly impor­tant,” accord­ing to a  2023 Gallup sur­vey. Con­sis­tent with this, mem­bers of Gen­er­a­tion Z are the least like­ly to drop out of high school and the most like­ly to go to col­lege com­pared to old­er gen­er­a­tions, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter .

How­ev­er, only about half ( 53 %) of col­lege-bound Gen Zers thought they could afford it , based on the same 2023 sur­vey. While con­cerns about col­lege afford­abil­i­ty were con­sis­tent across all demo­graph­ic groups, Black Gen Zers were the least like­ly to think they could afford it ( 39 %). Researchers note that this could con­tribute to low­er col­lege enroll­ment and com­ple­tion rates among Black students.

As learn­ers, Gen Zers are inter­est­ed in acquir­ing career skills, and they val­ue flex­i­ble and per­son­al­ized teach­ing approach­es. They are inde­pen­dent, cre­ative, hands-on and tech-savvy stu­dents who pre­fer immer­sive, active edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ences ver­sus pas­sive­ly sit­ting and lis­ten­ing to lec­tures for hours. Of course, they are a diverse group with dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing styles, which is part­ly why flex­i­bil­i­ty and mul­ti­ple modes of learn­ing (e.g., visu­al, audi­to­ry, kines­thet­ic, e‑learning, self-dis­cov­ery, etc.) work well for them.

The pan­dem­ic knocked a sig­nif­i­cant share of stu­dents off their aca­d­e­m­ic path. For instance: In Octo­ber 2020 , more than 40 % of house­holds report­ed that a prospec­tive stu­dent was can­celing plans to attend com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, accord­ing to data from the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau . Since the pan­dem­ic, col­lege enroll­ment rates have con­tin­ued to decline , espe­cial­ly among two-year insti­tu­tions, and grad­u­a­tion rates have stag­nat­ed . Gen Zers are increas­ing­ly tak­ing uncon­ven­tion­al path­ways through high­er edu­ca­tion, such as chang­ing schools, mov­ing across state lines, adjust­ing course loads and/​or paus­ing and restart­ing enroll­ment. It remains to be seen how Gen Z uncer­tain­ty about col­lege afford­abil­i­ty may affect future atten­dance rates.

Rec­og­niz­ing the range of issues fac­ing Gen Z, lead­ers in high­er edu­ca­tion and oth­er sec­tors can pri­or­i­tize a holis­tic approach to stu­dent well-being that address­es their finan­cial, men­tal and phys­i­cal health needs, as well as racial, gen­der and LGBTQ + equity.

Read more about Gen­er­a­tion Z and Education

4 . Eco­nom­ic Security

Eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty mat­ters to Gen Z. Mul­ti­ple stud­ies have report­ed that per­son­al finances, jobs, debt, the cost of liv­ing and hous­ing inse­cu­ri­ty are major sources of stress for Gen Z. In 2023 , almost two-thirds ( 64 %) of Gen Zers ages 12 to 26 said finan­cial resources were a bar­ri­er to their future goals. They want to have sta­ble, well-pay­ing jobs, afford­able hous­ing and to avoid crip­pling col­lege debt. Many also see a role for gov­ern­ment in sup­port­ing the eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of Amer­i­cans. More than two-thirds ( 70 %) of Gen Zers think the U.S. gov­ern­ment should pro­vide a uni­ver­sal basic income for all indi­vid­u­als, com­pared to 61 % of the over­all pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Gen­er­a­tional Kinet­ics’ 2023 State of Gen Z report .

Gen Z has been through con­sid­er­able tur­moil, eco­nom­ic and oth­er­wise, in their young lives to date — a glob­al pan­dem­ic and eco­nom­ic down­turn, cli­mate dis­as­ters, numer­ous polit­i­cal and soci­etal crises, his­tor­i­cal­ly fast inter­est rate hikes, high infla­tion and more. But they are resilient and con­tin­ue to adapt. When asked in 2023 about their finan­cial goals, Gen Z over­whelm­ing­ly report­ed that they are cur­rent­ly focused on sav­ing and earn­ing mon­ey, with old­er Gen Zers also focused on pay­ing off debt. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, two in five ( 41 %) mem­bers of Gen Z say they have no mon­ey saved for an emer­gency, accord­ing to the State of Gen Z report.

When it comes to earn­ing mon­ey, Gen Zers are career-focused, com­pet­i­tive and inter­est­ed in forg­ing their own paths. They have an entre­pre­neur­ial mind­set and are open to chal­leng­ing the tra­di­tion­al rat race. Quite a few of these youth believe that col­lege isn’t the only path to reach their goals, with near­ly one in five say­ing col­lege is not that impor­tant , and near­ly half hav­ing an infor­mal or for­mal job on the side (a ​ “ side hustle”).

When it comes to choos­ing career paths, only 29 % of Gen Zers plan to pur­sue an occu­pa­tion relat­ed to sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math ( STEM ), which are wide­ly con­sid­ered the jobs of the future. STEM sec­tors are already expe­ri­enc­ing labor short­ages, and jobs in these areas are expect­ed to grow sub­stan­tial­ly in the com­ing decades. U.S. lead­ers are grap­pling with how to pre­pare today’s young peo­ple for tomorrow’s work­force needs. 

5 . Civic Engagement

Mem­bers of Gen­er­a­tion Z are pas­sion­ate about advo­cat­ing for social change.

They are polit­i­cal­ly engaged and believe that the gov­ern­ment should do more to address­ society’s prob­lems. Recent sur­veys show that the top pri­or­i­ties for Gen Z include: cli­mate change, access to repro­duc­tive health care, cost of liv­ing (and hous­ing), jobs that pay a liv­ing wage, gun vio­lence and racial jus­tice. A  2022 poll also found that about three-quar­ters of Gen Z young adults (includ­ing polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive young peo­ple) sup­port gov­ern­ment poli­cies to reduce the wealth gap between the rich­est and poor­est Americans.

Gen Zers see vot­ing as a respon­si­bil­i­ty and a way to achieve change . Accord­ing­ly, in the Novem­ber 2022 elec­tion, Gen Z vot­ers turned out at a high­er rate than mil­len­ni­als and Gen Xers at the same age. This is part of an ongo­ing trend in which Gen Z’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion turnout was almost a  10 -point increase from their 2016 rate, and they are cred­it­ed with help­ing to shape the 2020 elec­tion results. Since 2022 , Gen Z has added 8 . 3 mil­lion eli­gi­ble vot­ers, and they are on track to have more than 40 mil­lion total eli­gi­ble vot­ers in 2024 .

Gen Zers are also com­fort­able dri­ving change. A  2023 report on Gen Z found that they are 92 % more like­ly than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions to engage in pub­lic protests. Using plat­forms like Snapchat, Insta­gram, Twit­ter and Tik­Tok, these youth have helped move activism into the dig­i­tal age. And, along the way, they’ve offered the world a mas­ter class in har­ness­ing the pow­er of social media to spot­light a spe­cif­ic cause or an issue that they want to see change. Gen Z is 68 % more like­ly to engage in polit­i­cal issues through social media than mil­len­ni­als, Gen Xers or oth­er gen­er­a­tions, accord­ing to the same report.

Some exam­ples to date: Mem­bers of Gen­er­a­tion Z orga­nized march­es nation­wide after a gun­man killed 17 peo­ple at Mar­jo­ry Stone­man Dou­glas High School in Park­land, Flori­da. Swedish teen and envi­ron­men­tal activist Gre­ta Thun­berg lever­aged social media to cap­ti­vate the world and chal­lenge lead­ers to take action against cli­mate change. And 23 -year-old Malala Yousafzai, who blogged about her right to edu­ca­tion, kicked off a fem­i­nist move­ment in the Mid­dle East en route to win­ning a Nobel Peace Prize.

Gen Z rec­og­nizes the pow­er of social media to mobi­lize the pub­lic, and near­ly all U.S. mem­bers of Gen Z — 98 % — report dai­ly use of at least one major social media plat­form .

6 . Racial Equity

Racial equi­ty is a key social issue for Gen­er­a­tion Z.

Gen Zers are more racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, with near­ly half of the group’s mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing com­mu­ni­ties of col­or . Fit­ting­ly, this group strong­ly val­ues inclu­sion, cul­tur­al diver­si­ty and racial and eth­nic equal­i­ty. Today’s young peo­ple are also acute­ly aware of the nation’s steep racial divides.

One recent poll — con­duct­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Med­ical Col­leges Cen­ter for Health Jus­tice with Gen Zers ages 18 to 24 — found that three in five respon­dents believe racial jus­tice should be a top pri­or­i­ty for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Fur­ther, the poll found that:

• Two in three Gen Zers think sys­temic racism is a pub­lic health cri­sis and makes it hard­er for peo­ple of col­or to access health care.
• More than three-quar­ters believe that racial res­i­den­tial seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing should be a pri­or­i­ty for the fed­er­al government.
• Three in five have lit­tle to no con­fi­dence in the U.S. crim­i­nal jus­tice system’s abil­i­ty to treat indi­vid­u­als equal­ly. Trust in the police is par­tic­u­lar­ly low among those who have per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced discrimination.

Gen Z does not stop at racial equi­ty, though. They val­ue fair­ness and equal­i­ty in all facets of life , and they are pas­sion­ate about LGBTQ + rights, as well. To date, they are the gen­er­a­tion most like­ly to have mem­bers who iden­ti­fy as non-bina­ry or third gen­der . More than one in five U.S. Gen Z adults iden­ti­fies as LGBTQ + , accord­ing to a  2023 survey.

7 . Envi­ron­ment

The wors­en­ing effects of cli­mate change are impact­ing the lives of Gen Z, spurring deep anx­i­ety but also activism .

Gen Zers around the world are expe­ri­enc­ing ​ “ eco-anx­i­ety.” A recent inter­na­tion­al study of 10 , 000 young peo­ple ages 16 to 25  in 10 coun­tries found that over 80 % were wor­ried about the cli­mate cri­sis, with many report­ing feel­ings of sad­ness, anx­i­ety, anger, pow­er­less­ness, help­less­ness and guilt. In the Unit­ed States, more than 70 % of Gen Zers ages 18 to 24 believe cli­mate change is an imme­di­ate and long-term threat to the planet’s safe­ty and that the gov­ern­ment should strength­en poli­cies to reduce CO 2 emissions.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Gen Zers believe that insti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es have an oblig­a­tion to take a stand on envi­ron­men­tal issues, accord­ing to a  2023 Gen Z study . And these young peo­ple will sup­port those that do. For exam­ple, one in five Gen Zers said that a brand’s posi­tion on issues would affect whether or not they buy from them. Addi­tion­al­ly, near­ly a third said they would buy more sus­tain­able goods if brands had clear­er labels or bet­ter infor­ma­tion on the product’s cli­mate impact. 

Beyond expect­ing com­pa­nies to fall in line, young peo­ple are also com­mit­ted to lead­ing by exam­ple. Sev­er­al recent stud­ies have found that Gen Z is will­ing to pay more for sus­tain­able prod­ucts, with one find­ing that 90 % of Gen Zers pur­chased such prod­ucts, while the same was true for 85 % of mil­len­ni­als, 84 % of Gen Xers and 78 % of Baby Boomers.

8 . Gun Violence

Gen Z con­sid­ers gun vio­lence a major issue. As a gen­er­a­tion grow­ing up with mass shoot­ings and active shoot­er drills in schools, they are more like­ly than mil­len­ni­als to rank gun vio­lence among their top three pri­or­i­ties , accord­ing to a  2022 nation­al sur­vey by Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty. Anoth­er poll that year found that sev­en in 10 Gen Z young adults see this as a pub­lic health issue .

Trag­i­cal­ly, the data bear out their con­cerns. A  2023 analy­sis by the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Gun Vio­lence Solu­tions found that firearm deaths are at an all-time high: 48 , 830 Amer­i­cans died as a result of gun vio­lence in 2021 (the most recent data in the report), more than 2020 ’s record-break­ing num­ber. The rate of gun deaths also increased by 22 % between 2019 and 2021 . This increase has been fueled by both gun homi­cides and sui­cides. Gen Z’s focus on gun vio­lence, includ­ing sui­cides, close­ly con­nects to their con­cern about the men­tal health crisis.

Guns are also the lead­ing cause of death for chil­dren, youth and young adults, as report­ed in the Johns Hop­kins analy­sis. Black young peo­ple expe­ri­ence gun vio­lence at espe­cial­ly alarm­ing rates. For instance, in 2021 , more than half ( 51 %) of all Black Gen Zers ages 15 to 19 who died were killed by firearms. Fur­ther, Black kids and teens were about five times as like­ly as their white peers to die from gun vio­lence that year, accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter . The dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact of firearm vio­lence on peo­ple of col­or inter­sects with Gen Z’s strong focus on racial justice.

Rec­og­niz­ing Gen­er­a­tion Z’s pas­sion and will­ing­ness to engage in social activism, they will no doubt con­tin­ue to make their voic­es heard on this issue.

Learn More About Gen­er­a­tion Z

Under­stand­ing Gen­er­a­tion Z is crit­i­cal for shap­ing the future of the nation in a pos­i­tive way. Explore addi­tion­al Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion resources to learn more about America’s younger gen­er­a­tions, includ­ing Gen­er­a­tion Z and Gen­er­a­tion Alpha:

• What the Sta­tis­tics Say About Gen­er­a­tion Z
• Sta­tis­tics Snap­shot: Gen­er­a­tion Z and Education
• Core Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Gen­er­a­tion Z
• The Chang­ing Child Pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States
• KIDS COUNT Adds New Dataset on Youth and Young Adults Ages 14 to 24 , Cap­tur­ing Most Gen Zers 
• Gen­er­a­tion Z and Men­tal Health
• Social Medi­a’s Con­cern­ing Effect on Teen Men­tal Health

KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter indi­ca­tors on Gen Z and oth­er generations:

• Pop­u­la­tion size by Gen Alpha, Gen Z, mil­len­ni­als, Gen X and baby boomers, by race and ethnicity
• Peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty by generation
• Peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty by gen­er­a­tion and race and ethnicity
• Peo­ple liv­ing in low-income house­holds by generation
• Peo­ple liv­ing in low-income house­holds by gen­er­a­tion and race and ethnicity

Sign up for our newslet­ters to get the lat­est data and oth­er resources.

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• Assets and Savings
• COVID-19 Responses
• Generation Z
• Health and Child Development
• Youth and Young Adult Employment

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How to Write the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay + Examples

What’s covered:.

• What is the Overcoming Challenges Essay?
• Real Overcoming Challenges Essay Prompts
• How to Choose a Topic
• Writing Tips

Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

• Where to Get Your Essay Edited

While any college essay can be intimidating, the Overcoming Challenges prompt often worries students the most. Those students who’ve been lucky enough not to experience trauma tend to assume they have nothing worth saying. On the other hand, students who’ve overcome larger obstacles may be hesitant to talk about them.

Regardless of your particular circumstances, there are steps you can take to make the essay writing process simpler. Here are our top tips for writing the overcoming challenges essay successfully.

What is the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay?

The overcoming challenges prompt shows up frequently in both main application essays (like the Common App) and supplemental essays. Because supplemental essays allow students to provide schools with additional information, applicants should be sure that the subject matter they choose to write about differs from what’s in their main essay.

Students often assume the overcoming challenges essay requires them to detail past traumas. While you can certainly write about an experience that’s had a profound effect on your life, it’s important to remember that colleges aren’t evaluating students based on the seriousness of the obstacle they overcame.

On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task. 

Real “Overcoming Challenges” Essay Prompts

To help you understand what the “Overcoming Challenges” essay looks like, here are a couple sample prompts.

Currently, the Common Application asks students to answer the following prompt in 650 words or less:

“The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

For the past several years, MIT has prompted students to write 200 to 250 words on the following:

“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?”

In both cases, the prompts explicitly ask for your response to the challenge. The event itself isn’t as important as how it pushed you to grow.

How to Choose a Topic for an Essay on Overcoming Challenges

When it comes to finding the best topic for your overcoming challenges essays, there’s no right answer. The word “challenge” is ambiguous and could be used to reference a wide range of situations from prevailing over a bully to getting over your lifelong stage fright to appear in a school musical. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when selecting an essay subject.

1. Avoid trivial or common topics

While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules for choosing an essay topic, students should avoid overdone topics.

These include:

• Working hard in a challenging class
• Overcoming a sports injury
• Moving schools or immigrating to the US
• Tragedy (divorce, death, abuse)

Admissions officers have read numerous essays on the subject, so it’s harder for you to stand out (see our full list of cliché college essay topics to avoid ). If events like these were truly formative to you, you can still choose to write about them, but you’ll need to be as personal as possible. 

It’s also ideal if you have a less traditional storyline for a cliché topic; for example, if your sports injury led you to discover a new passion, that would be a more unique story than detailing how you overcame your injury and got back in the game.

Similarly, students may not want to write about an obstacle that admissions committees could perceive as low stakes, such as getting a B on a test, or getting into a small fight with a friend. The goal of this essay is to illustrate how you respond to adversity, so the topic you pick should’ve been at least impactful on your personal growth.

2. Pick challenges that demonstrate qualities you want to highlight

Students often mistakenly assume they need to have experienced exceptional circumstances like poverty, an abusive parent, or cancer to write a good essay. The truth is that the best topics will allow you to highlight specific personal qualities and share more about who you are. The essay should be less about the challenge itself, and more about how you responded to it.

Ask yourself what personality traits you want to emphasize, and see what’s missing in your application. Maybe you want to highlight your adaptability, for example, but that isn’t clearly expressed in your application. In this case, you might write about a challenge that put your adaptability to the test, or shaped you to become more adaptable.

Here are some examples of good topics we’ve seen over the years:

• Not having a coach for a sports team and becoming one yourself
• Helping a parent through a serious health issue
• Trying to get the school track dedicated to a coach
• Having to switch your Model UN position last-minute

Tips for Writing an Essay About Overcoming Challenges

Once you’ve selected a topic for your essays, it’s time to sit down and write. For best results, make sure your essay focuses on your efforts to tackle an obstacle rather than the problem itself. Additionally, you could avoid essay writing pitfalls by doing the following:

1. Choose an original essay structure

If you want your overcoming challenges essay to attract attention, aim to break away from more traditional structures. Most of these essays start by describing an unsuccessful attempt at a goal and then explain the steps the writer took to master the challenge. 

You can stand out by choosing a challenge you’re still working on overcoming, or focus on a mental or emotional challenge that spans multiple activities or events. For example, you might discuss your fear of public speaking and how that impacted your ability to coach your brother’s Little League team and run for Student Council. 

You can also choose a challenge that can be narrated in the moment, such as being put on the spot to teach a yoga class. These challenges can make particularly engaging essays, as you get to experience the writer’s thoughts and emotions as they unfold.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have succeeded in your goal for this essay. Maybe you ran for an election and lost, or maybe you proposed a measure to the school board that wasn’t passed. It’s still possible to write a strong essay about topics like these as long as you focus on your personal growth. In fact, these may make for even stronger essays since they are more unconventional topics.

2. Focus on the internal

When writing about past experiences, you may be tempted to spend too much time describing specific people and events. With an Overcoming Challenges essay though, the goal is to focus on your thoughts and feelings.

For example, rather than detail all the steps you took to become a better public speaker, use the majority of your essay to describe your mental state as you embarked on the journey to achieving your goals. Were you excited, scared, anxious, or hopeful? Don’t be afraid to let the reader in on your innermost emotions and thoughts during this process.

3. Share what you learned 

An Overcoming Challenges essay should leave the reader with a clear understanding of what you learned on your journey, be it physical, mental, or emotional. There’s no need to explicitly say “this experience taught me X,” but your essay should at least implicitly share any lessons you learned. This can be done through your actions and in-the-moment reflections. Remember that the goal is to show admissions committees why your experiences make you a great candidate for admission. 

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the g arb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essay Edited

The Overcoming Challenges essay is one of the trickier supplemental prompts, so it’s important to get feedback on your drafts. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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On a recent press tour for my new book in New York City, I spent time telling dozens of media outlets the story of what the millennial generation is going through.

Some media members totally understood the challenges facing millennials, have seen it firsthand themselves and wanted to get to the bottom of these issues with me.

But then there was a slight majority of media members who shot back with the same old tired stereotypes about our generation: “Entitled.” “Lazy.” “Millennials were given trophies for just existing,” and so on.

Yet, the millennial generation is experiencing real challenges. And they’re a little more weighty and substantial than the fact that some of us won an “honorable mention” ribbon for coming in last place sometime in fourth grade.

Some of the statistics about these challenges might shock you. Or they may bring waves of clarity for all the twentysomethings out there who feel lost, frustrated and like they’re fighting an uphill battle.

Right when it was millennials’ turn to grab hold of the American Dream, it exploded in our face, with the Great Recession happily pulling the pin.

I’m not here to whine about these challenges, I’m here to open up a real conversation about them so that we can figure out how we overcome and thrive.

Millennials are the Largest, Most Educated Generation in History

There are over 85-90 million millennials in the U.S., and 61 percent have attended college (as opposed to 46 percent of Baby Boomers).

This sounds exciting, but with the supply of educated workers much higher than the demand for them in the workforce, it has created a perfect storm for unemployment, underemployment, and a flat-out frustrating beginning to our career.

As a result, according to U.S. Census Data, 40 percent of unemployed workers are millennials.

As I write in  All Groan Up , “The job hunt has become the millennial version of the Hunger Games—without the cameras or any interaction with Jennifer Lawrence.”

The college diploma feels worth as much as your high school degree now, with the new tension of feeling like you have to now get a master’s or Ph.D. to even be allowed into the game.

A degree still feels like a must, but it is no longer the automatic door opener.

Most Millennials are Deep in Debt

Today, average college debt for a millennial is around $33,000 .

With college tuition seeing a 1,140 percent increase since the late ’70s, coupled with the longest stretch of income stagnation in the modern era, no wonder why the highest percentage of twentysomethings ever recorded ( around 26 percent ) are living back with their parents.

The college debt in the United States is more than credit card and auto loan debt combined. As Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote in “The Coming Meltdown of College Education,” “We freak out about the Trillions of dollars in debt our country faces. What about the TRILLION DOLLARs plus in debt college kids are facing?”

Millennials Have Higher Levels of Anxiety and Depression than Previous Generations

A Psychology Today study showed that millennials are reporting the highest levels of clinical anxiety, stress and depression of any other generation at the same age.

With some of the stats mentioned above, no wonder so many twentysomethings feel like they’re going through a quarter-life crisis .

Many want to blame millennials’ problems on the fact that we’re entitled and lazy. Sure, we have things we need to improve upon as we re-set our expectations and timeline for how long and hard it’s going to be to find our way.

But when I look at Millennials I don’t see a generation entitled to success. We fight hard to succeed, and we don’t really know how to fail.

Couple that with the new disorder I call The new OCD— Obsessive Comparison Disorder , and you have a whirling destructive force of anxiety and depression.

We’re all struggling, yet we’re all struggling to make it appear like we’re not struggling!

Here are a few things that really helped me overcome these challenges in my life.

Asking Hard, Intentional Questions

Many of us don’t want to have difficult conversations with the person we’re avoiding the most: ourselves.

Yet, there’s something incredibly important and profound in asking yourself intentional questions , and then actually taking the time to write down your answers.

Many of us think we’ve defined things in our lives, or that we know who we are and how we’re called to live out our faith, yet we’ve actually been distracting ourselves from the truth.

Giving Grace and Space to Fail

(without calling ourselves failures)

For so many years in my 20s, I felt like a failure, when really I was experiencing many small successes that were leading to failed end results.

I kept focusing on the final outcome without giving credit to the amazing wins and all the new skills I was learning along the way.

As I write in 101 Secrets For Your Twenties , “Failing is simply finding a more profound way to be successful, if you’re willing to keep trying and giving yourself the real possibility of failing again. The biggest failure of our twenties would be if we never had any.”

After all, if God gives us grace when we fail, we need to learn to do the same.

Finding Our ‘Signature Sauce’

I believe we each have our own Signature Sauce, a unique, God-given flavor we bring to the world that no one else can.

It’s going to take time, effort, and a couple failed experiments and scars to figure out your Signature Sauce.

As Seth Godin writes in Linchpin , “The future belongs to chefs, not cooks or bottle washers. It’s easy to buy a cookbook (filled with instructions to follow) but really hard to find a chef book.”

Being Purposeful in the Process

Maybe the Great Recession will be the best thing that ever happened to millennials because it forced us to learn patience, perseverance and grit.

Many of us were slammed by the Great Recession like a Pinata being smacked at a birthday party, and hopefully that will help us reap some sweet candy in the future.

Being successful in our 20s is about being purposeful in the process.

Becoming an adult is not a one-time thing. You grow into growing up, each season bringing with it things you’re going to have to secretly Google to figure out how to do.

We have this yearning to “arrive.” To make it, but maybe not making it is a gift. If you’ve arrived, why bother still exploring? When you’ve made it, why put in the extra time? Why battle the hard questions? Why push yourself?

Maybe every person who “made it” was simply stopping short. Maybe those of us who feel very “unmade” were simply meant to create more.

An earlier version of this article was published on allgroanup.com. Used here with permission

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College Essay Tips for First-Gen Students

tl;dr: Writing a first-gen student essay can be a daunting task, but it's an amazing opportunity to showcase your personality and be the host of your own immersive world. Start by choosing a challenge you have faced as a first-gen student and then outline why it was significant, what you learned, and how others can learn from it. Make sure to captivate your audience with a strong introduction, add immersive descriptions, and talk about your future in the conclusion. Don't forget to ask for help from teachers and peers to edit your essay for grammar and feedback!

What is a First-Generation Student?

A first-generation student is someone who is the first generation in their family to attend a 4-year college or university. This can encompass many different types of students from diverse backgrounds.  While some of these students' families may have been living in the United States for a long time, others may have been born in the U.S. to immigrant parents 👪 or a naturalized American citizen.

For more information about first-gen students, check out this article from CollegeVine !

What is a First-Gen Student Essay?

A first-generation student essay is different from a regular college essay because the reader wants to hear about the struggles you experience as a first-gen student. First-gen essays are mostly found in scholarship prompts but can be used as your personal essay on the Common or Coalition Application. Being that these prompts are found in scholarships, not all first-gens are required to write them! The prompts tend to follow the guideline of “describe a challenge you have faced as a result of being a first-gen student.” First-gen essays allow you to describe the aspects of your life that have been challenged due to being a first-gen and how those obstacles strengthened 💪 your spirit; in this essay, you have the chance to highlight your culture first hand.

Although these are not first-gen student essays, reading these sample essays can help you understand essay structure and brainstorm essay topics !

How to Structure Your First-Gen Student Essay

Most of the time, first-gen essays are found in scholarship prompts, meaning that other students might face the same struggles as you. What’s important to remember 💭is how you flourished despite those struggles or moments, how the lessons learned have altered your future, and how you can use your growth to benefit others. This essay is more than an “essay”; it's an opportunity to exhibit your personality and be the host of your own immersive world the reader will want to come back to. It’s your moment to pull a Gatsby, throw an elaborate party to win the heart of Daisy–even if you die at the end 👀, at least the party holds your memory.  

The first step in developing your essay is choosing your tribulation or a moment of struggle in your life that has stayed with you. In an outline 📝, describe why this event was significant, what you learned, how others can learn from this, and how you might have approached the situation differently. These questions will get you thinking, and hopefully, you can produce at least five solid ideas. From those thoughts, you can cross some moments out.

During this process, it is essential to remember 🧠 that every moment you experienced has value. Crossing out a moment on a list doesn’t mean it’s being crossed out of your life; these moments have made you strong and better prepared for your future. You know you have chosen the right moment when you can write a “novel long” 📖 description of it; however, if the key lesson you learned is omitted from your “novel,” try again.

Now that you have a topic, it is time to captivate the reader. Just like in every English class, you need a strong opening statement! Your essay can be well written but a waste if there’s no eye-catching, breath-holding, heart-racing 😯 intro. This is probably the most important and equally tricky aspect of your essay, so you should designate a decent amount of time and attention to your introduction. You might not get it on the first try, but it’s ok! That is why the delete ❎ key exists.

Once you have your intro, it's time for your essay’s body, meat, and party. Your reader is your guest and if you don’t have the “perfect” theme, guests, food, music, party favors, they’re going to leave unsatisfied eventually. Although you might have all these party 🎉 plans in your head, they aren’t executed in the “real world” until you make it real! In this step, you describe your story, add immersive descriptions, make the reader feel as though they are living your struggles–the highs and the lows included. Don’t leave them wanting a cake slice 🍰. Although this is your opportunity to write a “sob story,” remember that what will make you stand out is the growth you have learned, achieved, and will continue to follow. How did your growth benefit you, your community, your future? Although you are creating a “perfect” party, you still want the reader to come back to celebrate 🙌 with you again.

As with all parties, your essay must come to an end, so make sure the guests are leaving satisfied! To close off your essay, talk about your future. Don’t stray from the lessons and personal growth 🌱 you have achieved. Talk about how you will follow through and use what you learned to uplift and inspire others. You’re the host of the party, and you always want your guests to leave on a positive note.

Tips to Remember

Continuing with the party analogy, although other people might host the same party, it’s imperative to put your own 💃 spin on it. You and another host might have the same theme, but what do you have that they don’t? These essays allow you to show off your personality and your challenges in a manner of different ways.

Being a first-gen student myself, I understand the difficulty in opening up and revealing your tribulations, pain, and vulnerability. However, readers are eager to read about your life–writing a first-gen essay allows you to present a personal glimpse of who you are 🤩.

It’s important to understand that good writing is not only about grammar; many first-gen students learned English as their second language. What's important is the effectiveness in delivering your ideas clearly and being able to communicate 🗣 effectively. After you write your essay, ask a teacher or a peer to edit your essay in order to better your grammar or receive comments that better strengthen your essay.

During this entire writing process, don't listen to the pessimistic voice 🙊 in your head, no matter how persistent it may be. That voice inside you roots from the unnecessary burden of centuries before you. This process might make you question your life, value, or identity, but what matters is that after every struggle you've marched on with your pride intact and spirits high, shaping who you are today. This may be a stressful moment, but you owe it to yourself to step back and relax 🧘. After all, the best parties always have a host that is enjoying themselves as well. Happy writing!  

For more tips about college essay writing, watch this video !

Next, check out these great TikToks and tweets for advice about the college application process!

Guide Outline

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