Excerpt from Fight’s Chapter One, United by Fear

While the norm-busting transition and early months of the Trump presidency were jarring for many, for Generation Z—whose members became politically conscious during the age of “No Drama Obama”—the change was seminal. In a January 2019 article for Pacific Standard, Jared Keller explained:

Two years later, the physiological effects of the Trump administration aren’t going away. A growing body of research has tracked the detrimental impacts of Trump-related stress on broad segments of the American population, from young adults to women, to racial and LGBT communities.

Other studies confirmed these insights, showing how major sociopolitical events can affect individuals’ psychology and physiology, with age-related vulnerability as a factor. “Although young adults usually think of stressors as the personal problems, imminent threats, or daily hassles that penetrate their everyday lives,” Fordham University professor Lindsay T. Hoyt noted that her 2016 study “suggests that macro-level events (at a national scale) can influence their health and well-being.”

Through social media, Gen Zers have been exposed to, and feel a connection to, the climate and their peers in all parts of the world. As children, the world for baby boomers and many Gen Xers often began and ended on their block; for Gen Z, there is no limit, and with this brings an unparalleled understanding of humanity and empathy. Therefore, attacks on the environment, whole groups of people, and Muslim bans are fundamentally at odds with who they are.

As if existing as an adolescent isn’t challenging enough in itself, especially with the enhanced pressures created by mobile phones and social media, the nature of our politics added a dangerous and toxic level of anxiety. Higher levels of cortisol, a pathway to headaches, sleep problems, digestive ailments, concentration impairment, anxiety, and depression were forming a “pit of despair” in millions of Ameri- cans, according to Keller.

Transitioning from the calm, thoughtful assuredness of President Obama to a reality-show president elected without majority support was a most unsettling way for Generation Z to come of age. I came face-to-face with this anxiety and un- easiness during the first in a series of in-depth conversations I hosted with small groups of high school and college students from across the country that summer of 2017.

When I asked my standard question, “What unites us as Americans?” Katie, a nursing student from Southern Illinois, quickly answered, “Fear unites us.”

Before I could even follow up with “Fear of what?” she continued:

Let’s see, fear of death. Fear of our rights being in- fringed upon. Fear of the future for our kids. Fear for our family. Fear for our health.

Chris, a rising college senior from Northern Kentucky echoed her sentiment. “The thing that really brings us together as Americans,” he said, “is being afraid and paranoid of ab . . . so . . . lute . . . ly everything. Sandy Hook and the club shootings, when those happened, everybody lost all of their shit at the same time. This is happening to everyone!”

Fear for their future. Fear for our future. Fear was on its way to seizing the soul of the next generation before most of its members reached adulthood. In dozens of similar conversations from that moment forward, the extreme levels of stress and anxiety I witnessed in Columbus were impossible to miss. To this day, few moments in a focus group have had a greater impact on me than when I asked for an explanation of what older generations don’t get about Generation Z. Grace, a biology student about to turn twenty-one at the time, told me:

An older generation would not understand walking into a classroom and thinking about how easy it would be for someone to shoot it up. The same daily weight on an adult’s shoulders over bills or taxes is what children feel about living or dying.

While many in Washington and on cable TV were fixated on the seemingly bizarre notion of using psychoanalysis and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove President Trump from office his first summer in Washington, it was apparent to me that our attention should instead be on the fragile mental health of Generation Z.

Not long ago, young people told me that “opportunity” was the thread that connected us as Americans; by 2017 I was reminded that it “now divides us because not everyone can have it.” For Generation Z, fear, stress, and anxiety were the dominant forces shaping the generation.

The young people I spoke with that summer spent surprisingly little time railing against President Trump, however. Generation Z recognized and voiced more quickly than others that it was structural deficiencies in our institutions and not any one individual, that was to blame for the position in which they, and our nation, now found themselves. Trump was a symptom, not the root problem, they would tell me. The failure of older generations of elected officials from both parties to address myriad concerns related to systemic inequality, and an economy leaving too many behind, were among the ailments these young Americans sought to cure. Generation Z is introspective. Its members are comforted and not burdened when they challenge our leaders, traditions, the meaning of exceptionalism, and even themselves.

In what the Republican Party might one day consider a cruel twist of fate, Donald Trump single-handedly removed one of the most challenging barriers to political engagement. Generation Z learned a lesson that some never do. Its members now know extremely well the difference politics can make in the health of our democracy—and also in their own day-to-day lives.

Things would get far worse, however, before Gen Zers could begin to make them better.