This is a response to the YouTube channel ALifeAfterLayoff’s segment: Bosses Are FIRING Gen Z Workers Just Months After Hiring Them.
I agree with the sentiment that phone addiction also reduces attention span. Kids really shouldn’t be allowed on social media. At the very least, screen time should be limited. Phones should not cause withdrawal symptoms when unavailable, yet that’s what we see.
These are children who grew up in a society where:
- Parents of Gen Z did everything for them. They weren’t allowed to go five miles on a bicycle with same-aged friends until dinner-time to explore a pond at the age of eight because that’s “child abuse” rather than “free ranging”. Helicopter parenting has given us this generation of poorly prepared children. They don’t know how to interact with each other except on their phones.*
- There is no company loyalty. The current crop of employers exhibit sociopathic trends. They expect their employees to fall on their sword for the company, then discard them with impunity when they become useless husks of themselves after years of loyal service. They fire older people who have the capacity for mentorship and are the company institutional memory because they have health problems and are too expensive. So they find reasons to fire the older people and hire younger people to attempt to fill those shoes with no institutional memory.
- Fortunes are tied to whether you can get a job. Your healthcare… where you live… Without becoming what amounts to a modern-day serf, unless you’re a funder-kiddy, you pretty much have no options. These kids grew up knowing this. Why should they behave like they’re going to make something of themselves when they know it’s just a grind?
- Our educational system is failing us. In the same way insurance companies have hampered doctors from actually doing their jobs because they refuse to pay, teachers on poverty wages are forced to use their own funds to find creative ways to teach their students using less and less. In the minds of today’s parents, the classroom has devolved into a babysitting position when these teachers should have been allowed to be mentors. Parents want a break from their kids while they work, so that’s all grade school is now. When these kids get to college, the life skills they should have learned in high school are still not taught. The gap remains. Higher education in the US also costs as much as a house mortgage for any degrees that lead to higher paying positions. Now you’ve saddled a kid with a debt they’ll be paying off for 30 years, if they can. They’re supposed to also purchase a house?
The current situation with Gen Z entering the workforce isn’t a bug in the system – it’s a feature of a system designed to maintain power structures while shifting blame to individuals.
Our system is systemically set up to fail. I blame it on Reaganomics and the intentional inculcation of pride in ignorance of the masses.
Companies brought this on themselves. In the words of the recent schadenfreude regarding the healthcare CEO, my sympathy is out of network.
*Clearly this doesn’t apply to all Gen Z.
featured image photo credit: https://www.lyncconf.com/
