The generational blame game: by a lazy Gen Z’er who needs to work harder

Blaming young people for…well, everything, has become a national pastime. House prices? Gen Z should stop buying avocado toast. Mental health issues? We’re just snowflakes refusing to toughen up. Wanting to actually live rather than slowly wither behind a desk in a lifeless open-plan office? Lazy. Unpatriotic. Disgraceful.

Except, now, it turns out that the real troublemakers are the ones yelling the loudest. According to a recent report, the so-called “problem generation” may no longer be the youth but the over-55s. This cohort seems to be rebranding retirement as an encore to fresher’s week, with rates of substance misuse rising rapidly, including cannabis and even cocaine. In England and Wales, more than a third of all drug-related deaths in 2022 involved people over the age of 50. Public health officials have even reported a marked rise in sexually transmitted infections among older adults, with a sixfold increase in gonorrhoea among Americans aged 55+ since 2010 and a 31% rise in syphilis infections among those over 65 in England, in just four years. This certainly undermines the image of the responsible and measured elder, shaking their head at the supposed decline of the youth.

Boomers love to boast that they ‘worked hard’ to get where they are, and many did. But they also benefited from a system that, by today’s standards, was stacked in their favour

Yet somehow, the blame still falls on Gen Z, a generation accused of being unambitious simply because they question the value of working themselves into burnout for a mortgage they may never afford. Nowhere is the generational divide more evident than in the housing market. While older generations could purchase homes when prices were a fraction of their current value, today’s first-time buyers are contending with historically high property prices, stagnant wages, and near-insurmountable deposit requirements. The average UK house is now 191% more expensive for first-time buyers than it was for their parents in the 1990s, with the house-price-to-income ratio more than doubled.

Boomers love to boast that they ‘worked hard’ to get where they are, and many did. But they also benefited from a system that, by today’s standards, was stacked in their favour: affordable housing, free higher education, job security, and a relatively stable economy. Meanwhile, Gen Z has inherited the climate crisis, an NHS on life support, and a cost-of-living crisis so severe that many of us hesitate to turn on the heating or eat out, let alone consider starting a family.

Yet, millionaire property developers still patronisingly suggest that if we gave up lattes and brunch we’d be on the property ladder by next week. In reality, wealth inequality in the UK has reached such extremes that a recent report warned it could be a major driver of societal collapse within the next decade. Last year alone, UK billionaires saw their collective wealth rise by £35 million a day, reaching £182 billion, enough to cover the entire city of Manchester in £10 notes nearly one and a half times over. Despite this, the older generations have consistently voted in governments that have prioritised the richest in society over public welfare.

Even patriotism has become a punchline, with a recent study finding that only 41% of young people feel proud to be British…this has decreased from 80% in 2004

Work culture is another area where generational tensions run high, with Gen Z in the firing line for “quiet quitting.” This is the practice of doing one’s job without taking on extra responsibilities or sacrificing personal time, choosing boundaries over burnout culture. Perhaps this is not laziness but a correction. My generation has recognised the harsh truth that the traditional formula of working hard and eventually reaping the rewards doesn’t hold up anymore. The days of buying a house on an average salary from a steady 9–5 are long gone. So, for many young people, the question is, what exactly is all this hard work meant to lead to?

Even patriotism has become a punchline, with a recent study finding that only 41% of young people feel proud to be British. This has decreased from 80% in 2004, but when our great nation offers unaffordable homes, year-long NHS waiting lists, and headlines about food bank use hitting record highs, national pride begins to feel more like Stockholm syndrome.

So, where does this leave us? Increasingly, for many of us, the answer is to leave. I, alongside many of my peers, am considering moving abroad. Several of my friends in medicine plan to relocate to Australia or the US, not out of disloyalty but because the NHS is under immense strain and junior doctors’ salaries are frankly insulting. Others are drawn to the Middle East, where safety is such that you can leave a sports car unlocked and come back to it untouched, unlike London, where I pull my coat over my Casio watch on the tube and cling to my bag to avoid being mugged.

Now, I can already hear the inevitable response: stop whining, pull yourself together, and get on with it like we did. To which I say, with the utmost respect, spare me the motivational quotes and tales of walking five miles to school in the snow. If pointing out systemic inequality, static wages, a crumbling health system, soaring energy bills, unaffordable living costs, and rising pollution sounds like ‘complaining’, then perhaps the real problem isn’t our attitude but your denial.

Here’s an idea: Maybe the younger generation isn’t broken. Maybe we’re not lazy, disloyal, or overly sensitive. Maybe we’re just exhausted from being scapegoated, gaslit, and sold a version of adulthood that no longer exists.