Written by Jojo Milan-Howells, Designed by Alyssia Liu & Caroline Paik

The Cultural

By Jojo Milan-Howells

Designed by Alyssia Liu and Caroline Paik

Fever. Cough. Shortness of breath. Sore throat. A loss of taste or smell.

We are all aware of the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 and the effects that it has on our body. How could we not? Our screens were constantly bombarded with the warning signs of SARS-CoV-2 and the typical “bless you” you received when you sneezed was replaced by a judgemental stare. For some people, the months of March 2020 to June 2021, marked a time of panic and detrimental effects to all aspects of life, especially to mental health.

Suicide, depression, anxiety levels rose in 2020, especially amongst younger generations. According to a series of surveys released by the U.S. department of health and human services, the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety disorder in June 2020 was approximately three times those reported in the second quarter of 2019 (25.5% versus 8.1%), and the levels of depression was approximately four times that reported in the second quarter of 2019 (24.3% versus 6.5%).1 Suicidal thoughts also increased during this time; approximately twice as many respondents reported serious consideration of suicide in the previous 30 days than did adults in the United States in 2018, referring to the previous 12 months (10.7% versus 4.3%).2 This rampant decline in mental health was not necessarily caused directly by SARS-CoV-2 itself, for example the depression brought by the loss of a family member to the disease, but from our social response to SARS-CoV-2.3 The fact that we were constantly reminded that interacting with our friends and family’s could potentially lead to infection, brought about harm to our social lives and hence our mental health. Most people agree that because of both the physical and mental damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 , that it was a dark time for our world, but there may have been a silver lining in all this chaos; a cultural “reset '' for Gen Z. Any time a group of individuals meet with a giant shock, whether that be a natural disaster or outbreak of violence, there is an inadvertent reset as a result.4 Dr. Kent D.W. Bream, associate professor of Clinical Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that he’s already seen a shift in mindset between his current students and his students pre-COVID. Dr. Bream noticed that the pandemic disrupted a cycle of dysfunctional competition at UPenn, by physically removing the need for students to outdo the previous year.5 “If you look at any student group before COVID, everybody was a vice president in charge of something. You join a group and you are only there for a week and suddenly you are the vice president for external affairs. It's a group for like 12 students. I dont know what you are talking about external affairs but there was this need to always outdo the person before you by title, media coverage, attention, or award.”6 Dr. Bream observed that his students lived in a mindset of “You are better than the person who came before you” and needed to prove it in every facet of their lives.7 Furthermore, this mindset led to an “interminable escalation” in which students always have “to have more money, have a bigger job, have a better grad school, have more papers” than the person who came before them and this “constant need to compare and exceed” one’s predecessors “was particularly toxic before the pandemic.”8 This is where the Covid silver lining comes in. Dr. Bream notes that what caused this cultural reset was the fact that students no longer had anyone else to compare themselves to.9 As a result, they focused more on themselves physically and mentally as they tried to discover their own goals and aspirations instead of basing them on others.10 Furthermore, this independence led people to start questioning the hegemony of group thought and expectations, which ultimately led to a healthier mindset and outlook on life.11 Having seen the positive impact from this dark time, one can only ask if this is going to be a permanent change for Gen Z or are we once again going to find our lives dictated by the generations that came before us?