How worried should people be about Generation Z?
Two new books fit into a familiar pattern of the old fretting about the young
In 1935 Harper’s magazine published a sorrowful article about young Americans. The authors, journalists George Leighton and Richard Hellman, argued that a generation was “rotting before our eyes”. Apathy and disenchantment were taking hold, together with criminality. Even high-school students were packing guns and were “out for what they can get”. Leighton and Hellman blamed mass unemployment for this tragedy. Some of their contemporaries pointed at marijuana.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The young and the relentless”
Culture March 23rd 2024
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