Gen Z Isn’t Too Sensitive, They’re Sounding the Alarm

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“This is a trigger warning.”

Not long ago, those words would have made no sense to most readers. Today, they are almost expected. From television shows to Instagram captions to classroom syllabi, trigger warnings have become a cultural norm. Gen Z has never known a world without them. Born into the era of hashtags and streaming, they’ve come of age with content cautions embedded into the very fabric of their daily lives.

Trigger warnings didn’t emerge in classrooms or on Netflix. Instead, they began in primarily feminist internet communities (early online forums where survivors of sexual violence gathered for support) of the late 1990s, especially on forums where survivors of sexual violence gathered (Boysen et al., 2020, Philly Mag, 2018). By the early 2010s, they migrated onto college campuses, appearing in syllabi and sparking national debates about safety and censorship (New Yorker, 2014; Britannica, 2023). From there, trigger warnings spread into mainstream media and social platforms, becoming so ubiquitous that Gen Z has never really known a world without them (The Atlantic, 2023). Whether or not they work as intended remains debated, but their presence signals something important: a generation uniquely shaped by sensitivity to harm.

And yet, behind these warnings, the harm is real. On the eve of World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD), I want to address two of the biggest questions I receive about generations, particularly Gen Z: “Why is this generation so sensitive?” and “What is it with Gen Z and Mental Health?”

A Crisis in Plain Sight

The numbers are sobering. Between 2010 and 2015, rates of severe depressive symptoms among adolescent girls jumped 58% (Twenge, 2017). During the same years, the share of teens with smartphones crossed 40%, climbing to more than 70% by 2015 (Haidt, 2024). The curves line up in ways that are hard to ignore. Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, calls 2010–2015 the “Great Rewiring,” the moment when childhood moved decisively indoors, onto screens, and into social media feeds.

Since then, the story has only grown darker. The CDC reports that youth suicide rates, especially among teen girls, have risen to their highest levels in modern recordkeeping (Curtin et al., 2023). Emergency room visits for self-harm among adolescent girls more than doubled between 2009 and 2019 (Mercado & Holland, 2021). These are not blips. They are trends.

Different from the Dark Times Before

Many pundits chock up this disturbing trend to The Great Recession, the polarized political landscape, the uncertain economy. However, the data both here in the United States and globally reflects that this time is different.

Of course, this is not the first time America has faced despair. During the Great Depression, suicide rates peaked at 22 per 100,000 people, nearly double today’s levels (National Vital Statistics System, 1933). In the 1970s, rising divorce and inflation pushed midlife (roughly ages 35 - 54) suicide upward again.

But today’s crisis looks different. It is concentrated in youth, especially preteen and adolescent girls. This manifests not only in suicide but in the daily despair of anxiety, self-harm, and chronic depression.

Meanwhile, another wave of suffering, what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton (2020) term “deaths of despair,” is simultaneously unfolding among middle-aged Millennials and Gen Xers. Drug overdoses, alcohol-related diseases, and suicides have surged, creating a second front in the mental health crisis. Both patterns point to the same conclusion: despair is no longer a marginal phenomenon. It is generationally widespread.

Pop Culture. The Mirror and the Warning

Unlike the Great Depression or the midlife despair of the 1970s, today’s crisis has not stayed abstract; it has spilled directly into youth culture and pop culture. Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why sparked widespread debate for its portrayal of teen suicide, and some research shows that those concerns were well-founded. While the causation is widely debated, one NIH-funded study found a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth aged 10–17 in the month following the show’s release (Bridge et al., 2020). Another estimate placed this as approximately 195 additional deaths among young people in the nine months that followed (Nationwide Children’s Hospital, 2019). Whether dramatized for streaming or sung out on stage, stories like Dear Evan Hansen or 13 Reasons Why resonate precisely because they mirror lived feelings of isolation, signals that this crisis is both cultural and personal.

A Generation Shaped by Sensitivity

It’s easy to caricature Gen Z as fragile or overdramatic. But look closer. They’ve been raised in an environment saturated with alerts, warnings, and protections. At the same time, they’ve been immersed in algorithm-driven feeds that amplify anxiety, comparison, and conflict.

Researchers, including an internal Meta employee, found that a newly created Instagram account posing as a 13-year-old was immediately served graphic anorexia-related content, with algorithmic recommendations for accounts named “skinny binge” and “apple core anorexic” (CBS News, 2022). Similarly, external researchers using “mystery shopper” profiles reported that liking just one diet or fitness post triggered a cascade of weight-loss content in the explore feed, demonstrating how quickly the algorithm spirals toward dangerous “thinspo” (The Guardian, 2021).

The result is not weakness, it’s wiring. They are the first generation to live fully in the world Haidt and Twenge warned about: always online, never offline, and deeply affected by the invisible architecture of digital life.

This is not just about statistics. It’s about the students skipping school because of panic attacks. It’s about the young professional who leaves a promising career because of burnout before 25. The teens writing goodbye notes on apps their parents don’t even use. These are not abstract trends. They are life and death realities.

A Call to Awareness

Normally in this space, I close with action steps and practical insights for leaders and parents. But here, I need to pause. This issue is too complex and too sensitive for quick-fix prescriptions. Plus, I am not adequately equipped to provide helpful instruction on this matter. Instead, let this be a call to awareness.

Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt have revealed the depth of this crisis. The data confirms it. As leaders, parents, and peers, our responsibility is not to dismiss, minimize, or laugh off a “fragile generation.” Our responsibility is to pay attention. To understand. To educate ourselves. To remember that while you may not have experienced these struggles personally, millions of young people today are living them and the numbers are still climbing.

This isn’t abstract. It isn’t exaggerated. It’s real. And it’s happening now.