Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in October 2022.
The tension between older generations and younger generations, old as time itself, is not hard to miss in today’s media environment. We need only to scan recent headlines to glimpse common pain points: “Millennials Are the Silencing Generation,” “Generation Z and the Therapeutic Campus,” “Millennials, Put Away Childish Things,” to name a few.
One can picture a gruff elder wagging his finger at those darn kids, wishing they would handle life more like him and his peers.
Older generations commonly complain that Generation Z (ages 10-25) and Millennials (ages 26-41) spend inordinate time crafting and maintaining their social media presence. And that these generations overemphasize the mental health model, which erodes their ability to cope with normal life stressors.
But this tendency to sort and name generational distinctives is not productive, according to Walt Mueller, founder and president of the 33-year-old Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (CPYU), a non-profit dedicated to building strong families. As the decades have come and gone, he has seen the dangers of pigeonholing generational traits, as these things can become self-fulfilling.
“The church needs to look less at generational differences and more at similarities,” said Mueller. “It frees us up to see how alike we are as human beings.” He advises that the church take stock of the unique issues young people are facing and help them build resilience by focusing on the truths of the gospel.
In the 1980s Mueller’s primary struggle was engaging apathetic kids who saw no need for the things of God. But today is a different story, he says. Now, teenagers and 20-somethings are very aware of their brokenness and eager for help as they face rising anxiety and depression levels, the tyranny of a 24/7 social media environment, and the burden of identity-creation in an anything-goes culture.
Skyrocketing Anxiety
College campus health centers have historically focused on sports injuries and respiratory illnesses, but that has changed in the past 10 to 15 years, according to Mueller. “Now, stress and anxiety are off the charts.” One elite university in the Southeast reported that 80% of the student body had sought treatment for anxiety and depression, and there was a four-month waiting list for care.
Derek Rishmawy, a Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) campus minister at the University of California-Irvine, has seen an increase in students grappling with mental health issues during his 10 years of college ministry. “College students today are more attuned to their mental health challenges,” he said, acknowledging that while greater openness on this front is good, sometimes this heightened awareness can pathologize regular things, such as managing a heavy course load or balancing work and school.
Rishmawy says that he is grateful for mental health professionals and does not hesitate to refer students out who need professional care. But an overemphasis on the therapeutic model can deemphasize spiritual realities.
This is echoed in a chapel talk by Hans Madueme, Covenant College associate professor of theological studies. “We live in a society that tends to medicalize all of life . . . where we are nothing more than serotonin and molecules and neurons, where the category of mental illness is expanded to include almost everything — and somehow explains who we are and why we live the way we do. It can make it hard for us to see ourselves in truly biblical ways, to recognize that sin does haunt us, and that our biggest need is to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Today’s younger generations are the first digital natives, and have not experienced life without smartphones, social media, or easy access to pornography.
The mental health rubric alone cannot explain all of life. But we also cannot deny that skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression are consuming younger generations. It begs the question, why? One obvious answer is the effect of technology on our lives. Today’s younger generations are the first digital natives and have not experienced life without smartphones, social media, or easy access to pornography.
“It’s gotten worse since my generation,” said Rishmawy, a millennial. “There’s a consistent pressure-cooker situation of identity maintenance via social media. It’s a hamster wheel of reinforcement.”
Some of the most well-adjusted students he knows have decided to delete social media apps from their phones, he says. “I know one young man who chooses not to have an Instagram account to pursue holiness.”
He also observes that digital access to pornography is a bigger deal than we think: “It’s extraordinarily widespread and egalitarian,” affecting both men and women. He explains that many students who are alienated relationally go to porn to find relief, not knowing that “it’s like going to salt water to quench your thirst.”
Both pornography use and phone addiction perpetuate cycles of shame, guilt, and alienation. To combat this, Rishmawy advises that struggling students exchange smartphones for dumb phones, or do all their computer work in the library or in hallways.
“There’s wisdom in, as Jesus says, not cutting off limbs but cutting down data plans,” said Rishmawy.
The Burden of Meaning Making
So much of young people’s angst appears to stem from technology and social media, but actually has roots in the deeper issues of meaning and identity. In the past, a person’s identity came through family lineage or by geography or by God. But today each person must create an identity for themselves and use social media to reinforce that identity continually.
“That is a recipe for anxiety and instability,” says Rishmawy.
Alan Noble, Oklahoma Baptist University associate professor of English and author of “You Are Not Your Own” (InterVarsity Press, 2021), agrees. “The culture of achievement and meaning-making through personal effort is crushing,” said Noble.
Many have observed a growing “failure to launch” phenomenon, wherein young people delay moving from adolescence to adulthood through typical milestones such as marriage or financial independence. But this stunted development does not demonstrate laziness, says Noble, so much as an inability of young people to cope with high expectations.
“So many young people are told, ‘Your life is a project, and your task is to make it interesting, meaningful, and beautiful and to change the world,’” said Noble. “They are told, ‘You can do it — and you can also mess it up.’ It’s a lot of pressure.”
And because today’s options are endless, many become stuck in choice paralysis. Young people really do want to succeed in life, Noble says, but they realize they are likely to fail and ultimately decide to bow out of the meritocracy, asking, “Why bother trying?”
This dynamic is amplified by social media, which requires young people to create a successful life and then perform it continuously for likes and shares. Life becomes a competition that many see as unwinnable.
“They see how good-looking, talented, and successful others seem to be,” said Noble. “The algorithm is throwing it in their faces.”
And because they have been on social media from young ages, young people publicly share ideas as they are forming. Little grace is given to those who misstep, further cementing a despair of succeeding.
The antidote to all of this, Noble says, is to reframe expectations and to see the world as it really is, with God as the sole maker of meaning. Noble tells students that it is not up to them to change the world: “Only Christ is redeeming all things.”
“I tell them, just pick something, do it well, and seek to glorify God,” said Noble. “They seem to find it refreshing.” He urges them to use a set of four questions to assess what to do with their lives: What are you good at? What makes money? What do you enjoy doing? What is good for your community?
This can simplify decision making for young people as they seek to build normal, meaningful lives, he says. “If we put pressure on people to craft a great story, we can expect them to crack under the pressure.”
Reorienting Toward Truth
While Rishmawy interacts with a number of well-adjusted, thriving kids in his college ministry, he also encounters those who are overwhelmed by life. “In a single conversation with someone, we might talk about why they are depressed, their porn use, a strained relationship with their mom or dad, high academic pressure, and their anxiety about aiming for a job they’re not even sure they can get, because of so much competition.”
He says that many of these students are experiencing a crisis of meaning, and his role is to tell them that God loves them and that there is deep security to be found in the basic truths of the gospel.
Rishmawy regularly shares the doctrines of the Apostles’ Creed to encourage students that they are not the author of their own lives, and that there is Someone outside of them who is a trustworthy guide to reality. “These are the tentpoles and anchors in our unstable culture and time,” he said.
He encourages his students that they don’t have to stay where they are. “The Holy Spirit will slowly transform us into the image of Christ and liberate us from spiritual oppression,” said Rishmawy.
He also sees the importance of building relationships with students one on one. “I offer a lot of Bible studies, and my greatest success in ministry comes from direct engagement with students with the truth of the Word and getting to know them individually.”
Mueller has seen this in his ministry also. “When I first started in youth ministry, 30 kids would walk in a room and I would see them all the same,” said Mueller. “I failed to see them as individuals.”
He now teaches the importance of seeing teens as human beings first, image-bearers of God with dignity and worth. And he actively seeks to understand the patterns of each kid’s need: “How has human brokenness visited this person? What are the childhood experiences that have deformed them? The more holes there are, the less resilient and less prepared that kid will be.”
Mueller sees the youth worker’s role as finding those holes and filling them with good teaching and with nurture, relationship, and the truths of the gospel.
For Alan Noble, many of the well-adjusted students he encounters share a common background: “They have been told over and over again by parents and others that their worth is not tied to their performance. This is so important for building resilience.”
Their parents love them, approve of them, and help them focus on loving people and serving God, Noble says. But they also ask them to do hard things, to be willing to fail, and to expect suffering and persecution. This is increasingly difficult in a society that offers a plethora of coping mechanisms and endless entertainment options to dull the senses and numb pain.
Noble encourages his students to work hard, even when they aren’t assured of the outcome. He references the T.S. Eliot poem “Four Quartets” as an example of the tension we must learn to live in: “For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
How the Church Can Help
For all the complexity facing today’s younger generations, there are simple, time-tested ways the church can pursue and minister to them.
“Your average pastor or family with a commitment to the Word and loving people is fundamentally equipped to love this generation,” said Rishmawy. He describes how the ordinary means of grace minister to these students. “The Word is still primary. The Holy Spirit is still an agent of change.”
The biggest challenge, he says, is slowing down and directly engaging with students to learn what is going on in their lives. “Be patient in relationship,” he says, “and the Word will begin to assert itself.”
Mueller says too many churches and youth ministries water down their messages for teens. He encourages them to talk to teens with respect, “adult to adult,” and to broach difficult topics.
“Whoever has the conversation first owns the topic,” said Mueller. “It sets the bar for how every conversation after that is evaluated.” He encourages churches to begin discussing difficult topics with younger students for this reason.
Additionally, a flourishing church ministry toward teens and young adults should encompass all generations of the church, says Mueller. “It is critical to recruit mentors outside of mom and dad — someone that these kids can look up to and respect. We underestimate the full function of the beautiful body of Christ.”
When parents and churches are aligned, the results are remarkable. Mueller frequently sees kids well-nurtured by their parents and student ministries: “I am always amazed at how bright and capable they are.”
To this end, Mueller advocates for robust teaching and theology, and for rigorous training for youth ministers. CPYU recently created a podcast, “The Word in Youth Ministry,” after struggling to find existing podcasts that equip youth workers to teach the Bible and theology.
Offering a Counter-Liturgy
In essence, churches must offer a counter-liturgy to the cultural messages that bombard kids on their smartphones. “We must provide teaching and habits that counter the narrative that you make a life for yourself,” said Noble.
In the 1950s, impressionable teens would spend a few minutes flipping through glossy magazine ads to glimpse an aspirational life beyond their own. But now young people are continuously fed airbrushed Instagram images of the good life through their smartphones. Today’s youth must work harder to push back against cultural narratives that tell them they must create their own worth.
The church should catechize youth and young adults to resist this narrative, Noble says, portraying a beautiful picture of God’s people thriving in a land that is not their home. “It is normal for God’s followers to live in the midst of sinful cities and to flourish inside of them,” he said, citing Jeremiah 29.
For those who have engaged in youth ministry over time, there are certain predictable patterns. Youth have always struggled to find their place amid the established order, and the process of growth has always involved failure and change. In that sense, there is nothing new under the sun.
But technology and social media are clearly affecting young people today, amplifying common struggles, creating new ones, and broadcasting them in an endless cycle.
The damage is clear, with so many markers for youth well-being in freefall. But there may be an upside in the midst of this challenge, according to Mueller.
“This landscape of emotional brokenness and heartache is a landscape of tremendous opportunity for the gospel.”
Recently, as Mueller observed a youth minister delivering an expository message to teens, he could sense that the adults in the room doubted the sermon would hold the kids’ interest. But the adults were shocked to see the teens begin to scribble notes. “It was living proof that kids are majorly hungry for the gospel,” said Mueller. “It shouldn’t surprise us. They want depth — that’s what we’ve been made for.”
Melissa Morgan Kelley is a writer and editor. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and children.