Over the weekend, I fell into a rut of watching feel-good inspirational movies. They did not work.
Halfway through “Good Will Hunting,” I realized how hopeless I’ve felt about my own future. Finishing “Eat Pray Love” made me lose my appetite. And after silencing all the breaking news notifications I got during “Erin Brockovich,” I just felt guilty.
Ultimately, it made me wonder if anything still makes me hopeful. The truth is, I don’t think we talk enough about how much we’ve lowered our expectations—for the world, for other people, and for ourselves. We’ve replaced faith with detachment, because it feels easier to say nothing matters than to admit we’re scared that maybe nothing will get better. We ghost the people we care about. We skim past news that once would’ve shaken us. We make cynicism a personality trait, and call anyone who still believes in something cringe.
Take dating for example. When was the last time you met someone who was truly a hopeless romantic? In a world where romantic relationships are being built by swiping left or right, emotional detachment and a lack of labels. Our terminology surrounding dating speaks for itself. Situationships. Icks. Ghosting. Nonchalant. We’ve created an entire vocabulary designed to blur lines and avoid vulnerability. And data backs it up. 50% of people aged 18–34 have experienced a “situationship.” That’s half of young adults stuck somewhere between a relationship and nothing at all.
A 2023 Forbes Health survey revealed that 79% of Gen Z users experience dating app burnout, citing reasons like ghosting, lack of meaningful connections, and miscommunications about relationship intentions. And who can blame them? We end things by disappearing. We break up over text. 84% of Gen Zers and Millennials have experienced ghosting—a number that says everything about how we handle accountability these days. We have turned emotional connections into a competition of who acts more nonchalant, leaving ourselves with a fear of vulnerability because things probably won’t work out anyways, right?
Last week, a friend of mine told me a guy sent her a Google Form questionnaire to get to know her instead of having a real conversation. It asked questions like “What’s your favorite color?” and “What are you looking for?”—things you’d normally learn by talking, but now apparently outsource to a link. We laughed about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how symbolic it was. We’re so afraid of connection that we’re turning even basic emotional intimacy into an administrative task.
Somewhere along the line, not caring became cool. Honesty became embarrassing. And hope became ingenuous.
But cynicism isn’t just for dates. It’s crept into how we engage with politics too.
With our overwhelming access to the internet, it’s difficult not to feel discouraged about the future. We grew up watching global crises stack on top of each other—wildfires burning across continents, routine school shootings, a pandemic that reshaped our youth, and literally everything else. Now, every election season feels like a recurring nightmare: the same headlines, candidates, and empty promises.
In the 2024 presidential primaries, only 42% of voters aged 18–29 cast ballots—a sharp decline from over 50% in 2020. When the youngest and supposedly most hopeful generation of voters turns disillusioned, it says a lot about the world we live in. It’s not that we don’t care though. It’s that we cared so hard, for so long, and saw so little come of it that everything starts to feel hopeless.
As of October 2024, only 62% of Gen Z believe living in a democracy is important—compared to nearly 90% of older generations. Unironically, this number might have gotten worse as we lose hope in our political system and society at large. And just like that, the generation of freedom became the generation of lost hope.
It reflects the way we think about our futures too. The question of what you want to be when you grow up is starting to feel absurd. What does it even mean to “plan ahead” when the cost of living is skyrocketing, the climate crisis feels unstoppable, and the job market demands three years of experience for an entry-level role? Anxiety and uncertainty seem to be the trademark of our generation—2 in 5 individuals in Gen Z report always feeling uncertain about their future. 35% of Gen Z cites cost of living as their top concern, followed by the 22% who worry over unemployment.
We laugh about our quarter-life crises, but behind the humor is grief for the futures we were promised and never got. It would be easy to call all of this apathy. But that would be too simple. I don’t think we’ve stopped caring; I think we’re scared to start.
Coming from a post-Soviet country, I know more about this nihilistic mindset than I would like to. Years of war, economic instability, lack of freedom, education disparities, and unstable families created a generation of kids who thought happiness and hope was unacceptable. However, with recent events, it’s been different. Instead of falling victim to subtle authoritarianism that we all watched rise for the past decades, suddenly, something clicked and we all said, “That’s enough.” Despite the government’s attempts to suppress dissent, tens of thousands have taken to the streets, demanding a future aligned with our values. And the place I once thought had no future ahead proved to me that collective hope still exists and it’s something worth holding on to.
Moving here and always hearing of the U.S. as this great free nation, I didn’t think it’d be so familiar. But it is. And I don’t think the answer is to lean further into numbness. In fact, I think reclaiming hope might be the most rebellious thing we can do right now. Not just hope for the country, but hope for ourselves, our futures, our love. Not blind hope, not delusion—but the kind of quiet belief that refuses to let cynicism close the door completely. The kind of belief that texts back even if it might get hurt. That votes, even when the system feels broken. That dreams, even if the future is unclear.
Because if we let go of hope entirely, we risk turning the fear that things will never change into a reality where we stop showing up for ourselves, each other, and the future we still deserve.
