The Hungry Generation

Gen Z is Starved for Sex, Food, and the Messiness of Life.

Gen Z has been missing out on an abundant existence, one that is teeming with pleasurable sex, satisfying meals, and an overall messiness. Young adults have instead opted for optimization and control. About 50% of Gen Z turns to TikTok for health advice; where the information is prescriptive and restrictive. In an optimization-obsessed culture, following health trends on social media isn’t often connected to living a restricted life. Yet Gen Z’s fixations with optimization seem endless and rooted in far more than any health goals.

Gen Z optimization pursuits include intermittent fasting, sleepmaxxing (hacks to improve sleep, even the one where you put tape on your mouth to sleep), and a resurrected fixation with cottage cheese. These practices are all rooted in rigidity and lead to lives that look rather controlled. Gen Z isn’t just trying to get their macros in or sleep better, the reality is that they are struggling and grasping for a way to cope.

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While these young adults remain on a hamster wheel of optimization, they are seemingly shutting down their needs. As licensed psychologist specializing in eating disorders, I have become keenly aware of the insidious ways restriction shows up and the purpose it serves. While it is true that Gen Z is experiencing an uptick in disordered eating and the growing use of weight loss drugs have fueled a thriving diet culture, they are restricting in so many more ways.

Along with their decreased appetites for food they have a lower risk threshold leading to an unwillingness to be social and get messy. The data on young American’s sex lives is alarming, with 24% of 18–29-year-olds reporting they haven’t had sex in a year (double the amount from 2010). It’s not just pleasure-seeking experiences like sex, food; it’s an overall dampening of emotional experiences like kindness, joy, hope, and resilience. Between doom scrolling on TikTok, “pleasure seeking” on porn hub, and eating micro meals because of Ozempic, there is a continuous loop of barely getting a sexual need met to seeing how terrible the world is to being scared to enjoy a full meal. Gen Z is stuck in this loop, how can there be fullness?

It is worth understanding why young people are shutting down their sexual desires, ignoring their hunger for carbs, and why the pull to live rigidly is so strong. In eating disorder treatment, we unpack one’s eating disorder by understanding how these restrictive behaviors ultimately serve as a form of protection.

Gen Z is coping with the precarity of their future. Gen Z is scared and their mental health isn’t good. Economic pessimism in on the rise, and this loss of hope is deeply connected to the loss of what many considered a defining American characteristic: the ability to dream of having more for oneself. Economists have suggested that the US economy likely plateaued years ago and another “great stagnation” is looming, with Americans no longer moving or changing jobs. And in the wake of this uncertainty, Americans’ pessimism surrounding their finances has hit an all-time high, with 53% assuming their situation will worsen.

Jessica Grose reported on Gen Z’s loss of faith in systemic support or stability, “Gen Z still wants to climb the old ladder, finding a foothold in the job market while settling down and considering homeownership. But as I had these conversations, I kept thinking of the old circus bit in which clowns keep moving the ladder just as someone is trying to ascend; it’s tough to grab hold of the bottom rung when the ladder is not fixed.” Grose highlights precarity that leads Gen Z to seek control.

Taking chances when life feels so precarious is way too risky, and this is especially scary for young adults who are, by definition, going through serious changes as they step into independence. As a result, Gen Z is taking fewer risks, settling into stagnation instead. And with stagnation comes resignation, a life lacking in abundance, and of course the desire to stay away from life’s inevitable messiness. While it makes sense to batten down the hatches in moments of instability, what we are really reacting to is a loss of security that has been a long time coming.

Sitting with someone entrenched in an eating disorder like anorexia, it can feel like they are opting out of living. Obviously, I am deeply aware that this is not a choice, and everyone’s experience of an eating disorder is vastly nuanced. But being overly fixated on food and myopic about exercise makes one’s life small and empty. And even though it offers momentary protection, ultimately, it’s an opting out of fullness of every kind. It is hard for life to feel full without pleasure and joy and mess, and but today’s young Americans are determined to avoid the mess. When we are fearful of the mess, we yearn for rigidity, routine, and control. In other words, restriction.

When there is a lack of security, we tend to hunker down and see the world through the lens of fear and scarcity. And while Gen Z is open about their disappointment in the new trajectory they face young American’s restriction keeps them from building the very tool needed to persevere: resilience. The ability to “bounce back” and trust oneself to get back up feels like it has been lost. All the over control and rigidity leads to an inability to tolerate discomfort—no one is practicing getting back to the hard stuff.

Resilience is necessary in eating disorder treatment. Not surprisingly, patients with Anorexia Nervosa score low on resilience factors, and research suggests that addressing these factors improves outcomes. However, to build resilience, we need to feel security. And as journalist Faith Hill suggested in her 2023 piece, America is in its’ “insecure era”, we aren’t feeling safe with one another, resilience is diminished.

But Gen Z needs to build more opportunities for resilience by learning to accept the mess. Renowned psychologist, author and creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) describes the need to get to acceptance and how we move towards it, “Freedom from suffering requires acceptance...Deciding to tolerate the moment is acceptance.” And for a generation allergic to feeling awkward, being able to be in the “cringe” and just exist could be a way to move towards abundance.

Much of the precariousness of our day-to-day existence is not going anywhere. Yet, moving away from a restrictive mindset is possible. Building resilience by putting down the phones and getting to a place of accepting the mess is a necessary step away from rigidity. In eating disorder treatment centers, patients actively engage with one another in group therapy. There they are expected to take up space, engage interpersonally, and get messy all in an effort to find more for themselves. Young Americans wanting to improve their sex lives, build more actual connections, and have a fuller life should take a page from the eating disorder treatment playbook.