Gen Z is grappling with global chaos—here's how they're coping with 'inheriting broken systems'

As the first digital native generation, Gen Z is grappling with exposure to global instability in a way that no other generation has.

"We were raised with war bleeding through our screens ... we've seen more armed drones, missiles and mutilated children before 9 a.m. than any generation before us," said 25-year-old neuroscience and AI researcher Amogh Mehrotra.

Geopolitical turmoil has rocked the world in recent years, from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, as well as the conflict between Israel and Iran during which nuclear tensions were heightened.  

Gen Z is also struggling with inflation, increasing housing prices, climate change and mass corporate layoffs — and they're seeing all of it play out right in front of their eyes. This has created a profound sense of uncertainty for many in the generation as they try to build their future.

"Many of us feel like we're inheriting broken systems, and yet we're expected to fix them," Mehrotra told CNBC Make It.

To cope with the realities of a challenging global landscape, some young people are injecting wry humor into serious situations.

"First war, kinda nervous," one TikTok video showing missiles dropping on cities is captioned. The video racked up 2.3 million likes.

Another TikTok video with 480,000 likes shows outfit ideas for "World War III" with concepts such as "military chic" and "political prisoner streetwear."

When Tanushree Srivastava first arrived in the U.K. from Delhi in 2021, the 26-year-old dreamed of working for a fashion magazine, but her hopes were dashed as economic and political uncertainty quickly became a fact of life.  

The young Gen Z immigrant completed her master's in fashion communication, hoping to break into the industry. However, in order to stay in the U.K., she needed a Skilled Worker visa, which limited her options.

Many employers in the country are reluctant to hire immigrants with the five-year visa due to the associated costs. After two years of job hunting, Srivastava finally found a company that would sponsor her — she is now an account executive at a PR and communications agency.

"That wasn't my plan," she told CNBC Make It. "I'm from a middle-class family, so I took a loan to come here, and now it's so hard to get jobs, and with inflation, everything changing around government policies and geopolitics, it's so hard to actually believe that tomorrow is known."

Srivastava said she feels "hopeless" about her future ambitions because the status of immigrants is precarious both in the U.K. and the U.S.

"It has literally limited me in so many ways that I'm not very happy and joyous about it, and with now what's happening, [war], I don't know if we'd exist tomorrow, so I'm not sure how much to plan."  

The prospect of war made her anxious for her family's safety in India, she said, especially with the recent India-Pakistan spat.

To add to her worries, the thought of buying a house or having a family feels out of reach. "It seems very risky at this point...we just need to basically survive right now, it's really expensive."

Srivastava isn't alone in her anxieties. Many Gen Zers are delaying adulthood as financial insecurity remains top of mind.

Deloitte's 2025 Global Gen Z and Millennial survey of 23,482 respondents in 44 countries found that over 80% of respondents felt that their long-term financial futures and day-to-day expenses played a key role in their stress and anxiety.

Almost half of Gen Z respondents said they don't feel financially stable, and 52% said they're living paycheck to paycheck. Around 41% of Gen Z are worried they won't be able to retire comfortably.

While many Gen Zers are anxious, some cope by taking agency over their lives.

UC Berkeley graduate Amrita Bhasin was supposed to begin her role with Meta before she ultimately decided to take the entrepreneur path instead.

The 24-year-old came to that decision after realizing how unstable the technology industry had become. After watching many of her friends get laid off and seeing companies increasingly outsource jobs to artificial intelligence, she concluded that "big tech was not going to be cushy and stable forever."

"There [are] people who go to college, they spend $200k to $300k on a private school computer science degree, and then they can't get a job," said Bhasin.

"Then they're like: 'But I followed the path. I did [everything] I was supposed to do.' And the problem is that what's at the end of the path is just no longer guaranteed," she said. "And so I think [Gen Z is] just like: 'Why would I follow a system if it doesn't guarantee me a job?'"

Seeing that other industries were also unstable, Bhasin decided to start a company of her own. "Entrepreneurship wasn't any more unstable than the others," she said.

Today, she is the co-founder and CEO of Sotira, a venture-backed B2B marketplace for overstock in the logistics and freight industry.

Young people tend to aspire to work for themselves. A 2024 Fiverr survey of over 10,000 Gen Zers around the world found that 70% are freelancing or plan to in the future, and a quarter are hoping to start their own business, with the goal of being financially comfortable and retiring early.

Similarly, 29-year-old Harsha Poojari had decided to cope by focusing on her own happiness. Today, she has her own business called An Honest Media Company, where she works as a visual strategist and creative director on a fractional basis.

She said that while this generation faces mounting mental health challenges largely due to social media and the internet, that very access to information presents them with a unique opportunity.

Growing up being exposed to so much news on her smart phone pushed Poojari to want to help create a "better world" by choosing to work with clients that are more impact-driven.

"We have this opportunity that ... generations before haven't had, of really owning the means of production and being able to [say] I want to quit and ... work for myself," said Poojari. "There's more agency and freedom with what we can do."

"I'm able to spend my time doing the projects that I want to do, and [can] say no ... if the work doesn't align with me," she added.

"Rather than just doing work for work's sake, it feels more important than ever that the time [and] energy that I put into something ... actually leads to a better future for me and for humanity," said Poojari.

Ultimately, although Gen Z is grappling with navigating their own lives in the midst of global chaos, many remain optimistic and have chosen to take control over not just their own futures, but also the future of the world.

"The geopolitical conflict has kind of shown a lot of issues in society, right? There's a lot of problems, there's a lot of holes, and I've gone after solving it," said Bhasin.

"Gen Z is choosing, in my opinion, to tackle big problems," she added. "If any generation were to be the one to have to address these issues, our generation is doing a [really] good job."

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