Gen Z: They're Zooming Apart (with Rachel Janfaza) | The Focus Group

This young woman has totally changed my mind as to the impact of COVID. As a married boomer who retired right in the middle of COVID, my experience was different. It was inconvenient but essentially my life remained the same. Listening to her talk, I now understand the profound effect it had on this generation at these pivotal time in their lives. I loved hearing these young women talk about their lives.

As a newly retired single cat lady, I've learned that there are worse things in life than being single.

Gen X woman here who grew up in the world where women were told men didn’t want marriage and had to be talked into taking you on as their ball and chain. Even then, though, the statistics were that men remarried faster after a death or divorce and were happier, healthier, and richer with that ball and chain. There was a lot more on the line for women who didn’t marry back in the day but the fact that there were spinsters and wallflowers was never seen as a societal problem to solve. It was a personal problem for those women to feel shame over. I think that has a lot to do with women’s reaction toward these issues.

My younger GenZ daughter (almost 25) is getting ready to marry her lovely Dutch boyfriend & move to the Netherlands. I will miss her, but I couldn’t be happier for her.

The term "third spaces" has been around for quite awhile, and generally has three criteria: 1. Not home 2. Not work or school 3. Not set up around the expectation that you have to spend money. The latter has been a problem for decades.

I work in NYC around the corner from the Morgan Library. It is a cultural center that offers reduced dates to college students to attend their amazing events (I'm 70). The last 3 hour event that cost $20 had so many young people, my friend and I were the oldest in any room. It lifted my heart. Cultural institutions can bring us all back together again.

Please make this young woman a regular

Can you please have this guest on again with you Sarah? Not only is she really interesting and smart but the chemistry between the two you was really full of depth and nuance. And YES to your observations about how unprocessed are the impacts of the pandemic and how it continues to affect us - please keep unpacking this.

I have a gen z son who graduated HS in 2020 and missed everything important like HS graduation, prom, senior trip, senior spring, college orientation, dorm experience so much so that he forgot how to socialize and interact with people. He was very popular in HS but lost his confidence. Having said that, he had intelligent and wisdom to not blame democrats for all of that. If these young people are blaming democrats for covid lockdowns then these people are not logical thinkers and have no intelligence. If anyone should be blamed for covid being so bad in US, it’s trump and his administration who ignored Covid, didn’t close the border on time and called it a hoax

Wow these young women are so much more articulate and well informed than almost all the men I have ever had to listen to on the focus group pod.