Comment: C’mon, Gen Z, the world needs you to rebel

By Allison Schrager / Bloomberg Opinion

The pandemic revealed many troubling trends that had been brewing for a long time without much notice. A big one is the curious lack of rebelliousness among young people.

University and high school years used to be a time to test boundaries and break rules. So when schools finally reopened with fairly draconian covid restrictions, I kept waiting for students to push back and rebel. After all, college and high school students are mostly vaccinated and face lower risk than older adults.

Young people are supposed to chafe at rules imposed by overly risk-averse authority figures. But it seems they largely accept covid restrictions and have even fiercely defended them. Many of the students in my neighborhood won’t step outside without a medical grade mask. What happened to youth pushing back against authority and being a little selfish? Instead, we have rule followers afraid to upset their community. And it seems when they do push back against their elders it’s to shame them for not following the rules.

This isn’t another rant against the woke culture; values and norms are always evolving. I am also not calling for violent or destructive behavior. What worries me is the complacency — the lack of questioning or healthy acts of rebellion — because those qualities are critical to our long-term prosperity. Civilization’s greatest leaps forward came from rebels who pushed boundaries and questioned the wisdom of their elders.

On reflection, our youths’ submissive response to covid-19 should not have come as a surprise. There were signs in the last several years that younger generations have been growing less rebellious. They don’t fully individuate from their parents, living with them longer and speaking to them multiple times a day when they do go to college. Teenagers are less likely to drink or have sex, go out without their parents, or get a driver’s license compared with teens 40 years ago. And while in some ways that’s good — they’re safer and there’s less teen pregnancy — it also suggests less experimentation, curiosity or desire to test limits.

There are many theories for why this generation is more cautious and compliant. It could be more helicopter parenting compromises children’s independence and resilience, making them less able to deal with setbacks. Or maybe it’s the influence of technology; we’re seeing the first generations growing up knowing that their mistakes can follow them forever, or could be broadcast to the entire world and result in them being shamed and shunned. Whatever the reason, it’s not a healthy trend. Not just for the individual — because a little defiance is important for psychological development — but for the entire U.S. economy.

Economic historian Joel Mokyr’s book “The Culture of Growth” takes on the two biggest mysteries in the economic history field. Why did growth suddenly take off in the 19th century? And why did it happen in the United Kingdom first? Mokyr argues that a rebellious spirit started brewing in Europe in the 16th and 17th century, and it created the conditions not only for rebels to thrive but to innovate too. Before, it was accepted — and stringently enforced — that elders had all the wisdom, which they passed down to each successive generation.

But people like Newton and Galileo (huge rebels) started to question what they were taught and began to explore the idea that nature was something they could work with for better outcomes. They adopted the scientific method to overthrow prevailing orthodoxies. It was radical at the time. And though rebellious thinkers got lots of pushback and were called heretics and jailed or worse, their ideas ultimately gained traction because the culture was changing and people were less threatened by challenging taboos compared with their ancestors. This paved the way for the thinkers of the Enlightenment. It happened in northern Europe because it was more politically fragmented so there was less top-down control as there was in China or Southern Europe. If an idea offended the church, government or community, the scholar could go somewhere more receptive.

Mokyr argues the fragmentation created a competitive environment where the best ideas could emerge and find a home, even if they offended some. The UK’s religious traditions, including its break from Catholicism, along with widespread education in places like Scotland, also fostered a culture that was more open to upsetting the status quo. Mokyr argues this environment created the conditions for the Industrial Revolution. History is full of examples of bursts of innovation that eventually fizzled out. It takes a rebellious culture to create an environment where new ideas and inventions are quickly displaced by even better ideas and inventions.

You need to be an iconoclast to be a great innovator or entrepreneur. You need to be the kind of person who thinks the existing solutions are bad or inadequate. You need to recognize that sometimes the wisdom you get from authorities is lacking, especially if it defies scientific reason and logic. People will say you are wrong and crazy and sometimes get angry with you. That’s why rebels also need a culture that gives them room and (and capital) to test their ideas even if they are new or uncomfortable; a culture able to reward worthy ideas and cast aside bad ones. Steve Jobs was a rebel. Bill Gates dropped out of college to start a technology company before it was a thing.

Sometimes rebelliousness will blow up in your face. Teenagers can make bad choices; it’s part of the growing-up experience. Others don’t base their rebellion on reason or curiosity and are driven by ignorance or greed instead, like anti-vaxxers or Elizabeth Holmes. And such people need to be held accountable for their actions and offered better information.

But generally, rebellion is necessary for a dynamic society, which on balance makes our lives better and delivers the innovations that make us healthier and wiser. People need to test weird ideas and sometimes make bad decisions. In a healthy culture it’s how they learn to become better thinkers.

Covid restrictions are beginning to be lifted now, opening the door on an economy desperately in need of a new crop of innovators and barrier crashers. Young Americans should use their newfound freedom to take some chances, say some surprising things, own some shocking ideas, and prove they shouldn’t be remembered as the lamest generation.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”