Kali Gaddie was a college senior when the pandemic abruptly upended her life plans—and made her part of a big and deeply unhappy political force that figures to play a huge role in the 2024 election season.

Her graduation was postponed, she was let go from her college job and her summer internship got canceled. She spent the final months of school taking online classes from her parents’ house. “You would think that there’s a plan B or a safety net,” she said. “But there’s actually not.”

Today, Gaddie, 25, works as an office manager in Atlanta earning less than $35,000 a year. In her spare time, she uploads videos to TikTok, where she’s amassed thousands of followers. Now, that’s at risk of being taken away too. All of this has left her dejected and increasingly skeptical of politicians.

Young adults in Generation Z—those born in 1997 or after—have emerged from the pandemic feeling more disillusioned than any living generation before them, according to long-running surveys and interviews with dozens of young people around the country. They worry they’ll never make enough money to attain the security previous generations have achieved, citing their delayed launch into adulthood, an impenetrable housing market and loads of student debt.

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Young adult Gen Z voters are more disillusioned and pessimistic than any before. More here, including charts from *Generations*:https://t.co/bU8xNjCd9j

— Jean Twenge (author of GENERATIONS, iGEN) (@jean_twenge) March 15, 2024

As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.

Since this development very directly affects my ability to do my job as I understand it, I talk about it a lot. And when I talk about it with nonacademics, certain predictable responses inevitably arise, all questioning the reality of the trend I describe. Hasn’t every generation felt that the younger cohort is going to hell in a handbasket? Haven’t professors always complained that educators at earlier levels are not adequately equipping their students? And haven’t students from time immemorial skipped the readings?

The response of my fellow academics, however, reassures me that I’m not simply indulging in intergenerational grousing. Anecdotally, I have literally never met a professor who did not share my experience. Professors are also discussing the issue in academic trade publications, from a variety of perspectives. What we almost all seem to agree on is that we are facing new obstacles in structuring and delivering our courses, requiring us to ratchet down expectations in the face of a ratcheting down of preparation. Yes, there were always students who skipped the readings, but we are in new territory when even highly motivated honors students struggle to grasp the basic argument of a 20-page article. Yes, professors never feel satisfied that high school teachers have done enough, but not every generation of professors has had to deal with the fallout of No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Finally, yes, every generation thinks the younger generation is failing to make the grade—except for the current cohort of professors, who are by and large more invested in their students’ success and mental health and more responsive to student needs than any group of educators in human history. We are not complaining about our students. We are complaining about what has been taken from them….

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I know EXACTLY what he means. Same things have happened to me, and every professor & public school teacher over tge oast 28 years…..

The Loss of Things I Took for Grantedhttps://t.co/ql0ujAsjHx

— Dr. Irving Forbush (@IrvingForbush2) February 11, 2024

Maternity services could close at one of two London hospitals due to fewer births, the NHS said.

NHS North Central London said it needed to cut the number of maternity units in its area due to declining birth rates.

It has launched a public consultation, proposing to close either the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead or Whittington Hospital in Archway.

Concerns have been raised but NHS bosses said “nothing has been pre-decided”.

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Fewer births may force London maternity services to close https://t.co/LM6P0G5lMH

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 12, 2023

Homeownership has become a pipe dream for more Americans, even those who could afford to buy just a few years ago.

Many would-be buyers were already feeling stretched thin by home prices that shot quickly higher in the pandemic, but at least mortgage rates were low. Now that they are high, many people are just giving up.

It is now less affordable than any time in recent history to buy a home, and the math isn’t changing any time soon. Home prices aren’t expected to go back to prepandemic levels. The Federal Reserve, which started raising rates aggressively early last year to curb inflation, hasn’t shown much interest in cutting them. Mortgage rates slipped to about 7% last week, the lowest in several months, but they are still more than double what they were two years ago.

Typically, high mortgage rates slow down home sales, and home prices should soften as a result. Not this time. Home sales are certainly falling, but prices are still rising—there just aren’t enough homes to go around. The national median existing-home price rose to about $392,000 in October, the highest ever for that month in data that goes back to 1999.

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"It is now less affordable than any time in recent history to buy a home, and the math isn’t changing any time soon."@ginaheeb: https://t.co/8LZYrIAleG pic.twitter.com/LPIdKWGDAU

— Eric Wallerstein (@ericwallerstein) December 12, 2023

Gen Z and millennial adults are having a hard time achieving the same milestones their parents did when they first ventured out into the workforce.

For instance, 55% of young adult respondents find it is “much harder” to purchase a home, 44% said it is harder to find a job and 55% said it is harder to get promoted, according to a Youth & Money in the USA poll by CNBC and Generation Lab.

The survey polled 1,039 people between ages 18 and 34 across the U.S. from Oct. 25 to Oct. 30.

“This is purely a snapshot of what young people perceive their lives to be like compared to their parents,” said Cyrus Beschloss, founder of Generation Lab, an organization that built the largest respondent database of young people in America.

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Gen Z, millennials have a much harder time ‘adulting’ than their parents did, CNBC/Generation Lab survey finds https://t.co/h1T3NEXdZq

— CNBC (@CNBC) November 13, 2023

Barron’s: It is fairly widely acknowledged that the mental health of young Americans has deteriorated. What is significant about your newest research in this area?

David Blanchflower: I have written a lot about despair, distress, and well-being. My work has showed that happiness trends are basically hump-shaped over a lifetime. Distress or despair peaks in midlife. Young people are happy, middle-aged people are less happy, and then older people recover [happiness] in retirement. But what has happened, suddenly, is that the well-being of the young has collapsed, while other generations are the same.

In the latest research, I asked this question: Over the past 30 days, what number of those days [were] bad mental health days? If you said “every day of my life is a bad mental health day,” that’s what I call distress. In 2011, about 5% of women under age 25 reported mental distress. But by 2023, more than 10% said every day of their lives was a bad mental health day.

The same thing is happening with young men. It isn’t just a young woman’s problem. Both young women and young men have seen this uptick, although for women it is worse. So far, we have seen that levels of mental distress vary especially by education—it is worse for the less-educated.

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Young Americans are plagued by an epidemic of #unhappiness, according to anecdotal evidence & social science research.

The origins aren’t clear, although the #Covid pandemic didn’t helphttps://t.co/x0QXX8OfX5 #mentalhealth

— Pacific Journal of Health (@PacificJHealth) October 28, 2023

Nearly half of all young adults are living with their parents — and they’re not ashamed to say it.

Moving out and living on your own is often seen as a marker of adulthood. But dealt an onerous set of cards — including pandemic lockdowns, decades-high inflation, soaring student debt levels and a shaky job market — young people today are increasingly staying put. What’s more, it’s no longer seen as a sign of individual failure.

Almost 90% of surveyed Americans say people shouldn’t be judged for moving back home, according to Harris Poll in an exclusive survey for Bloomberg News. It’s seen as a pragmatic way to get ahead, the survey of 4,106 adults in August showed.

“We’re in an economy where it’s harder to live independently,” said Carol Sigelman, professor of social psychology at George Washington University. “Adults recognize that it’s tough these days.”

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Nearly half of young adults in the US are living with their parents — they're not ashamed to say it https://t.co/V4VNmKsIe1

— Bloomberg (@business) September 20, 2023

The number of marriages in China declined for nine consecutive years, falling by half in less than a decade. Last year, about 6.8 million couples registered for marriage, the lowest since records began in 1986, down from 13.5 million in 2013, according to government data released last month.

Although the numbers have risen so far in 2023 compared with the year before, more marriages are ending, too. In the first quarter of this year, 40,000 more couples married compared with the same period a year earlier, while divorces rose by 127,000.

Surveys have shown that young people are deterred by the toll of putting a child through China’s cutthroat education system. As women in cities achieve new levels of financial independence and education, marriage is less of an economic necessity to them. And men say they cannot afford to get married, citing cultural pressure to own a home and a car before they can even begin dating.

The instability of the last three years has compounded these pressures, reshaping many young people’s expectations about building a family. China has imposed an increasingly tight grip over every aspect of society under its leader, Xi Jinping — with effects that could weigh on the marriage rate.

Read it all.

It has been brutal for China’s young adults as their unemployment rate soars amid a wave of corporate layoffs. For many people, the recent turmoil is another reason to postpone major life decisions — contributing to a record-low marriage rate.https://t.co/eOaYk6ITgp

— NYT Business (@nytimesbusiness) July 10, 2023

What’s missing? This exceedingly important discussion usually slides past a huge societal disruption in the early 21st century, the palpable decline in vitality for much of American religion, with shrunken youth groups, disappearing Sunday school programs, slumping worship attendance by teens and young adults — and with it the loss of congregations as natural places for young people to meet possible mates.

Writing about the CDC report for World magazine, Allie Beth Stuckey adds a spiritual crisis to all the other ills. She contends that social media help exchange “the god of self” for the true God through constant focus on ourselves, as in “how we feel, how we look, how we sound, what we want, what we like.”

We hear constant calls to teach girls “to love themselves more.” Yet she suggests that such “self-idolatry” is “driving teens into feelings of purposelessness and depression.”

Solutions do not come from the place where girls’ problems lie. Instead, people throughout history “have needed purpose, joy, and satisfaction that exists outside of themselves, namely in the God who created them.”

Read it all.

With alarming new reports on American youth, what should religious leaders be doing? https://t.co/rPH7DLbtky on the CDC report that shows rising percentages of hopelessness and suicide, much connected with increasing singleness and relational dysfunction pic.twitter.com/bIAx8VGBUM

— Jayson Casper (@jnjcasper) March 11, 2023

One way to offer collaboration is through intentional intergenerational discipleship and guidance — mentoring in a way that is less like facilitation and more like how family members interact with one another. As Tim Alford, director of the youth arm of the Elim Pentecostal Church, says: “Young people need spiritual parents more than spiritual programmes.”

Recruiting more volunteers to help to run programmes for Gen Z — whether groups for youth or for those in their twenties — is not enough (research carried out by Youth for Christ suggests that only two per cent say that youth clubs are a favourite place to spend time). What is needed is an ongoing commitment to relationships between the generations throughout the Church.

I have loved opportunities to walk alongside some amazing women in their twenties, as they settle into adult life and learn what they want that to look like. They are passionate, empathetic, and have grown up trying to navigate a connected, constantly changing, and uncertain world.

The American author Simon Sinek suggests that many young adults in Gen Z project a self-confidence that they do not feel. In a precarious job market, they navigate side-hustles on top of their day-jobs; their peers constantly present their apparently perfect lives and selves on social media, whatever the reality when the camera isn’t there.

Gen Z, Explained notes that, for this generation, “revealing a weakness is honest, authentic and appreciated”. In Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Baker Academic, 2017) (Features, 3 January 2020), Professor Andrew Root describes our current “age of authenticity”. Gen Z are looking for authenticity, honesty, and integrity in not only what we say, but what we do and how we say it.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Making friends… listening… being spiritual parents… Loads of food for thought here in how older people in the church can best bless 15-25 year olds. And, by extension, others. https://t.co/5Nb9IGBJho

— Lucy Moore (@lucybmoore) March 17, 2023

The latest American Religious Benchmark Survey dovetailed with previous research at many points, but the pandemic’s unique impact on the young appeared to be a departure from some previous findings. CT reported in January 2022 that older and younger Americans both were more likely than middle-aged Americans to have experienced attendance drops during the pandemic.

Now senior adults apparently have come back to church even though their younger counterparts have not. According to the new survey, fewer Americans ages 65 and older changed their pre-COVID-19 church attendance patterns than any other group.

Single adults and self-identified liberals decreased their church attendance significantly as well. Before the pandemic, 30 percent of adults who had never married said they never attended religious services. That jumped to 44 percent by spring 2022. Among married adults, the percentage jumped from 22 percent to 28 percent.

While 31 percent of liberals never attended church before the pandemic, 46 percent said they didn’t attend in spring 2022. That compares with 14 percent of conservatives before the pandemic and 20 percent after.

Read it all.

Two-thirds of Americans reported the same level of church attendance both before and after the pandemic.

Yet declines among some groups left attendance down overall.https://t.co/FGqQr79O8o

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 10, 2023

Watch it all–used in the sermon yesterday morning by yours truly–KSH.

“There’s a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems,”…[Brad Wilcox] said, reached by telephone.

“The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future.”

The crisis is larger than lonely, underemployed and internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing dangerous signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay. She is the author of the book “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.”

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On Religion: Faith, family and the dropping number of marriages – Hastings Tribune https://t.co/EFynhOUjHd

— Religion Tweet (@ReligionTweet) October 1, 2022

On July 27, the University of North Carolina (UNC)–Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees made a strong, new commitment to safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus. Colleges and universities face immense pressure to comport with majority beliefs, but UNC’s trustees proactively resolved to maintain institutional neutrality on controversial political and social issues.

The trustees’ unanimous resolution built on the previous work of the faculty. To the credit of the UNC Faculty Assembly, it adopted in 2018 the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression, an action affirmed by the trustees in March 2021. The faculty resolution read, in part, “By reaffirming a commitment to full and open inquiry, robust debate, and civil discourse we also affirm the intellectual rigor and open-mindedness that our community may bring to any forum where difficult, challenging, and even disturbing ideas are presented.”

The trustees took a remarkable further step. In addition to confirming once more the decision of the Faculty Assembly, they put the university in the vanguard of institutions committed to a robust heterodoxy of views and opinions by also adopting what is known as the Kalven Committee Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action. The UNC resolution notes that the Kalven Report “recognizes that the neutrality of the University on social and political issues ‘arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints’ and further acknowledges ‘a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political and social issues of the day.’”

In an interview with me, UNC Trustee Dr. Perrin Jones, who introduced the resolution, observed that the unanimity of the board reflected its desire for public affirmation of the university’s commitment to be a forum for open and vigorous debate, which cannot happen without institutional neutrality. Board members embrace, in Dr. Jones’s words, the “high bar” of living up to these “timeless principles.”

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My new Forbes column is up. @UNC trustees struck a blow for freedom of speech, reaffirming their fealty to the Chicago Principles on Free Expression. They went one step further & paired that with a promise to maintain institutional neutrality. Inspiring. https://t.co/ze4KrVZ7GV

— Michael B. Poliakoff (@PoliakoffACTA) August 18, 2022

Friends of a student believed to have taken his own life at Cambridge University have claimed that a high-pressure academic culture has contributed to worsening mental health on campus.

With five suspected suicides in the past four months, the university has set up a rapid response group involving health professionals to review the recent deaths. The first has been confirmed as suicide by a coroner; the rest remain subject to inquests.

A friend of one of the students said she believed that Covid, combined with a pervasive culture to be a good academic, had contributed to the deaths. “Welfare support at Cambridge is quite strange,” she said. “They prioritise the academic so much that welfare is all about ‘what can we do to make you get better grades’. [My friend] who died, there are a lot of things the college probably did wrong, that I think they should change.

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Friends of a student believed to have taken his own life at Cambridge University have claimed that a high-pressure academic culture has contributed to worsening mental health on campushttps://t.co/8bT5Y83v92

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) July 12, 2022

🏆PURE PERFECTION 🏆

(1) @TerpsMLax defeats (7) Cornell, 9-7, and completes the first perfect season since 2006! #NCAAMLAX pic.twitter.com/VawOzB0uEK

— NCAA Lacrosse (@NCAALAX) May 30, 2022

In my classes last fall, a third of the students were missing nearly every time, and usually not the same third. Students buried their faces in their laptop screens and let my questions hang in the air unanswered. My classes were small, with nowhere to hide, yet some students openly slept through them.

I was teaching writing at two very different universities: one private and wealthy, its lush lawns surrounded by towering fraternity and sorority houses; the other public, with a diverse array of strivers milling about its largely brutalist campus. The problems in my classrooms, though, were the same. Students just weren’t doing what it takes to learn.

By several measures — attendance, late assignments, quality of in-class discussion — they performed worse than any students I had encountered in two decades of teaching. They didn’t even seem to be trying. At the private school, I required individual meetings to discuss their research paper drafts; only six of 14 showed up. Usually, they all do.

I wondered if it was me, if I was washed up. But when I posted about this on Facebook, more than a dozen friends teaching at institutions across the country gave similar reports. Last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education received comments from more than 100 college instructors about their classes. They, too, reported poor attendance, little discussion, missing homework and failed exams.

Read it all.

I wrote about the epidemic of disengagement among college students. To rebuild students’ ability to learn, universities will have to return face-to-face relationships to the center of what they do. https://t.co/J14IuRtYT2

— Jonathan Malesic (@JonMalesic) May 13, 2022

Baby boomer and Generation X bosses are going on courses to help them understand younger employees and get more out of them in the workplace.

Experts say that millennials and Generation Z actually speak a different language to older colleagues, causing friction in the office.

It follows a tribunal last month in which a trainee accountant was sacked after his boss claimed he was “too demanding, like his generation of millennials”.

Dr Elizabeth Michelle, a psychologist who gives workshops on how to handle millennials — a term for people born between 1981 and 1996 — and Generation Z, born from 1997-2012, said: “As a psychologist, I work with so many different things but the main thing people have been interested in is millennials and now Gen Z.

“I think boomers are desperate to be able to work more productively with them and they are very frustrated because they are so different. Managers want to understand their employees better.

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Baby boomer and Generation X bosses are going on courses to help them understand younger employees and get more out of them in the workplace https://t.co/TR9IVT3bH4

— The Times (@thetimes) May 7, 2022

More than 30 six-month work placements were made available by Lichfield Cathedral for 16 to 24-year-olds in the region. The roles available were in the Cathedral, churches, and organisations across the Diocese – providing valuable work experience for those impacted by the pandemic.

For some young people, like Gabriella, this opportunity proved to be life changing.

“In 2019, I began the year homeless” she explained.

“All the stress caused me to end up in hospital, which meant I missed my exams.

“Finding work was difficult to say the least.”

Read it all.

Super sunrise this morning from Murrells Inlet via Kathy Dowling. #scwx pic.twitter.com/WazJljCB4j

— Ed Piotrowski (@EdPiotrowski) May 5, 2022

As he sat just a few rows behind the Kansas bench at the Caesars Superdome on Monday night, Mario Chalmers tried not to squirm.

The program he had led to the 2008 basketball national championship had entered halftime with a 15-point deficit. Chalmers, the hero of that team who hit a 3-pointer to send the game to overtime in a win against Memphis, hoped the Jayhawks would remember what was still possible.

“I just thought, ‘Keep believing,'” Chalmers said after Kansas’ 72-69 come-from-behind win over North Carolina. “The same thing Coach [Bill] Self told us [in 2008] was to keep believing. And I knew they’d be able to pull it out in the end.”

The line between the joy of a hard-fought victory and the agony of almost is thin. Self, who won his second national title on Monday, knows too well after a 2012 loss to Kentucky in the championship game and a lopsided defeat against Villanova in the 2018 Final Four. But his first national title team with Chalmers also had been down in the second half, albeit in a more dire and urgent scenario, so he challenged his 2022 players in the locker room.

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Entering this season, Kansas had come back from 15 down at half to win a game just twice in their history.

In January, they did it to beat Kansas State. Last night, they did it to win a national championship. pic.twitter.com/o62169owxo

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) April 5, 2022

As an educator, Dr. DeKoven has had no superior in this or any other land. The great qualities of a leader and guide to young men–dignity, tact, firmness, sympathy, genuineness of nature–these he possessed in a marked degree. He needed no artificial safeguards to maintain his claims to respect. His personal appearance was noble and commanding. His face, whether bright with humor, or stern with disapproval, or melting with sympathy, was always attractive to look on, with a peculiar refinement of spiritual power. Students who never hesitated to cover him with ribbons on the base-ball ground or to tease him with ridicule of his favorite players, would rather have faced a battery than appear before him for discipline. In his constant visits to their rooms at odd times, he was always one of them, giving and taking jests, happy over their games, sometimes even mildly tolerant of their mischief, but the slightest violation of propriety or morals would be rebuked by a change of countenance indescribable, but most effective. He knew all the students by name and their antecedents, and he tried to make each one feel that “the Doctor” and he had some confidences shared by no one else. As a rule, the students worshipped him. If there was any fault found by any of them it was that his horror of certain kinds of evil was so keen that he could not force himself to be lenient to offenders of that class. In one other respect, he was sometimes misunderstood. He was with some men more than with others. They were not always necessarily the best or most congenial. They were those who, in his opinion, needed most help, and if any man ever thought that he was neglected it was because he himself erected the barrier that kept that great heart away from him. Sincere, true, tender, genuine through and through, that the Doctor always was, and the contact with such a life was an everlasting blessing to those who discovered it in time. Some, perhaps, who read these lines will recall with various emotions the old days–the early chapel service, and the walks with the Doctor afterwards, the thrilling sermons, the Easter morning breakfasts, the Sunday …night receptions, the gathering on the lawn at commencement, the choir suppers, the recitations in Butler, the Seniors’ tea, the hundred other associations with the old place where he was the spirit and the head; but however the memory comes to them now, with whatever regrets or misgivings or grateful joy, it cannot but bring the picture of a grand, pure, unselfish personality which never once in all the storms that beat upon it faltered for an instant in its love or duty for the individual students committed to its care.

Read it all.

22 –
&

Almighty God, you gave your servant Bl. James DeKoven special gifts of grace to understand & teach the truth revealed in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may… pic.twitter.com/9DwQevKLMe

— The Seabury Society (@SeaburySociety) March 22, 2021

Evensong at Manchester Cathedral attracts a disparate crowd. There are people you wouldn’t expect, like a young mother, all blonde highlights and dry shampoo. Several older couples. A younger man, in jeans and a tweed jacket, with a rucksack at his feet. The air smells mildly of disinfectant, and I look around, as writers do, avoiding eye contact and making mental notes.

The cathedral is old and beautiful, a brooding mass of stone and slab, arch and point. It sits, a great Gothic hulk, amongst the gleam of modern Manchester, not far from Victoria station. It is a landmark and, during the pandemic, provided somewhere to head during my long and pointless lockdown-busting walks around the anaesthetised city. Naturally, I started going in. The epic space and the vast, numinal nave roof called me back.

I am one of many Millennials who, if not reconnecting with Christianity, are disconnecting from the brutal nihilism of the modern world. Church attendance amongst the under 40s is on the rise. A good chunk of those young men and women don’t even describe themselves as believers. Belief, I think, is almost irrelevant. Twitter and the twenty-four hour news-cycle is no place for a creature with a soul.

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“Evensong at @ManCathedral attracts a disparate crowd. There are people you wouldn’t expect, like a young mother, all blonde highlights and dry shampoo. Several older couples. A younger man, in jeans and a tweed jacket, with a rucksack at his feet.”
https://t.co/ztpLnAnCVa

— Marcus Walker (@WalkerMarcus) February 14, 2022

Most single American adults aspire to be married. But for many now, marriage is supposed to be a capstone achievement rather than a cornerstone of young adult life. The “capstone model” says you are supposed to have all your ducks in a row—education, some professional success, and a clear adult identity—before you marry.

The median age at first marriage has increased over the past 50 years in the United States—from 23 in 1970 to about 30 in 2021 for men, and from 21 in 1970 to 28 in 2021 for women—with no sign of this upward trend leveling off.

Indeed, a recent national survey of millennials (ages 18–33) found the vast majority of respondents agree that marrying later means both people will be more mature, more likely to have achieved important personal goals, and more likely to have personal finances in order. Moreover, these young adults believe that later marriages will be more stable and of higher quality. That is the widely accepted cultural narrative.

Do later unions consistently provide better prospects for marital success than earlier ones? We often hear about the advantages of capstone marriage, but there has been little empirical investigation of those supposed benefits.

In a new State of Our Unions: 2022 report published by the National Marriage Project, the Wheatley Institution, and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, Alan Hawkins’s team of researchers reports on an empirical investigation of potential differences and similarities between two groups: early-marrieds (ages 20–24), who are more aligned with a “cornerstone marriage” model, and later-marrieds (25-plus), who are more aligned with a capstone marriage model. The study analyzes a wide range of marital outcomes.

Read it all.

Are marriages after turning 25 more stable and higher quality than marriages in your early 20's?

Here's what the numbers say https://t.co/01QKAOZWu9

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 9, 2022

A teenager has become what is thought to be England’s youngest churchwarden.

Ben Jenkins was appointed during a recent service at St Nicolas in Stanningfield, Suffolk.

The 19-year-old said he wanted to “make a difference” to his local church and community.

The Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the Right Reverend Martin Seeley, said it was “wonderful” to see younger people coming forward to serve their churches.

Mr Jenkins was elected to the office of churchwarden at the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich’s annual parochial church meeting in December.

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Suffolk churchwarden thought to be youngest in England https://t.co/SCuCBfu23H

— BBC Radio Suffolk (@BBCSuffolk) February 2, 2022

Serving RAF personnel are four times more likely to be problem gamblers than the rest of the population, according to a study that also found high rates of excessive drinking and depression.

The research by the RAF Benevolent Fund, the first of its kind, found one in 50 airmen and women were problem gamblers, a condition defined as undermining people’s ability to do their jobs and maintain good family relations.

This compared with one in 200 of the general population with researchers linking the greater prevalence among RAF crews to the amount of unsupervised downtime they had, deployments away from family, their disposable incomes and a greater propensity to risk taking.

Alison Wyman, associate director of the Fund, said gambling was a “hidden” problem because of the ease with which staff could conceal it. This placed a greater onus on both betting firms and the RAF to be alert to the danger signs.

Read it all.

Serving RAF personnel are four times more likely to be problem gamblers than the rest of the population, according to a study that also found high rates of excessive drinking and depression.

https://t.co/3g6aFaKM9O

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 30, 2022

The clash between socialist and liberal economics defined the late twentieth century, and this century brings a cultural version of that struggle. Today’s culture wars pit advocates of equal outcomes and special protection for identity groups against defenders of due process, equal treatment, scientific reason, and free speech. Our political map is taking shape around this new divide between what I will call cultural socialism and cultural liberalism.

Cultural socialism, which values equal results and harm prevention for identity groups over individual rights, has inspired race-based pedagogies and harsh punishments for controversial speech. Rooted in the idea that historically marginalized groups are sacred, this view is no passing fad. Letters, associations, universities, and media defending free speech notwithstanding, the young adherents of cultural socialism are steadily overturning the liberal ethos of the adult world.

Survey data from my new Manhattan Institute report, “The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America,” show the scale of the challenge. While the American public leans two-to-one in favor of cultural liberalism, a majority of Americans under 30 incline toward cultural socialism. For instance, while 65 percent of Americans over 55 oppose Google’s decision to fire James Damore for having questioned the firm’s training on gender equity, those under 30 support the firing by a 59–41 margin. Similar gaps separate young and old people on similar instances of cancel culture, such as the oustings of Gina Carano (an actor fired from Star Wars for social media posts) and Brendan Eich (the former CEO of Mozilla forced out in 2014 for opposing gay marriage in 2008). Only part of this disparity stems from the fact that young people lean left: centrist young people, for instance, support Google over Damore by a 61–39 margin, while centrists over 55 support Damore over Google 58–42.

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A Generational Threat to Free Expression: Survey data show that Americans under 30 prize cancel culture over liberty | @BirkbeckUoL Professor @epkaufm in @CityJournal on his latest @ManhattanInst research report https://t.co/RSVZ1k4tSg

— Brandon Fuller (@fuller_brandon) January 25, 2022

Five months after Kassandra Jones earned her master’s in public health from New York University in May 2019, she still hadn’t landed a job in the field. She was staring down a six-figure student-loan balance and had to pay for rent and food.

So she sold her eggs. Again.

Ms. Jones first harvested her eggs before starting at NYU in 2017 to help pay for moving to the city, she said. She received a $12,500 annual scholarship and relied on $131,000 in federal loans to cover the rest of her tuition and expenses. She has given her eggs five times, including to an NYU fertility clinic, earning $50,000.

Now 28 years old, Ms. Jones is working freelance on public-health campaigns for nonprofits making about $1,500 a month, which isn’t covering her living expenses, she said. She is applying for new jobs and considering leaving the field. “There are definitely moments where that number just looms as this tunnel that doesn’t have a light at the end of it,” she said of her debt. “It feels like I’m kind of trapped.”

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An NYU grad has more than $160,000 in student loans and struggles to land a job in her field. So she sells her eggs. https://t.co/POJLtZDk3g

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 19, 2021

People handed flowers to strangers on campus this week, and wrote encouraging notes in chalk. Students played with baby goats and tail-wagging dogs brought in to comfort them. Classes were canceled Tuesday, pop-up counseling centers appeared in dorms and concerned parents brought cookies and hugs to campus.

It has been a week of grief and disbelief at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There have been reports of two deaths by suicide since the semester began, according to the university, and an attempted suicide last weekend that prompted an outpouring of sadness and worry.

The reasons behind any suicide are complex, and little is publicly known about these deaths. But the response on the Chapel Hill campus has been immediate and intense. And it has resonated nationally, coming at a time when many young people are feeling particularly burdened.

College students nationwide are more stressed — with the coronavirus pandemic adding loneliness, worry about illness, economic distress, relentless uncertainty and churn to a time of life that is already challenging for many. Demand for mental health services had already been high, but a recent study of college students found increased levels of anxiety and isolation during the pandemic.

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College students nationwide are more stressed — with the coronavirus pandemic adding loneliness, worry about illness, economic distress, relentless uncertainty and churn to a time of life that is already challenging for many https://t.co/HFfED9Gwie

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 15, 2021

It is the generation growing up with unlimited access to the internet, provided with instant information and entertainment (‘infotainment’) and unprecedented online connection; but it also has the highest levels of loneliness, social anxiety and mental health issues.

Generation Z, or iGen, as some have dubbed them, is generally defined as those born between 1996 and 2010.

Although of course it is arbitrary to draw a strict line between the profile of those born from one year and another, the characteristics of this generation have evolved from those of Millennials, the previous generation (born between 1981and 1995), creating notable differences which are resulting in new experiences and outlooks.

The period of emerging adulthood that many Gen Zs are currently experiencing is fraught with challenges faced by humans for the very first time.

They have more choice and freedom than ever before, yet are paralysed with doubt.

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OPINION: Among the Christian Gen Zs, there is a proactive approach to putting their faith into action, as they believe it to be closely aligned with social justice. By Becca Purton with @JubileeCentre and @biblesociety https://t.co/kVdfBufzkN

— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) September 21, 2021

Dozens of evangelical schools belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) have joined an interfaith effort called Faith in the Vaccine, designed to recruit students and faculty to help inform their communities about vaccination and recognize the role religious identity might play in people’s hesitation.

“This was not about hounding people into getting the vaccine or shaming them if they were hesitant,” said Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Corps (IFYC), which launched the effort last spring and has disbursed $4 million to fund the campaign so far. “It was very much about engaging with great respect and sensitivity … and helping them kind of talk their own way into vaccination.”

Nearly 50 CCCU member schools signed up for the program. IFYC, along with medical professionals from the Rush University Medical School, trained campus ambassadors in conversational tactics and medical information about the vaccines.

But what started out as a campaign to promote education around vaccination within these faith communities has shifted to efforts to actually get shots in arms. The Faith in the Vaccine ambassadors, according to IFYC, have helped promote or host hundreds of clinics and events across the country, accounting for an estimated 10,000 or more vaccinations.

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Faith in the Vaccine ambassadors have helped promote or host hundreds of clinics and events across the country, accounting for an estimated 10,000 or more vaccinations. @ifyc @cccuorg https://t.co/ZByL0TXuhy

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 16, 2021