La generazione Z fra incertezza e contingenza. Una ricerca teorico-empirica

Generation Z is often described by observers in two seemingly irreconcilable ways: on the one hand, as obsessively narcissistic, anxious and susceptible, unable to cope with obstacles and disappointments (‘snowflake’ or ‘strawberry generation’), overexposed on social media, whose civil battles are purely rhetorical (e.g. radical ecologism); on the other hand, as courageous, politically committed and able, through concrete actions, to draw the attention of institutions and public opinion. However, a theoretical- empirical sociological observation, focused on the post-pandemic context, allows us to identify in what we call hypersensitivity the point of convergence of the two mentioned perspectives: it is expressed by different forms of psychological and affective-emotional unease (such as cutting, attempted suicide, eco-anxiety, depression, etc.), but also by individual proactive reactions to world-society’s contingency and uncertainty, both on individual and relational and on social level. The article therefore aims to make this hypothesis explicit through an ongoing research project, which invites us to consider discomfort not in pathological terms, but as the result of adaptive reactions to social reality.