Gen Z: Their Unique Challenges and Winning Characteristics | CLIP | International Roundtable

One topic here is doom scrolling. Gen Z seems to have their own dictionary, and they have a lot of words. Maybe you'll know some of them, maybe not. So, Hannah, why don't you explain to me what doom scrolling is? Yeah, well, I have to say, you look at the statistics, the average amount of time that young people spend on social media and video games is nine hours a day, which is astounding. That should honestly frighten every single individual that understands anything about the amount of, the effects that spending this amount of time on social media and video games can have on young people. And not only that, I mean, the average age of someone looking at pornography is age 11. So not only are they on social media, nine hours on average a day, but the content that they're consuming is horrific. And obviously, big tech has a huge role to play in this in that they're not incentivized to censor content that is pornographic or containing nude content. But doom scrolling, it's really sad to see that so many young people are addicted to these social media apps. And again, like I said earlier in the previous segment, I don't think that it's any coincidence that this generation is the most lonely when we are spending this amount of time on social media apps. So, Brayden, she basically just talked about doom scrolling. People are spending way too much time. I think she said nine hours on the phone. I have some numbers here. Six hours average daily for Gen Z. Some watching as long as 15 hours a day. Is this you? Who are these people? Yeah, frankly, I thought I had a lot. I'm six or seven hours a day, and my entire job is social media. So I'm constantly on my phone researching, reading, and creating content. And here I was thinking that I was contributing to the problem. Little did I know that I was actually on the low end of that spectrum. It's really interesting, and I wrote about it in my latest book, which I'm releasing soon, Embrace Masculinity, and I talk about how the effects of social media essentially degrade and destroy a person's brain. I mean, like Hannah touched on, social media and big tech as a whole have no reason not to censor pornography or lewd content, and they don't because it's beneficial to them. They keep it up because it keeps people addicted at scrolling and stuck on their phones. We have a world where studies are showing that 25% of men aged 18 to 25 have not approached a woman in real life, period, ever. 50% of them reported not having talked to a woman. Some of what they're doing is pornographic. Some of it is the dating apps. I know on Hinge, you can actually select, I don't know if you're familiar with Hinge. Are you familiar with Hinge, Brayden? It's a dating app. I know it's one of the dating apps. It's popular with Gen Z. You can select what type of political preference you're looking for, like a liberal, a conservative, a moderate. Do you think this is beneficial in maybe changing up the ways that young people are interacting and finding a group that fits them, or is it just another way for people to waste more time and not interact? Well, if dating apps were effective, they wouldn't exist because there wouldn't be any clients after a certain period of time. So clearly, they're not effective. They're meant to keep you scrolling, and they're meant to keep you swiping, and the problem with dating apps as a whole is you are never satisfied because you are one swipe away from finding that potential Mr. or Mrs., and so when you get that addiction of the next person could be better, you're never satisfied with what you have in front of you, and you end up throwing away something that could potentially be very good, and we've seen it time and time again with plenty of guys. I mean, I'm 23 now. When I was 18, I had dating apps. It was the dumbest thing I could have done, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. I would be ashamed if I'd done it and said nothing, but I want guys to know that they're not alone if they're going through something like this, but they're not going to be better if they stick to it. Let's talk about another type of content that people see on social media or this on YouTube. Let's go to this channel that I found on a popular video with Gen Z. The biggest financial mistake you will ever make was being born after 1980. Homes are unaffordable, you will need a loan to go to college, jobs are scarce, and financial meltdowns are common. If you are a young person, you have to ask yourself, is it too late for me to ever get ahead financially? Hannah, do you come across this type of content where you're in Gen Z? It looks like the future's pretty grim for you. What is your assessment of that? Yeah, well, I think a lot of this is manipulation tactics. I mean, Yuri Benzinov, he was a KGB informant. He was warning Americans about the Russian propaganda and how they will use the psychological warfare, the ideological subversion through social media, through the media in Hollywood to kind of leave young people depressed, lonely, really just searching for hope, and ultimately just kind of feeling, like you said, like doom, filled with doom, and like there's no hope for the future of our country. So I think this is a very strategic tactic that they have. I think the Trump administration, the Trump campaign did a very successful job of saying, yes, we've got problems, it's because of democratic policies, but we're here to make this country great again, we're here to make it better again, safe again, wealthy again. So obviously you just see the differences between the Republican Party, the way that they have managed social media, their social media platforms versus the Democrats, and I think it's a very strategic tool. They want kids confused on how they're gonna be able to protect their family. That is a very strategic, I mean, you know communism very well. This is a very strategic goal in Marxism and under communist regimes. So New York Governor Kathy Hochul, she's talked about in the State of the State putting restrictions on kids using their cell phones in school, in K through, I think it's K through 12 or K through nine, K through 12. What do you think about policy like that? Not using your phone in school, not scrolling. Yeah, I mean, I think kids should most certainly put away their phones during the classroom. I mean, that should just be a common sense that you shouldn't be scrolling on social media apps, taking selfies while you're trying to learn. And I know Breedon's mom well, she talks all about how these are not really educational systems anymore. This is indoctrination camps. They were never designed necessarily to educate children. And that's a whole nother topic. But as it pertains to Kathy's proposed legislation, I do not think kids should be on their phones during studying time. I mean, this used to just be a common sense idea. However, in 2025, it's like controversial to say that kids shouldn't be scrolling on Snapchat and TikTok while the teacher's talking. So it's crazy. But yeah, I think that we should have some sort of parameters around using your phone in the classroom. So we'll go back to Breedon now. You got your parents' name dropped. Kevin Sorbo is your father and Sam Sorbo is your mom. I want to talk to you about mental health. This is a huge buzzword for people in Gen Z. There's a lot of content that people are doom-scrolling on, actually, that talks about why people need to consider wellness. But this generation, is our mental health well? No, not at all, not at all. And it's largely to do with social media, but it's also just a societal factor as a whole. I mean, 75% of women in their lifetime will take at least three different forms of antidepressants. And that right there is a telltale sign that we are in societal decline. 50% of men report having severe cases or experiences of depression, anxiety, or any of those detrimental mental illnesses. And like we talked about earlier, a lot of that has to do with social media. And a lot of that has to do with what Hannah and you guys were talking about at the very beginning with not feeling as though you can make enough money to support yourself. And to a degree, part of that is true. I mean, you can go on the Bureau of Labor Statistics right now and look at the graduating salary of a college, what a college degree would get you essentially as a salary right in the year 1959. And it was around $10,000 a year, which keeping up for inflation today is around $120,000. However, graduating college today with a good degree, you can on average maybe get a job that gets you about $80,000 a year. So inflation hasn't kept up. And so to a certain point, yes, it is much harder. I mean, I like to say my biggest regret was not buying Bitcoin when I was eight years old, but we can't go back. I should have bought, I say. Maybe you should have got a house. I should have bought a house at nine years old, you know, before the crisis. Yeah, exactly. Hannah, we have a minute left, but I'm gonna go back to you real quick. Suicide rate in young girls, nine to 15, or 15 to 19 is the highest of any other generation for Gen Z. Why is that? Yeah, again, I think that largely has to do with the feminist movement. I mean, you look in the 60s, 70s, the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedman saying that through the feminist movement, women will be happier. They will be more successful. They'll live fulfilled lives. Obviously that did not work because now today, like Brayden just said, I mean, women and men are the most oppressed, most suicidal that we've ever seen in any generation. And so when you tell men and women that they are to be X, Y, Z, when they were not created, designed to be X, Y, Z, then you're going to see the consequences of lying to an entire generation of young girls. Too much stuff is going into them and it's confusing them and that's contributing to this depression that they're seeing. Yeah, 100%. Social media, Hollywood, the educational system, the indoctrination camps, as I call them. I mean, there's so many different areas of propaganda and fools that's resulting in women being the most suicidal. But I have to say, the biggest that I believe has been the feminist movement. Brayden, you were in a movie called Jesus Freaks. You played Joshua, I believe. There's another Gen Z word out there that resonates with Jesus Freaks, it's trads. People going back to church, you mentioned it, becoming Eastern Orthodox, becoming Catholic. What's going on? What is this? We're looking for a return to normalcy. This whole kind of trads movement that we're seeing today is people essentially fed up and sick of the lies that are being given to them by the government, the mainstream media, social media as a whole. I mean, like we talked about with depression on the last segment, everything is contributing negatively to the mental health of people and people are realizing that there has to be something more. I mean, Father Mike Schmitz says that the heart is an idol-making factory. And so when we make everything into an idol, we don't really find joy in anything. And so a lot of young people are returning to Christianity, realizing that there is something bigger than them, there is something greater than them, and that something happens to also care about them. And so they feel loved, they feel accepted, they feel as though they can finally be at peace. And that's why we're seeing this massive return. I wanna play a clip of trad wives. This is another phenomenon that's going on. Let's look at this on TikTok. Really interesting to see how shocked people are by the term trad wife and how they seem to think it's some new way of living, like it's some unprecedented new trend. Like, have you seen these millennial and Gen Z girls? They just wanna be at home with their kids, they wanna have husbands and they wanna take care of their husbands, they wanna cook and they wanna clean and they wanna wear dresses. It's insane, when in reality, it's literally like the oldest lifestyle in the book. Before this, they were just called stay-at-home moms. And before that, they were just called women. But now our society has gone so far in the feminist direction that anybody who wants to live a little bit old school and a little bit like how women used to live is fringe, right? Like an extremist. And I just think about how so many of us, since we were little, we were raised in this kind of boss babe feminist society that told us you can be so much more than just a mom, you can be so much more than just a wife. And so many of us listened and we tried to climb corporate ladders and we boss babed so hard. Now, we're a little bit boss babed out. I agree 100% with what she said. I think women have been fed this lie that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, which has been a very strategic Marxist goal. I mean, even Karl Marx talks about it. You look at the communist goals from the naked communists, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I mean, it said that one of their main goals is to collapse the family unit. And how do you collapse the family unit? Again, by confusing male and female roles in society. And so women, I think are, like she said, are really going back to just wanting to be moms and wives to their husbands. That's what we are created or designed for. We're designed to nurture. Even if we're not a wife or a mom, we still have a more nurturing, more emotional spirit about us. But I do want to say this. It's very interesting to see all of the content come out from women like this. And then you look back and Betty Friedman, who again, lied to women. And I just saw Susan the other day said that by 2030, if we continue the path we're on, 45% of women will be unmarried and childless between the ages of 25 and 44, which is staggering. And again, that's why when I say this is a very strategic agenda by these globalists, by these oligarchs, it is. Just look at the words that come out of their own mouths. They say it. They want to break down the family unit. They have successfully done it in America. And that is why I believe that Gen Z is waking up. They've realized that they have been lied to. We've been manipulated by every institution. And I think that's why they're coming out. They're going to church, they're getting married, and they're seeking to find their identity in Christ or in something other than themselves.