The Recent Decline of Resilience

I

Building resilience, or the ability to handle adversity, is crucial for the transition into adulthood. However, conversations with employers, educators, and parents today often reveal stories about young adults struggling with issues ranging from severe stress and anxiety to academic pressures and even basic tasks like doing laundry.

Pop culture often portrays Millennials as generally helpless and their Gen Z counterparts as overly attached to their phones, leading to social dysfunction. Beyond these stereotypes, research suggests that a lack of resilience is turning once-normal challenges of growing up into overwhelming obstacles.

In recent years, increased attention to the mental health of college students has revealed concerning trends. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that one in four college students is diagnosed with or treated for a mental health condition annually. Additionally, eight in ten students report feeling overwhelmed, and 45% have felt hopeless. Clearly, mental health is a significant concern on college campuses, necessitating more resources to help students cope with depression, anxiety, and mental illness.

Besides mental health, developing academic resilience is also important. The ability to handle and learn from academic challenges, including failures, is crucial for college success. However, academic resilience seems to have declined rapidly over the past decade. Faculty report a growing number of students who not only respond poorly to criticism but also feel entitled to multiple chances on exams, papers, and other assignments. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some high schools allow unlimited exam retakes or frequent extra-credit opportunities to compensate for poor grades, practices that are uncommon in college.

The broader trend is a decline in resilience: young adults seem less willing or able to learn from adversity compared to the recent past. Possible reasons include being shielded from negative consequences during their teens, guided by “helicopter parents” around most obstacles, or becoming overconfident due to insufficient challenges.

Whatever the cause, the consequences can be severe. Students earning even a few poor grades may disengage from class, stop attending, or drop out, hindering their academic progress.

The lack of resilience might also be linked to widespread media coverage of college students struggling with basic life tasks. Media reports often suggest that college students can’t cook, do laundry, manage simple finances, or even handle their morning routines.

Additionally, frequent criticisms of Millennial employees—such as their inability to work independently, refusal to work normal hours, reluctance to perform entry-level tasks, and difficulty accepting criticism from managers—highlight a complex array of issues.

Not all young people exhibit these behaviors, but the number of “failure to launch” individuals seems to be rising annually. Ultimately, many of these issues can be traced to a lack of resilience: without the ability to learn from mistakes or face mild adversity, personal growth becomes challenging.

Educators, employers, and parents share responsibility for not fostering greater resilience in youth. While many young people face specific challenges that require professional support, many others struggle to cope with what have long been considered normal life challenges: a poor grade, a difficult assignment, an unpleasant encounter, an unfamiliar task, or an awkward situation.

Understanding the reasons behind this and developing strategies to address it should concern us all, so that our children can reach their full potential. It is crucial to allow children to fail and respond by demonstrating healthy coping mechanisms. Help children accept uncertainty instead of resisting it. Recognizing that uncertainty and change are inherent, though stressful, parts of life allows for greater flexibility, focus on controllable aspects, and forward movement. Remind your child of past difficult times they have overcome and reassure them that things will change.