Gen Z is accused of a lot of things.

We’re soft, too woke, and emotional snowflakes. We can’t order drinks at the bar, we’re not partying, and we can’t make small talk. So it’s no wonder why I tend to find myself standing in as my generation’s lead defense attorney at the dinner table with family, particularly during this season of giving.

But what if there’s some truth to all this? Could Gen Z’s ethical codes and moral values really be diverging from previous generations? And what does it mean for society if it turns out that young people really are more individualistic and — gasp — maybe even “coddled”?

Key takeaways

• Gen Z faces a lot of criticism for being more antisocial, individualistic, and reactionary than older generations.
  
• New research from the Survey Center on American Life suggests there may actually be some truth to this: Younger people today are more prone to viewing morality and ethics through an individual lens, instead of as a social contract or in a community context.
  
• There are divides within the generation too; young women have more open moral views on things like drinking and casual sex than young men do.
  
• It all suggests there may be something special about Gen Z, right now.

To answer these questions — and determine if it should matter that Gen Z doesn’t want to drink or have tough conversations — I spoke with Daniel A. Cox, the director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, where he focuses his research on Gen Z and American families.

“Whether you’re talking about educational institutions, political institutions, or religious institutions,” he told me, “we need people to come into these places and not think that they’re the most important person in the room.” Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You have a new report out that dives into the moral and ethical views that young Americans hold today. What’s the upshot?

There’s an individualistic orientation cutting across so many domains of life: education, religious life, family life, and views on marriage, and Americans seem to be judging everything in life by how well they meet our individual needs. Institutions and relationships only have purpose in helping us meet our own goals. That’s been a fundamental shift. Now you’re seeing it in basically every aspect of American life, and it’s particularly dramatic for young people.

Young people want personal flexibility. And it has percolated around in various sorts of cultural trends that you may have seen or heard of, like the idea of going “no contact” with friends, parents, siblings, or partners and separating yourself from “toxic” people. The idea is that if these relationships are not serving your immediate needs well, the correct approach is to end them, instead of seeing that there is value in messy relationships and tending to them.

Wait, so we’re essentially raising a generation of coddled narcissists and yappers who think they’re main characters? (Kids these days!)

That might not be how I would characterize it, but there is a........

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