Gen z

This entry is posted on 34-35 number of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 26 August 2025.

In the face of the Jubilee of young people, one might think that the Z generation is getting closer to religion. Rather, it went hunting for the sacred, of the Altrove, of something that knows how to keep body and world together, presence and relationship, emotion and meaning. A need that manifests itself in unexpected places and shapes: in a concert, in a protest, in a mass encounter. In often confused, chaotic and problematic ways. The fact remains that we are faced with a generation that immediately inhabited the failure of modern promises: stable work, the livable planet, functioning democracy. Which grew in complete existential and climatic precariousness, in the crisis of truth and in the saturation of information. It is the most lonely generation, more anxious, more subjected to stimuli. For this, Gen Z is looking for something that resembles transcendence, but without dogmas. Not a way of escape from the world but a way to live it differently. Look for collective experiences that pull it out of algorithmic isolation, while trying to build a language capable of keeping emotion and truth, vulnerability and strength together. It doesn’t matter that it is crossing the Holy Door, march for the climate or read aloud on Tiktok. The gesture is the same: marking a passage, feeling one’s body in relation to another body, building a “we” who have a minimum of consistency. For a generation grown in the culture of irony at all costs and disillusionment, the ritual has returned to make sense. This research is leading to a spirituality without belonging, which is also an ethics without catechisms. In fact, the need is not to go back. And the value for them is not in the authority, but in resonance. This also applies to ideas. The Gen Z – or rather, who among them has not been addicted to the society in which we have thrown them – is on the hunt for shared processes. It does not want to be catechized, but involved. He doesn’t want to be convinced, but heard. It is a generation that demands authenticity, in the profound sense of not betraying what you are. Spirituality, in this context, is what gives meaning to politics. The care of the planet, civil rights, the struggle against discrimination are attempts to save (or rather, to invent the link between itself and the world. The sacred, for this generation, is everywhere there is a radical attention to life, an emergency of possibilities. A song, a shared silence, a hug: everything can become a bearer of meaning. Because Gen Z is not a nihilistic at all. It is looking; In a world that offers them less and less future, it attacks everything that can create a present, and tries to create a bond. He does not ask for answers (he knows they are not there). He asks for room to build, with his voice and body, a sense that is not delivered from above but generated together. This is the form of its spirituality: a shared intensity. To which we have a duty to make space and give confidence.

To subscribe to Vanity Fair, Click here.