teacher

High school teacher Kelly Gibson does an exercise with her class every year: she asks students to write out their biggest, wildest, most ambitious dreams.

You can probably imagine the type of answers she often gets:

"Is your dream to sign with the NFL? Win America's Got Talent? Get a full ride scholarship for a university? Become the first brain surgeon at the age of 18? Win NASCAR?" she says in the intro to a recent TikTok video.

"Over the years, these answers have given me a lot of insight into what's going on with the generation."

That's why this year's responses from students were so telling.

Gibson says 10 years ago, her students were all hyper-focused on getting into top colleges and securing prestigious internships. Five years (because of the pandemic, she theorizes) many of her kids dreamt of being doctors and nurses.

Not her students in 2025.

"Instead of dreaming of accomplishing things, instead they have things like 'I won 2 billion dollars', 'I won the lottery', 'I just won a new truck', 'I won the lottery'," she says, reading off the written responses she received. Of course, there were still students who dreamt of curing cancer of playing pro sports, but this overwhelming focus on "winning" money was a clear stand-out, and a stark difference from previous years.

"The majority of them were about getting money, and getting money quickly."

So there you have it. Young Gen Z-ers are lazy and entitled, right? Gibson says No. The answers, to her, tell a different story entirely.

"The last five years have been awfully rough on our young people. They are growing up [and] seeing a world that does not have a lot of hope in it," she says.

"We've lost the ability of our young people to dream of doing something and being successful at something in this world. Instead, what they see is... the only way you can survive is to have a lot of money. Forget hope, forget dreams, just get cash."

Gen Zers struggle to find hope. Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

This sounds like it can't possibly be true, but it is: A Harvard poll recently found that half of all Gen Zers suffer from depression requiring clinical treatment. Half. Why? Pick your poison: Climate change reaching the point of no return, the unaffordability of every day necessities, and the worst political division we've seen in decades, just to scratch the surface.

It's bleak, but why worry about what you want to achieve in the future when you're not sure there will be a future?

There may be other motivators behind these answers, too. Many young people don't have a "dream job" because their dream is not to work, but to live. Those prestigious internships everyone was chasing a decade ago, after all, only lead to a lot of unpaid work so that you can eventually work for a company that will likely lay you off one day. Gen Zers are smart enough to pick up on what has happened to the generations who came before them, and they want a different path for themselves.

Over a million people viewed Gibson's video on TikTok and Instagram, and many chimed in with their own theories on the dramatic shift.

"This might be a hot take, but I think it is a privilege to dream. It means someone is not in survival mode and has the necessities to be able to want more. Maslow was right about that hierarchy of needs"

"They’re dreaming 'big' of safety and security"

" Gen Z is getting so much flack but they are very correct about the future we're all heading towards and people don't want to admit it."

"the saddest part is that winning a million dollars anymore means half buys a modest house and the rest is for property tax."

"My teens see no future here. No housing.. no healthcare.. no childcare.. no college. It doesn’t matter how hard you work; you’ll struggle. And you WILL work until you die. There is no more American Dream, you cannot survive on one income and that makes it impossible to raise a family. They SEE the world we created for them."

Despite the doom and gloom, Gibson ended on a hopeful note.

"I am so disappointed. Not in these kids, but in us as an older society who have built a world where that's all kids can dream about," she says.

She called on adults to 'do better' and do more to offer kids a chance at a bright future. In a follow up video, she urged parents and educators not to just encourage kids to dream, but to support policies that "make life livable." She also says we need to model chasing joy and not money in our own lives. "Hope is a skill, and it's one we teach by example."

Finally, Gibson implored young people not to give up.

"Gen Z, I need you to know there is still hope in the world. And chasing what you love is worthwhile."