Sunbeams, Cigarettes, and The Apocalypse

Gen Z hedonism and the threat against humanity

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a 601 attendee in possession of some cigarettes must be in want of some friends — or so the saying goes. When the indoor smoking ban was introduced, an unexpected positive outcome was the uptick in romantic connections forged. But, in this era of pilates princesses and manospheric protein powders, what triggered this sudden shift?

When browsing social media, celebrity pages, or even the mainstream news, a surprising trend is apparent: smoking is back. Whether it’s Paul Mescal, Addison Rae, or Queen Margaret of Denmark, it seems that smoking for Gen Z isn’t quite the taboo it was for the generation before us. In the late ‘90s and noughties, smoking was akin to a moral failure — in particular, American public figures went to painstaking lengths to conceal their nicotine habits. Yet, in a bizarre trend that contravenes the onward march of society, our generation is witness to the renaissance of the cig. 

Cigarettes are not the only categorically unhealthy habit that has seen a rebirth in our self-indulgent era. Sunbeds —  or tanning beds, depending on which side of the Atlantic you find yourself on — have spiked in popularity under Gen Z. Even though we were raised with unequivocal scientific warning against sunbeds (the undoubted high chances of skin cancer, for one) we seem undeterred in our pursuit of the perfect golden hue.

The mainstream media reflects the modern romanticisation of these unhealthy habits (series’ like Normal People and Love Island), the opposite used to be true. Iconic TV shows of yesteryear like Friends proselytise the harms of smoking, with all the other characters encouraging Chandler to stop smoking and Rachel failing to pick up the habit in a social setting. The age group that directly precedes ours (the one that straddles both Millennials and Gen Z), on average, abhors smoking. So are we, late teens and early twenty-somethings, not listening to our elders and betters?

In my opinion, the appeal of rejecting a habit due to its negative impact on our health falls on deaf ears. We were born into uncertainty shortly after 9/11, which caused the post-Cold War world order to crumble; toddlers during the 2008 financial crisis, when the steady Western economy we were promised would never falter shattered in days. We came of age during the pandemic when teenagers were isolated from peers during the most pivotal time for development and socialisation. We have witnessed the rise of autocracy and fascism to a degree not seen since our grandparents' early lives. 

The constant upheaval of the twentieth century promised one thing: that the next century would see peace and stability. That’s why it was all worth it, that's why the Wall came down, that’s why the former Eastern Bloc crumbled. But everything we were promised turned on us to spite us. The hubris of our forebearers caught us out in turn. The pinnacle of promise our generation rested upon turned out to be a trap.

Gen Z has turned out instead entirely fatalistic, with a keen sense of our own mortality. When raised with the looming spectre of climate catastrophe growing ever more prominent, who can blame us for wanting to indulge in cheap thrills?

In a way, we’re damned by our very name. Gen Z, the end of the alphabet, the end of the line. If even our title implies we’re the final edition of humanity, is it truly a surprise that we indulge in less-than-life-affirming habits?

It’s all very well for Millennials —  they thought that after the Berlin Wall came down, complete annihilation and nuclear armageddon were threats of the past. They had reason to live, houses to buy (how Gen Z dreams!). But for us, never knowing if tomorrow is promised, why not build our own Gomorrah? Politics has a way of infecting pop culture — call it trickle-down trends — and this is one that has snuck in in a major way.

As the Doomsday Clock ticks closer and closer to midnight, I think it’s neither surprising nor something we should be blamed for that we indulge our hedonistic instinct rather than seek to prolong our lives — lives that we have learned, time and time again, we do not control in any meaningful sense.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons