If you were born in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you didn’t grow up inside stability—you grew up watching institutions crack in real time. A global pandemic shut down schools and economies overnight. Government institutions contradicted themselves on live screens and in real time. Debt exploded, prices detached from reality, and trust in government, media, universities and corporations quietly collapsed. Unlike previous generations who eased into adulthood under the assumption that “the system basically works,” you were initiated early into volatility.

You learned to question narratives, cross-check authority, adapt quickly, and live digitally by default. You are the first generation raised fully online, the last to remember a pre-AI world, and the one coming of age precisely as the old institutional order reaches its limits 

You, Generation Z, are A Generation Built for the Storm.

And you should care because history doesn’t hand out moments like this very often—and when it does, the people who understand what’s happening shape the next eighty years. Every major American renewal has been led by a generation forged in crisis, not comfort. The chaos around you isn’t random; it’s the predictable breakdown phase that comes as old institutions–the ones that worked for previous generations–crack apart.  This is that time, the time of the crack up, right before reconstruction. While older systems cling to control, your generation has something new: tools that decentralize power, automate leverage, and replace trust with verification. If you ignore this moment, you’ll spend your life reacting to systems designed by others. If you understand it, you can build what replaces them—new ways to work, save, create, govern, and cooperate. 

This isn’t about politics or ideology. It’s about agency–your agency. The storm is already here and it is your turn to act.