You decide — can Gen Z afford to celebrate youth?

‘Because all they wanted was a cheap and easy alternative,’ he adds. ‘Not to be shouted at by someone on a moral high ground.’

Collias and Jacob Wedderburn-Day’s Treepoints was founded as a way to make an impact on the planet they both care about. To a certain extent, the motivation behind their startup has also been out of fear. ‘The stark weather impacts this year are more obvious than ever before,’ Wedderburn-Day says. ‘Especially in Europe, it’s more local than we’ve ever seen.’

But they also have big, positive goals for their newly founded company. In the next two or three years, Collias says they plan to use the profits generated to fund projects using carbon offsetting, reforestation and biomass, as well as carbon capture tech.

Using the positive, solution-focused approach is something life coach Puja McClymont recommends for dealing with eco-anxiety too. ‘Reframe the magnitude of the worries,’ McClymont says. ‘Each person can only do so much, and whatever you can do will contribute to change.’

McClymont is part of Gen-X, but she is very much in tune with the environmental stress caused by news networks and social media. Unfollowing certain accounts and cutting down news consumption is a good first step to decreasing the angst.

Once you’re in control of these worries, the life coach outlines some steps to permit yourself to ‘let go’ of the rest:

Be thankful out loud for what you have achieved. Journal achievements and physically celebrate, perhaps with a commemorative dinner. Avoid being ‘woke’ but stay informed. This way, you can still appreciate being young while acknowledging the opportunities you have to make a change in the world.

Alongside climate change, the pandemic has also worsened Gen-Z’s need to keep constantly busy.

Samarasinghe, 21, just graduated with a degree in biomedical science from the University of Sussex, but facing one of the lowest-funded job sectors in the country and increasing pressure from her friends, family and the Internet, she says she feels like she’s running out of time. ‘All I can think is: ‘I need to be employed,’’ she adds.

The Deloitte survey highlighted that 50% of all Gen Zers consider job and career prospects their foremost worry.

The pandemic has also forced two-thirds of respondents to reassess their financial goals. While 5% of Gen Zers said they were unsure about future financial situations before the pandemic, this grew to 13% this year.

Hustle culture can be defined as someone overworking and pushing themselves past their physical or mental limit to achieve the ‘goal’ of wealth and success.

Like Samarasinghe, it seems many Gen Zers fit right into this culture. Focusing on being successful means forgetting to preserve their young years. Deloitte reported that, among the Gen Zers who didn’t take time off work, four in 10 chose to work through the constant stress.

‘Do I have enough experience? Am I going to be good enough? How can I make my CV look better?’ These are some of the questions racing through Samarasinghe’s head.

Her Gen-X parents, who moved to Italy from Sri Lanka to provide a better future for Samarasinghe and her sister, recount stories of their young years all the time.

‘Because of what they’ve sacrificed for me, I haven’t had the same opportunities to be young and rebellious,’ she notes. Instead, she feels she is running a race she can never win, in a field that is underfunded and wasn’t prioritised by governments until the global pandemic.

Now, a year-and-a-half since the coronavirus outbreak, she has graduated into one of the worst job markets in history, feeling as though the pandemic completely robbed her of her youth.

The only way Samarasinghe has been able to remind herself that she is 21 is through turning to her peers and engaging in activities that she used to love as a child. One of the highlights of lockdown earlier this year was playing football with her housemates for endless hours in the garden.

‘We felt like kids,’ she says, laughing. ‘It was the best we’d felt in a long time.’

Some entrepreneurs, such as Collias and Wedderburn-Day, are striving to ensure that their workplace is somewhere great and anxiety-free.

‘The big thing about running your own company is that you can invest in it being fun,’ says Wedderburn-Day. ‘It’s worth it as long as you enjoy it.’