Why Gen Z are bringing back astrology

Why are Gen Z so ob-stressed?

In some ways, astrology is perfectly suited for Gen Z and the intent age. There’s a low barrier to entry, and nearly endless depths to plumb if you’ve the time. The availability of more in-depth information online has given this cultural wave of astrology a certain erudition.

But I, and many experts, have another theory (note: experts were probably first with the theory and then I used their research to bolster my pondering). People tend to turn to astrology in times of acute stress.

A 1982 study by the psychologist Graham Tyson found that people who consult astrologers do so in response to stressers in their lives, stating that ‘under conditions of high stress’, the individual is prepared to use astrology as a coping device even though under low-stress conditions he [or she] does not believe in it.’

According to multiple studies, including this one by the American Psychological Association in 2016, Gen Z is the most stressed generation living, and is also the generation most likely to say that their stress has increased in the last five years. Millennials and Gen Z were significantly more likely to record in the study that reading/ watching the news stressed them out.

And its not hard to see why, with climate change, political infighting, and international conflict cementing themselves ever more as a part of our future.

Young people are starting to get sick of a life lived so intensely on the grid. They’re experiencing fatigue with dating apps and social media. Gen Z seem to be craving something more in this era of quantified selves, and tracked locations, and indexed answers to every possible question.

What’s more, it might be that millennials and Gen Z are more comfortable living in the borderlands between scepticism and belief because they’ve spent so much of their lives on the internet – a domain that is both real and unreal.

Ruby Warrington, whose New Age guidebook Material Girl, Mystical World came out in 2017, had this to say on her astrology focused website The Numinous: ‘I think that almost as a counterbalance to the fact that we live in such a quantifiable and meticulously organised time, there is a desire to connect to and tap into that numinous [supernatural and mysterious] part of ourselves.’

This sort of cultural 180 has happened before. Excuse my literary nerd-out, but The Enlightenment was followed by a wave of Romantic era poets and authors like Byron and Shelley who focused on the sublime and ineffable in nature and God.

The concept of ‘knowing everything’ can sometimes be just as uncomfortable as knowing nothing.

The ability to both fiercely meme a belief system, and to not besmirch or belittle it, is to me a microcosmic example of the Gen Z attitude – endlessly sarcastic, but stringently hopeful.

It’s part of the human condition to want to try to create narratives around our experiences. And the movement away from a religiousness that has caused so much conflict in the past to something you can safely meme about might be a good thing overall for our generation.