Everyone in Generation Z Should See Dear Evan Hansen
what a musical can teach the world’s young adults
Adolescents is hard. Everyone knows that, but when someone older than you tries to console you, it doesn’t make anything easier. Yes, elders know what it’s like to be growing up, but they don’t at the same time. They don’t know what it’s like to be a young adult in today’s day and age.
Today’s young adults make up Generation Z, individuals who were born in the mid 1990s up until the early 2000s. There may be a little debate as to where millennials end and Gen Z starts since the concept behind Gen Z are individuals that were always surrounded by advanced technology. For example, I was born in 1998 which depending on where you research, would catergize me as a Millennial or Gen Z. Technically I can fit into both since I was grew up on CD players and books as opposed to IPads (I was nine when Apple launched the IPod Classic in 2007). I grew up with thousands of types of cell phones and they didn’t have a touch screen until I was in middle school (most of the phones were flip phones). I was six when Facebook was launched, seven when YouTube launched (2005), and had an AOL account for my first email. So yes, I do fall in the middle (as most late 1990s kids do) but, for this article, we can assume that Generation Z are students (definitely)in high school and college.
Another charastertic of Gen Z is that, they’re stressed. The school system is scheduling them into 8 classes a day, pressuring them to take advanced and honors classes because if they don’t they won’t get into a good college and therefore won’t have a good life. Of course this is not including extra cirriculars and SAT/ACT prep. High school students get assigned at least two hours of homework a day and have a quiz or exam once a week. And that’s just freshman year in high school. In a recent study conducted in 2017, we learned that “more than one in three teenage girls suffer with anxiety and depression”. As an individual that went to high school in the 2010s, I can confirm that is pretty accurate. I had my first panic attack in my freshman year (age 15) and believe that my anxiety started and reached its peak during my high school years. It was common for my classmates to take ‘mental health days’ throughout the school year to calm down and one student had to be taken out of school for a number of months due to a mental break down.
But it’s not just the school work that results in our young adults’ crazy high anxiety and/or depression rates. Almost every single member of Generation Z has at least one form of social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, these kids have at least one (if not all). So when these teenagers finally come home, their societal pressure follows them home via social media. They’re concerned about what people think of them, how many likes they get, and who invited who. Because of social media, young adults are always on high alert of who’s doing what and more importantly, why they’re not doing it. Everything is public.
It’s hard to be 15 today. It was hard to be 15 five years ago and I can only imagine how hard it is now. There’s too much pressure on these young adults to have good grades, be active in at least one club, and also have everyone be your friend. It breaks them. It broke me. And when my parents tried to counsel and tell me that everything was okay, it didn’t make me feel any better because they didn’t know what it was like to be a high school kid in 2014. They just didn’t.
In comes the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen, a musical I saw with my mother two years ago. The show reloves around a high school senior, Evan, who is socially awkward and has trouble connecting with people. It is only when Evan gets caught up in a lie that he actually becomes ‘popular’ and gets the love and attention he desperately craved for years.
The show tackles many heavy issues like suicide, parental separation, and drug use but it is mostly about how everyone, at one point or another, feels like they don’t belong. Every kid feels as if they are alone in the universe and that no one sees them. This is an issue that the majority of Generation Z goes through. The show focuses on this issue and shows it perfectly in the first 15 minutes of the show when Evan sings his ‘I want’ song, Waving Through a Window.
This song, written by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, perfectly describes what social anxiety (or any form of anxiety) feels like. It’s the first song that truly understood and put into words what I was going through. It perfectly and seamlessly described what I felt some days so well that I had an emotional reaction when I heard the song for the first time. This song shows and describes what normal anxiety and also social anxiety (in the 21st century) feels like to young adults. It’s the feelling of isolation while knowing that you physically, aren’t alone. The feeling that when you’re talking, you’re somehow underwater so no one can really understand you. The feeling when yes, you do have friends that do talk to you, but they like to talk to other people more. This is what most high schoolers feel like (at some point in their high school career), high schoolers with social anxiety and also kids that just want to fit in.
“I try to speak but nobody can here”
Throughout the play we watch Evan soak up all the attention and friendships he gets in result to going along with the lie he unintentionally created. We see him come out of his shell, we see him connect , we see him happy and thriving. As an audience member, you project yourself onto Evan. As you see him connect, you begin to think that even though we stuggle sometimes we can always change it (you don’t have to tell a massive lie in order to do that as well).
As the show ends its first act, another song catched me off gaurd. It’s when Evan is giving a speech and begins to tell the audience that one day, you will be found.
This song encompasses what this show is putting out into the unvierse. In this universe of likes, followers, subscribers, GPAs, and constant exposure that makes it hard to see who people truly are, it will be okay. Everybody is struggling one way or another. We all feel like we don’t belong or that we’re not good enough. It’s a tough world out there and sometimes we think the world might even be better without us. But that’s not true. No one is alone. There is always a hand to guide you forward, you just got to look for it and when you do, you will be found.
So to all the struggling Gen Z individuals out there: don’t give up. Reach out a hand and someone will find you. Even when the dark is pitch black and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, when you think you’re all alone and that no one understands what you’re going through, see this show (or at least listen to the music). Because when you do, you’ll realize someone does understand and that someone cares.
You’ll make it out. I promise you. I love you. I believe in you.
