Gen Z and Achievement Addiction

What happens when people short-circuit their way up Maslow's pyramid of needs?

Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

Key points

• Achievement culture is making those who "have it all" suffer the same maladies as those who have nothing.
• There are definitions of "success" beyond the conventional one of financial gain.
• The feeling of mattering turns out to be critically important for mental health.

Jennifer Wallace's New York Times bestseller, Never Enough: When Achievenment Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It, explores, in excruciating detail, the (literally) sickening stress that some Gen Z students are subject to in the rat race to get into a "good college."

She admits in the Introduction that her subject matter, the very high-achieving students from pressure-cooker high schools in the U.S., might be off-putting to some readers. It's assumed that this affluent population is doing just fine, but in reality, teenagers from this small slice of American society are suffering the same maladies previously found in only the poorest and most beleaguered in our society.

Wallace's book creates a space in the literature for us to consider how and why we're making this tiny subset of our population, who seem to have it all, as sick as those who have nothing. Why is this happening? The short answer is that for the cushiest of Americans, the most pressing needs are social in nature, not physiological.

It's helpful to invoke Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs here, the familiar pyramid with basic survival needs at the bottom and self-actualization at the top (with safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem ascendant stages in between). While we expect suffering in those who are struggling to get their basic needs met (food, clothing, shelter), it's somewhat surprising to find the same maladies in those who have an overabundance of life basics. Or is it?

A careful read of Wallace's Never Enough aligns with the insight that American affluence encourages a short-circuiting of the climb up Maslow's pyramid—bee-lining it from the bottom to the top by jumping right over the critical personal development that comprises the middle stages of the pyramid. The "survival of the fittest" mindset in high-achievement subcultures brings out the worst in both the kids, sickened by the unrelenting pressures to "succeed," and the parents, anxious to ensure their progeny further, or at least maintain, their social standing.

The obvious problem with short-circuiting your way to the top is that it does anything but enable "self-actualization," which Maslow defined as "becoming everything you are capable of becoming." These kids finally make it into an Ivy League and have no idea who they are, why they're there, and where they're going in life.

Tragically, what's missing from having bypassed the "love and belonging" and "esteem" stages is a sense of "mattering"—to the world, to their families and communities, and sometimes even to themselves. My own high school in small-town Connecticut, one of these pressure-cookers, has suffered an uptick in suicides.

The students at the institution where I teach, a large state university with an acceptance rate of 80%, were able to relate to some elements of the book but, overall, said the stories Wallace relayed sounded "unrealistic" or "exaggerated", which came as a relief to me. But "toxic achievement culture" is as real as it gets for the small subset of the Gen Z population who are self-deconstructing. Interestingly, the data do not show a clear advantage in those graduating from an Ivy League versus a state university or small liberal arts college (or, for some people, foregoing college altogether).

"Success" is one topic that came up a lot in discussions of the book with my students. We felt that Wallace tended to imply the conventional definition of "success" as financial, rather than as life satisfaction more broadly. Several of my students pushed back on this conventional definition, arguing that leading a purposeful life or pursuing a meaningful career were more important than being rich.

As a college professor, I'd have to agree with such alternative definitions of success, too. However, to be fair to Wallace, the parents she highlights in the book are exactly the type to favor financial success over other types of success.

The last couple of chapters of the book are perhaps the strongest. Just as my students were beginning to tire of the extreme stories of high schoolers who were falling apart, Wallace pivots to the "what we can do about it" messaging. The clouds part, and sunshine beams down.

Wallace offers ways in which young Gen Zers can get outside themselves by adding value to their friends, family, and community, which helps them feel that they matter. My students by and large agreed that chores in the home and volunteering outside the home were character-building experiences they resented at the time but can now acknowledge as worthwhile.

I think this messaging is very important for Gen Z youth, since so many pressures in their lives force them to focus on themselves rather than on others, let alone on society. The academic rat race to college encourages hyper-competition, and their unhealthy use of social media echoes more of the same: competition, comparison, attention-seeking, likes-counting, and so on. Many researchers have noted the inherent irony in "social" media making an entire generation lonely, insecure, and lacking in social skills.

A majority of my students noted that the book is intended more for the parents of Gen Z, more my generation (Gen X). But I'm still glad we read it together, as it encouraged open and honest conversation in the classroom about what matters in life. More fundamentally, it enabled us to pause and reflect long enough to begin figuring out what matters most, which takes time and self-awareness.