leading Gen Z
Discipling the social media generation
Ben Chang looks at the upcoming generation and explores the challenges and opportunities in discipling and leading them.
Ben Chang is an emergency medicine registrar, speaker, and writer. He is author of the book Christ and the Culture Wars and his new book Followers: Re-thinking Discipleship for a Social Media World is due to be released in February 2027.
Generation Z (or Gen Z) is generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, meaning the youngest are entering their teenage years whilst the oldest are the current cohort of foundation and specialty training doctors, junior staff nurses, and midwives. There are several attributes that mark Gen Z out from their surrounding generations. They were the group whose secondary and/or higher education was most severely compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also appear to place greater personal significance on attributes such as diversity and authenticity.1
However, there is one feature that unequivocally defines Gen Z above all others – they are the social media generation. As psychologist Jean Twenge unpacks in her book iGen, Gen Z is the first generation to grow up in the age of the smartphone and cannot remember a time before the internet.2 To use the popular term coined by writer Marc Prensky, Gen Z are the first generation of ‘digital natives’.3 They do not simply use social media for a purpose, such as looking at some photos or checking in with friends. Social media is the home in which they permanently and persistently reside.
How, then, can we approach reaching, engaging, and discipling the social media generation? It can be a daunting task, especially for those who do not consider themselves ‘digital natives’.
There are growing signs of a marked shift in attitudes amongst younger people, an openness to the spiritual, that poses a significant and exciting opportunity for those wanting to disciple Gen Z, including within the field of medicine and healthcare. In particular, social media appears to be cultivating a generation hungry for intimacy, order, and awe.
a hunger for intimacy
Firstly, social media has made relationships more disembodied. Friendships amongst young people are now often conducted primarily through the exchange of messages, pictures, and videos, rather than in-person interactions. And with the rise of dating apps, the same is also increasingly true of romantic and sexual relationships.
However, as friendships become increasingly disembodied, we are seeing an epidemic of loneliness.4, 5 As writer Stephen Marche notes: ‘We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.’6 As image bearers of a relational, triune God, we were designed to be physically with other people.
Herein lies our first key opportunity for discipling Gen Z.
As churches, we can intentionally seek to meet the hunger of the social media generation for intimate, in-person community. In an increasingly virtual world, we should heed the call of the writer to the Hebrews: ‘And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’ (Hebrews 10:24-25)
In the medical context, those who are involved in teaching and mentoring medical students need to be similarly conscious of this hunger for in-person relationships. Much of the university experience – both academic and social – has moved into the online space. Therefore, meaningful in-person friendships, particularly with more senior professionals, are greatly sought after by Gen Z. It is one thing to host a student webinar or deliver a conference seminar. It is another to regularly invite the local students into our home.
a hunger for order
Secondly, on social media, we can create any persona we like and project whatever version of reality our imaginations can conjure up. Growing up in the early 2000s, I was told that I could do anything and be anyone, provided I worked hard and ‘believed in myself’. Today, young people can do anything and be anyone by simply tapping a phone screen.
This prospect of unmitigated freedom may seem appealing. However, having such unrestrained autonomy can become disorientating and even distressing. A world completely without rules is chaos, not freedom. I suspect this is one of several contributing factors in the rising rates of anxiety amongst Gen Z.
This is the second key opportunity for the Church. It appears that the unmitigated freedom of social media has left a generation hungry for order in the chaos. I think we are seeing a growing desire for clear ethical guidance in a world of moral relativism.
Those involved in discipling young people in the Church should not obscure or gloss over the moral mandates of Scripture in the name of being ‘seeker-friendly’ (or even worse, compromise biblical ethics in the name of progress). Of course, we need to preach grace as well as sin, and we must be cognisant that many in modern secular culture need convincing that Christianity is not bigoted. However, we should still be unashamed in our proclamation that God gives us good moral mandates for human flourishing and freedom.
In the medical context, this is particularly germane for those who teach medical ethics. Topics such as abortion, assisted dying, and ‘gender-affirming’ therapies clearly must be approached with care and sensitivity. But at the same time, we must not assume a default moral relativism amongst Gen Z, which holds that all viewpoints are equally valid. If we are able to build compelling cases for Christian ethical viewpoints and principles, we may be surprised by how receptive many in Gen Z are, regardless of their religious background.
a hunger for awe
Third and finally, social media has brought the whole world into our palms. With a few taps of a screen, we can travel the globe, tune into the lives of our favourite celebrities, swipe through an infinite number of potential romantic partners, join a church service in a different continent, hurl insults at anybody who aggravates us, and the list could go on. In sum, social media has made the world seem very small and us feel very big.
However, this has left the social media generation hungry for something bigger than themselves. Psychologists call this a desire for ‘awe’. In a landmark 2003 paper, Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt define ‘awe’ as: an encounter with the ‘vastness’ of something that requires an adjusting of our mental structures to assimilate the encounter (called ‘accommodation’).7 As Haidt writes in his popular book The Anxious Generation: ‘That combination [of vastness and accommodation] seems to trigger a feeling in people of being small in a profoundly pleasurable – although sometimes also fearful – way. Awe opens us to changing our beliefs, allegiances, and behaviors.’8
We are awe-seeking beings ultimately because we were designed to live in worship of an awe-inspiring God. Our hunger for awe is therefore most satisfied when we heed the call of the Psalmist:
‘Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.’
(Psalm 95:6-7)
Today, as the social media generation starts to form the majority of younger doctors, nurses, and midwives in our workplaces and churches, will we be ready to introduce an awe-hungry generation to the God who is worthy of all our awe and worship?
