'You don't owe anyone anything' and how Gen Z is misusing therapy speak

Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. 

That’s the often-repeated phrase used to describe the phenomenon of diminishing communities.

But the situation is particularly pronounced with Gen Z as of late, according to a slew of social media posts. Likely the most therapy and mental health literate generation in history, Gen Z has made work-life balance and self care top priorities − but sometimes at the cost of their friendships.

At the same time, daily life has moved online. People can increasingly work or attend school remotely. The result is that young adults are losing the “villagers” that previous generations relied on.

Gen Z is good at boundaries. Do they take them too far?

Gen Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, has made great strides at boundary setting and mental health awareness.

Need proof? Look no further than viral, often repeated advice like "you don't owe anyone anything" and "protect your peace."The problem is when this these phrases are doled out by non-mental health experts and used for every situation, explains Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.

It's then that "protecting your peace" can morph into being selfish or a bad friend. 

“The use of therapy speak to justify, in essence, being non-committal socially, sort of withdrawing socially, or having the right to withdraw socially, I think, is really hurtful,” Zaki says.

As a Gen Zer myself, at 24, I've seen this among my peers. On a recent evening when my roommate and I planned a potluck-style party, several attendees bailed at the last minute, or didn't respond to our invitation at all.

It's not an uncommon occurrence. A friend will flake on another's birthday and evoke a therapy-adjacent excuse. In some cases, young people will avoid confrontations or uncomfortable situations under the guise of putting themselves first, Zaki adds.

I wondered, would prior generations just have called this what it was? Selfishness? Laziness? Zaki says, prior generations would not have canceled in the first place.

One of the ways sociologists once assessed people’s social connections, he says, was by asking how many people they could count on to pick them up from the airport at 1 a.m. Today, there’s Uber for that. When Joey moves out of his apartment with Chandler in “Friends,” everyone helps him pack his stuff, but in 2026 he could've used a TaskRabbit. And in place of asking neighbors for help, we have delivery services like Postmates and Instacart.

Where we’ve gained convenience, we’ve lost community.

How we lost 'the village'

Loneliness is something the Former U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has spoken extensively about. Even before the pandemic, roughly half of adults reported experiencing loneliness, but Murthy in the spring of 2023 declared America’s loneliness epidemic a public health crisis. 

In an Oct. 25 talk during the New Yorker Festival, he said that there’s been a “profound and steady decline” over the last half century in participation in faith organizations, recreational leagues and service organizations. He also points out that fewer people go to school, get jobs, and raise families in the same towns they grew up in. 

“Each time we make these moves, we leave a community behind, and we have to build a new community,” Murthy said during the festival.

There’s a third factor, too: our rapid reliance on technology, which has reduced the need for face-to-face interaction. 

“Many of the defaults that made social connection part of the infrastructure of our lives are gone, which is hard because it means that we need to then make greater individual effort to make that happen,” says Zaki.

That effort is, at times, burdensome or inconvenient. But the reality is that sometimes friendships require us to be inconvenienced. 

“On the other side of that anxiety is a connection that you vitally need for your health and well being,” Zaki says. “If we focus on keeping ourselves comfortable… we're missing out on, I think, a critical opportunity.”

Plus, studies have shown connections and friendships are good for our health and longevity.

“When we show up for others, our stress decreases, our sense of agency and autonomy increases, our happiness increases, and so when we focus on a hyper individualistic almost single serving version of well being… we actually are depriving ourselves of one of the great sources of well being,” Zaki says.

How young people can build community

The reality is that most people want to make more friends.

When I moved to New York a year ago, I challenged myself to meet new people. Naturally, it felt uncomfortable − part of our struggle with loneliness is our fear of looking out of place. Showing up to events alone, whether it was a media happy hour or crafting collage event, pushed me out of my comfort zone. And in the process, I found that there’s an entire anti-loneliness movement. 

In September, I traveled to the Poconos to spend a weekend at Camp Social, a women’s-only sleepaway camp geared toward solo campers looking to make new friends. A slate of options like Bumble BFF, Friender and Yubo advertise themselves as Tinder-like apps to meet friends, while others like Pie and Partiful help users find events in their area, many of which encourage going solo.

The obvious demand for these groups shows the elusive village exists if we’re willing to make the effort. 

Zaki likened building a community to making a resolution to go to the gym more: intentionally showing up and taking responsibility for an aspect of your health.

“Statistically speaking, people want to connect with you way more than you realize,” Zaki says. “I think there's so much life out there with each other.”

Rachel Hale’s role covering Youth Mental Health at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach her at [email protected] and @rachelleighhale on X.