More than just being well: teens and Gen Z are redefining what it means to be healthy

Health isn’t what it used to be – namely the absence of being sick.

Ask any teenager today what it means to them to be healthy, and you’re likely to hear about the vast array of areas in their lives they are “working on”.

This can include emotional health, aesthetic health, fitness, nutrition, social health, financial health, social media health, mental health, spiritual health … the list goes on.

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, health wasn’t something I or my friends thought about much. We took it for granted it was either something you had, or were unfortunate to have lost.

In contrast, today’s young people view health as something they can “grow” and should already be working on. Health has become an investment. And, through a process of expansion I call “healthization”, it has become an increasingly diverse one.

Beyond Dr Google

In my recent research, I asked 235 young New Zealanders aged 14–24 to talk about how they use digital technology as part of understanding their health. The results inform my recent book, Healthization: Turning Life into Health.

Some of the results were not unexpected: young people discussed googling their symptoms and self-diagnosing anything from a sore throat to a miscarriage.

They also talked about using online quizzes and a variety of websites and forums to ascertain their mental wellbeing, including self-diagnosing themselves with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

But at the same time as invoking the value of using “Dr Google”, they also talked about sophisticated strategies they use for determining what forms of online and offline knowledge are trustworthy.

They described how they triangulate online results, determine when to check with medical professionals, and frequently compare their understanding of health information with friends, siblings or parents.

Perhaps more unexpectedly, their definitions of what it means to be healthy were all-encompassing. So much so that for some there appeared to be almost no limit to the role that striving to be healthy plays in their lives.

Things that a generation ago were thought to be important but not necessarily part of being healthy – such as friendship, beauty, having a sense of community, dating, doing well in school, creating “down time” or moments of relaxation – are now rolled into this expansive concept of health.

Not having these things is no longer seen as sad or due to misfortune, but as being actively detrimental to one’s health.

Health’s moral dimension

In a country often stereotyped for its rugged but sometimes cavalier “she’ll be right” ethos, young people openly worry about their own and other people’s physical health in ways strikingly at odds with previous generations.

There has been a lot written about the 21st-century focus on self-improvement. But young people also describe eagerly helping others in their health projects or “journeys”, spending time googling mental health issues so they can help diagnose friends, or even taking their parents along on a run.

Indeed, mental and emotional health in particular are singled out as areas where young people see a generational role to promote greater transparency and social acceptance.

Health takes on a moral dimension as young people describe investing in their own and others’ health as a means to achieve “a good life”. In fact, not to work on one’s health was often depicted as morally wrong.

Through the process of healthization, health has come to cover a much broader terrain than it did a generation or so ago. So, is it even achievable?

Or, given so many different components to health – from minding one’s time on social media to drinking enough water, from working on establishing meaningful friendships to logging in with MapMyRun – is it an illusion that no one can possibly fulfil?

While this might initially appear to be the case, the young people I interviewed suggest differently.

While some did indeed seem overwhelmed by the amount of necessary “work” on health that faces them, others noted the need for “balance” and pathways (sometimes multiple ones) toward enacting those aspects of health that appear most meaningful and achievable.

Finding real balance

In my book I suggest the turn towards such holistic views of health not only helps us acknowledge the wide variety of things that affect our wellbeing, but highlights how the mind and body are interrelated – how our mental wellbeing can influence our physical health and vice versa.

The downside is that it can feel overwhelming and also draw attention away from other things we value and which we need or want to do. These may not necessarily be good for our health but are nonetheless socially meaningful.

That might include devoting time to caring for family members, for example, rather than working on our physical fitness. Or sacrificing our time or wellbeing to promote or protect a greater cause.

The trick, the book concludes, might be to adopt a point of view that embraces the merits of a broad view of health while also encouraging ourselves to look beyond it.

Just as young people are recognising the importance of working on the self while also emphasising the importance of their relationships with others, maybe we can all discover a better kind of “balance”.

Susanna Trnka received funding for this research from the Royal Society of New Zealand - Marsden Fund.