This 2025, Gen Z wasn’t the main character
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I have spent most of my teenage years wishing I lived in my own sitcom. Tight-knit group of friends, adult money, rent-controlled apartment overlooking a first-world city—what’s not to love, right? It’s likely the origin of our fascination with "main character energy": the idea of exuding the same charm, confidence, and self-assurance as the protagonists of these stories.
However, I forgot that our favorite characters were straight up failures as twenty-somethings. In the first episode of Friends, Ross already went through a divorce, while Rachel left someone at the altar. Jess from New Girl moved out of the apartment she shared with a cheating ex, while Ted from How I Met Your Mother yearned for an emotionally unavailable Robin. The list goes on.
Now, it’s our turn to commit our share of mistakes; to have the kind of WTF-inducing plotlines viewers can’t pull away from. 2025 made sure of that. We’ve had many hits and misses, and God knows we’ve all wished for a reboot at some point. Thankfully, they all make for a pretty good story.
This year, Gen Z…
Conquered the quarter-life crisis (or at least, tried to)
One of the perks of student life was structure: knowing exactly where we needed to be and what had to be done. But newfound independence has placed us at a crossroads, with no blueprint to map our way forward. Peers are either in between jobs or pursuing post-graduate studies abroad; stuck in situationships or contemplating marriage and kids. We’re so overwhelmed, others are opting to outsource their decision-making to machines.
It’s definitely a struggle that will spill over into the next year. But hopefully, we find solace in the fact that everyone from every generation has struggled with an existential crisis at some point. Others are simply better at taking things in stride.
Built boundaries
In an era of unpredictability, Gen Z has come to realize that we can only ever control ourselves. So, we’ve started putting our foot down and prioritizing what brings us peace of mind.
Bare minimum work culture, for instance, indicates that we place personal well-being above productivity in the modern workplace. Going no contact shows how we start necessary conflict in our closest relationships and leave situations that no longer serve us. Even something as innocuous as outdated humor gets shot down these days. These newfound norms shock our elders the most, since their brains are wired to think for the collective. But we can all benefit from being a little selfish if needed.
Questioned institutions
The systems and public figures meant to represent us routinely fail, but widespread misuse of funds for flood control projects and government inaction across all fronts radicalized us more. So, we’ve taken our concerns off social media and into the streets, storming the polls with record turnouts for millennial and Gen Z voters. It’s no coincidence that progressive candidates such as Senators Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan, and Akbayan Representative Chel Diokno emerged as dark horses. We sustained this energy in Luneta and EDSA, as we joined protests and demanded our fellow Filipinos to follow suit regardless of status. Hopefully, we make it to the end of what looks like a long, arduous fight.
Unlearned their truths
Even the ideas that helped us understand the world were subject to change. Gen Z has seen a shift in our beauty standards, acknowledging that Western and whitewashed was never better by default. Our understanding of mental health has changed, too, as we veered away from carelessly weaponizing therapy speak. We’ve also seen how issues don’t always have to be so black and white—be it our relationships with our bodies or canceled celebrities. It’s one of our best traits, as the product of a digital generation: our access and openness to information.
Now, we’re slowly accepting that adulthood is not all it’s cracked up to be. We are forced to choose between what we want to pursue and what pays the bills; to watch as our strongest friendships fall through the cracks for reasons unknown. We’ll be disillusioned, uninspired, and lost more times than we care to count.
But as the ever-enterprising members of Gen Z, we make do with what we have. Despite times of scarcity, we carve out our own moments of solitude. We’ve hiked mountains, ran marathons, and spent too much money on pickleball. But we’ve also enjoyed joining book clubs, compiling junk for our journals, and making matcha from scratch.
In the process, we are shamed for putting ourselves out there so publicly. "Performative" is one insult thrown around a lot, though performance is a natural consequence of living under the surveillance state that is social media. So is being "cringe," because we’ve been conditioned to practice nonchalance and feign apathy.
If there’s one lesson 2025 taught us, it’s that this is but a small price to pay as people in progress. May we continue trying on different identities and embarking on all sorts of side quests. We have all the time in the world; after all, this is only the first season of the show of our lives.