THE EMOTIONAL WEIGHT OF BEING YOUNG TODAY

We are not a fragile generation. We are a compressed one.

Compressed between expectations we didn’t choose, speed we didn’t ask for, and a future that keeps postponing itself. We were taught how to function, not how to be present. Productive, not alive. Always “fine,” even when something inside is giving way.

The emotional weight of being young today is not spectacular trauma. It’s constant pressure. It’s the accumulation of small things that never find space to come out.

We hold everything in. Fears that seem exaggerated.

Exhaustion without a clinical name.

The feeling of always being late for a life that keeps running ahead.

They told us we could become anything.

They never told us what to do when becoming everything means losing yourself.

Our generation collapses in silence because we learned early that noise is disruptive. That complaining is weakness. That stopping is a disguised failure. So we smile, work, produce content, relationships, automatic replies. Meanwhile, under the skin, pressure builds with no release valve.

We no longer know how to say “I can’t do this” without guilt.

We no longer know how to separate desire from expectation.

We no longer know if we’re tired or simply emptied.

The problem isn’t that we’re struggling.

The problem is that we do it neatly, quietly, performatively.

We’re the generation that talks about mental health while living as if feeling were a luxury. That normalizes anxiety but romanticizes endurance. That knows everything, except where to put the weight when it becomes too much.

This editorial is not a request for saving.

It’s a position.

Saying that emotional weight exists is already a political act.

Admitting that not everything can be turned into strength is disobedience.

Naming what we hold back is the first way not to let it consume us in silence.

We don’t want to be defined by suffering.

But we refuse to pretend it has no mass. Being young today means carrying invisible things.

And silence is not maturity.

It’s just another way to survive.

CZMOS is not here to simplify. It’s here to give weight to what weighs.