2 Reasons Why We Need to Stop Giving Gen Z Seventh Place Trophies

Their mental health is at risk.

You know and I know (as a Gen Z’er myself) that Gen Z is sensitive as hell.

I come from a generation of kids who received a million seventh-place trophies in school. Kids who got extra credit for participation. Kids who were hyped up as being “good enough” so you deserved everything you want.

Heck, even our parents never gave it to us straight.

They’d give you a hug and kiss after you lost the basketball game and say “Good job tiger! You’ll get’em next time!”

Now we’re spoiled.

Instead of working as hard as we can to prove we deserve our spot, we wallow in our entitlement. We expect a participation trophy for our efforts. While these trophies are great for getting others to join in, they are detrimental to Gen Z’s mental health.

Here’s why.

We get OVERLY jealous when we see someone doing better than us.

Flexing on social media has always been the wave for Gen Z.

We’re social media stockers almost. Staring at all of the snazzy Lambos and Yeezy’s on Instagram already fucks with your head. Imagine how that feels when you’ve been getting seventh-place awards your whole life.

You don’t just get a little jealous. Your whole world falls apart. When you sit in your crappy apartment and see a bunch of other people winning on Instagram, that sense of entitlement kicks in from participation trophies.

You look at your life as more of a disappointment than you should.

Let’s not even mention the fact that Gen Z can’t fully grasp the idea of keeping their mental health intact in the era of social media.

When life gives you that rude awakening after you’ve been applauded for being present, that’s just on another level.

We can’t grasp the concept of consistent hard work.

I’m a living testimony for this.

I’m twenty years old and I’ve been given so much for doing absolutely nothing, it’ll boggle your mind. Here are just a few examples of this:

• My mom pays my phone bill — and a lot of other stuff that she shouldn’t be paying for.
• I tried my luck at starting a digital marketing agency — I gave up within three months because I didn’t get any clients.
• I’ve gotten free money for doing absolutely nothing — That’s awesome at first, but it stuns your perception of what hard work is.

Hard work is kind of a new thing for Gen Z.

You see, I was always told that accomplishing your goals takes hard work. However, I never saw that translated into my life. Most of my “accomplishments” were handouts.

Someone can tell you to work hard a million times when you’re Gen Z. But when you’re never forced to apply this rule in your life, you get surprised when it works for other people.

How we can fix the problem.

Well, stop giving kids awards for showing up or to make them feel better when you know they suck!

Do you know what’s weird about everyone that’s successful in their life? They all had tough parents. Here are some examples:

• Lavar Ball— He got two out of his three sons in the N.B.A. and they were both top five picks in the draft — the first brothers to do so. He and his wife never babied them growing up. They made them play against older players as toddlers and had a tough-love approach whenever they lost a game.
• Joe Jackson— We all know the infamous and abusive story of Joe Jackson toward his children. He worked them to the bone. But it’s this level of toughness that produced the greatest entertainer of all time, Michael Jackson.
• Richard Williams — He trained Serena and Venus Williams at a very young age. He set them up to be tennis superstars and wasn’t afraid to be tough on them. Some locals even recall seeing Venus and Serena in strollers with tennis rackets when their parents played in the 1980s.

Now I’m not saying it’s all on the parents to fix this.

For Gen Z, they should treat every loss as an opportunity to step up their game. Don’t look at failure with your arms crossed. Put your head down and keep working. And stop with the social media envy.

Final Thought

Stop assuming that the world owes you something.

No one owes you shit. You’re not going to get a participation trophy for sucking at what you do. You have to put your head down and look at every failure as an opportunity to step your game up. Be hard on yourself.

Once you focus on yourself instead of the outside noise, you’ll start to see a humongous change. Not just in your life, but in your mental health.

So, step your game up now.

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