Gen Z Is The Future of Health

Our Report

A lot has changed in a year and yet one thing hasn’t. Gen Z is still signaling the way we do, see, and talk about health — a position that is only fueled by a global pandemic.

And yet, 70% of Gen Zers describe their current state as healthy. Looking back at our previous report pre-pandemic, this is only a 2% decrease, demonstrating that this generation is relentlessly healthy despite having experienced one of the biggest pandemics in our history — one that will certainly shape their view on health in the future.

Since publishing our report in 2019, one key finding still reigns supreme: To Gen Z, health is more than a vital sign. It’s integrated wellbeing.

While this holistic view of health that includes emotional, physical and mental health is not new, we believe that Gen Z is the first generation to truly embody this belief and live a life that’s driven by wellness. This belief will change the health industry as we know it today.

Meet Gen Well

Everything Gen Z does is connected to health — their relationships, their habits, their technology. We are witnessing the first generation in a long time who is united in a common mission: to be well. That’s why we call this generation Gen Well.

Despite a health pandemic marking some of their most influential years — whether they’re zooming in for their high school graduations, taking their college finals from their childhood bedrooms instead of an assembly hall, or even beginning their first real jobs out of college from their living room, Gen Well has adapted and demonstrated their resiliency.

They’re normalizing conversations around emotional health, incorporating daily rituals that address both mental and physical health, and redefining what quality of care means — from the aisles of the grocery store to the dorm room. Health is inherently integrated into their lives. As a generation that makes up a third of the global population, this is going to change the industry.

Now the health industry is playing catch up to ideologies that are already rooted into Gen Z’s identity.

(In this report, we use Gen Z and Gen Well interchangeably.)

The Four Forces

While Gen Well’s health and wellness is their number one priority, in our analysis in 2019 we identified four forces that influence this generation and how they live their life.

One force that we’re seeing extensively play out is haptic. Haptic this idea of a blended physical/digital life and living a life augmented by technology. Gen Z is looking for those blended experiences that contain elements of both online and offline.

This desire for blended experience manifests itself in the way Gen Zers want to access health. In our last report, we found that 50% of Gen Zers are accessing care in an alternative way — whether that’s a video chat with a therapist, a minute clinic, or a dispatch service like Dispatch Health — they’re looking for something beyond a traditional doctor’s visit.

To read more about each force, check out our initial Gen Z + The Future of Health report.

The Building Blocks of Gen Well + Health

While these four forces are how they manifest their every day decisions regarding their personal lives, if we dive deeper into the fundamentals, we can begin to identify the building blocks of their health. There’s more that’s driving their health decisions, what’s at the root of their beliefs, and what dictates their behavior, what care looks like and what they are doing for themselves.

Beliefs: The core of their health is emotional

At their core, their health is emotional. As a generation marked by its ability to adapt, Gen Well prioritizes mental and physical health equally. Put simply, emotional health is a core part of their identity and central to being well.

What do we mean by mental health? One respondent we spoke to said: “[Mental health] has a lot to do with the contentment you have. Deep down there's an intuitive baseline you know you should be at and what that feels like … You're not always super happy or not always super awake but you can feel yourself draining and deteriorating when you're not meeting that.”

So how has a pandemic affected their health? In our study, we found that Gen Zers mental health was more affected by the pandemic than their physical health. On a scale of 1-10, Gen Zers said COVID-19 has impacted their physical health 4/10 and has impacted their mental health 6/10.

When we think about mental and emotional health, depression and anxiety immediately rise to the top. In our study, when we asked Gen Zers to consider their biggest health concerns of the future, 54% of Gen Zers said their top concerns are being emotionally or mentally unwell (e.g. depression.)

“I'm an anxious person. [If] things are going well, I tend to worry, ‘Why is it going well? Something has to be going wrong soon.’”

Their journey of anxiety is not a continuum from negative to positive — it’s a tangled journey that can exist at both positive and negative at the same time. Understanding this is pivotal to how they care for their health and how they expect to experience relationships, care, and conversations.

We’re seeing this conversation around normalizing being emotionally or mentally unwell play out in the media. Just a few weeks ago, tennis pro Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open after being fined for refusing to not speak to the media for personal mental health reasons.

“The truth is that I have suffered long bouts of depression since the U.S. Open in 2018 and I have had a really hard time coping with that,” said Osaka. “I was already feeling vulnerable and anxious so I thought it was better to exercise self-care and skip the press conferences."

This outspoken cry for help marks a generational movement that mental health is health. This is vitally important to the way Gen Z operates and believes in caring for themselves.

When we asked Gen Zers why they were going to the doctor, mental and emotional issues were the number one reason they were making appointments to speak with their healthcare professional, immediately followed by reasons that address an immediate health need, to get better sleep, and to lose weight.

What they expect from the doctor is a whole different story.

Influences: The New Standard for Quality of Care is Defined by Relationships

To be well requires care that goes beyond the doctor’s exam room in just a singular short visit. They don’t just want more moments, they want better moments. And what’s influencing their health decisions is this desire for personal relationships. Gen Well is relationship-driven — even when it comes to healthcare. They’re looking for opportunities to build meaningful and personal relationships across all care touchpoints.

A McKinsey report appropriately identifies them as “communaholics”. In the McKinsey report, it says, “Gen Zers are radically inclusive. They don’t distinguish between friends they meet online and friends in the physical world. They continually flow between communities that promote their causes by exploiting the high level of mobilization technology makes possible.” 

Haptic, blended experiences come to play in their desire for a personal connection in this overly-connected world augmented by technology. The reality is, they expect to experience life in a blended version on both sides of the screen. Apps like Daylio really take this idea of a blended experience and encourage users to track their physical and mental symptoms every day to create beautiful data that helps them make better health decisions.  

To Gen Z, quality care is personal relationships, not concierge services. When we think of what the future of quality of care looks like, we may think of concierge services, safe processes, and patient-centered approaches. But to Gen Z, the highest level of quality of care is in the personal relationships they’re building — whether that’s with their primary care doctor or their therapist or a peer-to-peer support group. 

How is this different from other generations? In the past, Millennials were placated by ping pong tables and sleek design as a premium concierge service. This will not cut it for Gen Z.

Despite the rise of telemedicine during COVID-19, 66% of Gen Zers still prefer of Gen Zers some form of an in-person experience for healthcare.

There’s still a place for telemedicine in routine checkups but the key takeaway in this finding is the importance of establishing meaningful relationships beyond routine reasons.

Beyond seeing their doctor at a traditional doctor’s office, Gen Z is accessing care at the pharmacy (53%) and urgent care (39%) before they turn to telehealth solutions. In our survey, we learned that Gen Zers actually prefer brick-and-mortar — especially pharmacies — when making purchases regarding their health.

Despite it all, family and friends still remain their main sources of information when making purchasing decisions regarding their health, and this is not a departure from what we found in 2019. 80% of the Gen Zers we surveyed are comfortable talking about their physical health with their peers, and 69% are comfortable talking about their mental health with their peers. We hypothesize that this is because they’ve built strong, meaningful relationships in these people as allies to their mental health.

And that’s a good thing because, at its current state, the digital health industry has a trust issue and is really failing them. The fallout of this trust is pivotal to Gen Z, and at the end of the day, those who are most affected by this failed digital health system are the patients themselves. There’s a missed opportunity for Gen Zers to connect outside of their peer-to-peer groups.

This position was highlighted in a story from one of our respondents who said: “BetterHelp had a scandal in 2018. High profile influencers commented on the app and did an 'expose video.’ It impacted me to not use apps like that … YouTubers do not like promoting BetterHelp as much anymore. They took issue with how it wasn't transparent about collecting your personal information. The first therapists they used on the app were not official.”

They want trust in the relationship. It’s not about the technology, it’s about the relationship, whether or not it's enhanced by technology. At the bottom of it, it’s about that personal connection.

During an interview on the a16z podcast, Bio Eats World, Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, a Senior Medical Adviser for Pfizer said it beautifully:

“Patients don’t want things done to them. Patients want things done with them.”

This couldn’t apply any more clearly to how Gen Z expects to experience care.

Behaviors: What Care Looks Like Through the Eyes of Gen Z

And once we understand their beliefs and influences in health, we can understand their behavior toward health and paint a picture of what care looks like for Gen Z. As a generation that strives for integrated wellbeing, Gen Well is looking for and trying preventative health behaviors that will become a part of their daily routines.

We found that Gen Zers tend to spend more time and money on preventative measures (56%) rather than episodic reasons (44%).

What they’re doing for their health revolves around physical needs and activities. When they think about actions they’re taking for their health, sleep is top of mind with over half of Gen Zers recognizing that as a key health-related action.

So what have they done in the last year during a pandemic for their health? Gen Zers have explored new hobbies, changed their sleeping habits and focused on self-care routines. In an article from Psychology Today, 40% of Gen Zers have changed their sleeping habits to prioritize self-care. That might be because, “sleep deprivation is linked to hopelessness, substance use, depression, anxiety and suicidality in teens.”

When speaking about the pandemic, another aspect that comes to mind is Gen Zers effort to strengthen or improve their immunity. Over half of the respondents say that they’re now taking vitamins and supplements, exercising more, and maintaining a healthy weight as a precaution for immunity.

Another way they’re maintaining that holistic, intimate view of their health is through wearables. Nearly half (48%) of our respondents said that they use wearables, fitness trackers, or smartwatches to monitor their health. And of those who use wearables, most of them are looking for guidance when it comes to interpreting the data and using it for health decisions.

4 Ways to Design for the future of Gen Well

As we think about what the future of health looks like — one that is being carved by Gen Z and their beliefs, influences and behaviors, designing for a future that meets their needs means designing for a future of health.

Haptic Matters

When we think about building experiences, we have to think about building integrated experiences — experiences that think about both in-person and online.

Nurture relationships

Gen Z is your next customer. Actively seek out opportunities that will build relationships and foster peer-to-peer communication.

Integrate wellness into your rhetoric

Recognize that it’s ok to not be ok and having conversations around anxiety and depression are not taboo — they’re real.

Be transparent

Trust plays a huge role in Gen Z’s identity. Be authentic and transparent in every aspect possible because they’re paying attention and they’ll notice.

As strategists and marketers at LINUS, it’s our responsibility to meet Gen Z where they’re at. There is the potential for a world where we all experience the best of care. Getting there begins with designing around Gen Z's building blocks for health and wellness.