Lifestyle

Gen Z Is Tired of Chasing the Trend Cycle

Published

10 months ago

March 8, 2025

Gen Z Is Tired of Chasing the Trend Cycle

For the past few years, opening up social media has felt like standing in front of a fire hose of fashion and internet fads and cranking open the nozzle, full blast.

New “it” water bottles are anointed almost quarterly. Influencers urge their viewers to style themselves as coastal grandmothers, ballet dancers, indie sleazers and coquettes — looks that have little in common besides the consumption they require. Specious fads like the “mob wife aesthetic,” recognized by publications including this one, prompted The New Yorker’s humor column to predict what might come next: How about “Supreme Court casual” or “spotted-lanternfly goth”?

To keep up would leave most people broke, not to mention disoriented. And while a majority of these crazes are labeled “Gen Z trends,” members of that generation may be the ones most fatigued by the churn.

It’s not that they don’t get what’s going on: Today’s young adults can comfortably discuss the way that social media and fast fashion keep many members of their generation buying, sharing and discarding items. They are aware, sometimes painfully, that their insecurities are being harnessed for someone else’s bottom line. But awareness does not equal liberation. Understanding the mechanisms at play does not always mean they can escape them — although many are trying.

Neena Atkins, 16, a high school junior in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., said she felt “constantly bombarded” by product recommendations. Cheetah print was hot less than two months ago, she said, “and now when I go on TikTok, I see people saying, like, cheetah print is getting so old.”

Lina, 15, a high school freshman near Fort Wayne, Ind., watched classmates buy $35 Stanley tumblers only to covet another brand of pastel water bottles shortly thereafter. “It’s wasteful,” she said. “You’re just wasting resources, you’re wasting money.”

James Oakley, 19, a college student in Oregon, thinks his age group has reached saturation: “The prevalence and pure amount of microtrends has made it impossible to understand or participate.”

‘This Is Gross’

We tend to think of trends as a means of demonstrating that we know what’s cool and new, or as a way to take part in a bigger collective “moment.” For decades, critics have rightly pointed out that following trends facilitates a consumer capitalist culture — wake up, sheeple! — but it can also be experimental, playful, even fun.

Lately, though, trends feel more overwhelming. I recently set out to make sense of which trends were actually relevant to Gen Z-ers’ lives. But after hearing from dozens of young people, a pattern emerged: Many wanted to talk not about any one trend that they thought mattered, but about their struggles with the relentless onslaught of trends, and the whiplash they felt from trying to process them all so quickly.

Young people I spoke with described an online trend ecosystem that resembles a soupy flood plain of fads — trends that are at once flimsy and a genuine source of stress for young people eager to fit in. The insecurity that young people feel when they don’t have the “it” item is amplified when there’s a new “it” item every week.

To be clear, not every member of Gen Z has gotten sucked into the whirlpool that awaits them on their phones: Many can’t be bothered — or simply can’t afford — to pay attention. “A lot of people don’t buy from Shein, do not have the time or money to invest in every microtrend that just walks by,” James said.

Bemoaning the quickening of trends is itself a tradition. The scholar Quentin Bell observed in a 1978 edition of his book “On Human Finery,” that “the pace of fashion has become noticeable, so noticeable that the fashions of a man’s youth could look dowdy by the time that he was middle-aged.”

Almost a half-century later, the journalist Kyle Chayka wrote in his book “Filterworld” that “microtrends” now rise and fall in a matter of weeks. In its quest to retain our attention, social media seemed to have heightened both the quantity and intensity of what we once called a fad: “Under algorithmic feeds, the popular becomes more popular, and the obscure becomes even less visible,” he writes.

That’s how it feels for Francesca Oliva, an 18-year-old college freshman in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. As a middle schooler, she said, she felt pressure to own the signifiers of the “VSCO girl” look that was then dominant: pastel scrunchies, a Hydro Flask water bottle. When she got them, it felt a little bit like she was putting on a costume.

“When you have 18,000 different ‘core’ identities being thrown at you — like eclectic grandpa, or coastal grandmother, or office siren — you’re like, What am I supposed to be?” she said.

As she watched even more trends come and go, each one seemingly requiring a new wardrobe, she took a step back. She wants to spend her money on clothing that will last, she said, and she has neither the budget nor the mental energy to keep pace with a trend environment that resembles a game of Whac-a-Mole.

“People that continuously are buying these clothes just trying to fit in, it has to feel exhausting,” she said. “As someone who’s just observing that, it’s exhausting.”

Keeping up is a full-time job for Casey Lewis, author of the Gen Z trend newsletter “After School.” As an adolescent in rural Missouri in the late 1990s, Ms. Lewis, 37, learned about the popular styles of the moment — low-rise slip skirts, embellished baby tees — in teen magazines that arrived monthly. Fashion trends, in the macro sense, spun in 20-year cycles: Today’s tier of more slight digital ephemera did not yet exist.

Her newsletter, a daily cheat sheet for millennials and their elders who want to know what young people are up to, is stuffed with a survey of everything that social media users and fashion publications are simultaneously declaring to be of the moment. Some of its tongue-in-cheek subject lines barely scan as English: “Quietcations and Tweecore”; “Rococo Revival and Cinnamon Softcore.”

A sense of consumption fatigue has set in, she said. “Eventually, you’re just kind of like, ‘This is gross. Why am I even participating in this culture?’” she said. “I think creators and brands are increasingly having to answer to that understanding from young people.”

Status, Anxiety, FOMO

Accelerants for the trend cycle abound. TikTok requires novelty to hold our attention, and has an algorithm potent enough to elevate the unknown to ubiquity in a matter of days. Fast-fashion marketplaces are able to churn out polyester to meet whatever bottomless demand is generated online. And platforms are rolling out click-to-buy functions like TikTok Shop to all but eliminate the friction between seeing something online and having it dropped on one’s doorstep.

That can make being online an unsatisfying experience: Social media was sold as a playground, but ended up feeling more like a mall. “Every time I go on Instagram, it’s like something is being sold to me,” said Sequoya, a 22-year-old living in Salt Lake City.

Ensuring that the wheel continues to spin is the status-seeking element of human nature itself, W. David Marx argues in his book “Status and Culture.” We want what other people have in order to fit in, but eventually abandon those same things once we see them as too accessible to the masses. Or, as Ms. Lewis put it, “Once a 12-year-old is crying over getting a Stanley, a 17-year-old isn’t going to want one.”

In fashion, the result is a glut of low-quality clothing items that are not wearable for long. The average number of times a single garment is worn has decreased 36 percent compared with rates 15 years earlier, according to a 2019 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey & Company. For every five garments produced, the report added, three end up in a landfill or incinerated.

But it’s not just clothes. David Peraza, 21, a college student in Yucatán, Mexico, watches new titles surge to the top of the online game marketplace Steam more quickly than he can afford to buy them. At the beginning of last year, it seemed as if everyone was playing “Helldivers 2,” he said, only to pivot a few months later to an updated release of “The Legend of Zelda.”

“It is overwhelming,” he said. Games trend so quickly that his FOMO — fear of missing out — has grown “exponential.”

Some so-called trends feel more like mirages. Things like “mermaidcore” and “barefoot-boy summer” function less as reigning aesthetics in real life and more as mash-ups of words memorable enough to achieve social media virality for a week or two. But trend pieces reliably follow: “Lately I wonder if we’re living through a mass psychosis expressing itself through trend reporting,” the fashion critic Rachel Tashjian wrote for Harper’s Bazaar in 2022.

Those fleeting trends can still cause real anxiety for young people who feel pressure to measure up to what they see online.

Neena, the 16-year-old, recalled a conversation with a panicked friend during study hall. “She told me: ‘I’m really stressed out. I don’t know whether I want to be an Aussie girl or a vanilla girl,” Neena recalled, naming two looks that had briefly overtaken her TikTok feed. “That was kind of my realization: This is not normal.”

Enter ‘Underconsumption Core’

Is it possible that the fire hydrant of trends is starting to run dry? Business of Fashion predicted in January that viral microtrends were on their way out, in part because of the uncertain fate of TikTok, which was set to face a federal ban in January. The app flickered dark, and then back to life, after President Trump signed an executive order that delayed enforcement of the ban for 75 days.

Hana Tilksew, 19, a college student near Fresno, Calif., got rid of the app anyway. It’s been a relief, she said: “I think a permanent TikTok ban would definitely help mitigate the relentless pressure we feel to keep up.”

Other TikTok users have been making their fatigue known for a while now. In a flurry of videos last year, some expressed frustration at the buy-buy-buy ethos on the app. Others pushed “underconsumption core,” which encourages users to show off their off-trend, but still thoroughly wearable, clothes. Still more have documented their attempts at a “low-buy year” in which they vowed to cut back on shopping.

Such neatly packaged repudiations of trendiness strike Abner Gordan, a 21-year-old college student in New York City, as ironic. “In a weird way, I think being anti-trend is very trendy,” he said.

While many of his friends still buy secondhand clothing or furniture, he has watched the “underconsumption core” label lose steam online, just like all of the “cores” before it. It was dispiriting, he said, to witness what at first seemed like a move away from the trend cycle be subsumed by it instead.

“It’s like you can’t escape,” he said.

Perhaps Gen Z is just aging out of the period of their lives ruled by trends, Ms. Lewis said, noting that its eldest members are in their late 20s. But she does not think the online trend madness will slow down anytime soon. Enter Gen Alpha, whose eyes are already racing across screens. “I think they’re going to be trend freaks,” Ms. Lewis said.

Hana stopped buying ultra-trendy items when she realized that a closet full of bags and Brandy Melville miniskirts wasn’t making her any happier. She said she gave her hand-me-downs to her 13-year-old sister, a middle schooler who is “still obsessed with trends.”

“She’ll grow out of it eventually,” she said.

Lifestyle

Doctors says ‘The Pitt’ reflects the gritty realities of medicine today

Published

9 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Doctors says ‘The Pitt’ reflects the gritty realities of medicine today

From left: Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending physician, and Fiona Dourif plays Dr. Cassie McKay, a third-year resident, in a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department in the HBO Max series The Pitt.

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The first five minutes of the new season of The Pitt instantly capture the state of medicine in the mid-2020s: a hectic emergency department waiting room; a sign warning that aggressive behavior will not be tolerated; a memorial plaque for victims of a mass shooting; and a patient with large Ziploc bags filled to the brink with various supplements and homeopathic remedies.

Scenes from the new installment feel almost too recognizable to many doctors.

The return of the critically acclaimed medical drama streaming on HBO Max offers viewers a surprisingly realistic view of how doctors practice medicine in an age of political division, institutional mistrust and the corporatization of health care.

Each season covers one day in the kinetic, understaffed emergency department of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, with each episode spanning a single hour of a 15-hour shift. That means there’s no time for romantic plots or far-fetched storylines that typically dominate medical dramas.

Instead, the fast-paced show takes viewers into the real world of the ER, complete with a firehose of medical jargon and the day-to-day struggles of those on the frontlines of the American health care system. It’s a microcosm of medicine — and of a fragmented United States.

Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael "Robby" Rabinovitch in The Pitt.

Many doctors and health professionals praised season one of the series, and ER docs even invited the show’s star Noah Wyle to their annual conference in September.

So what do doctors think of the new season? As a medical student myself, I appreciated the dig at the “July effect” — the long-held belief that the quality of care decreases in July when newbie doctors start residency — rebranded “first week in July syndrome” by one of the characters.

That insider wink sets the tone for a season that Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, says is on point. Patel, who co-hosts the show’s companion podcast, watched the first nine episodes of the new installment and spoke to NPR about his first impressions.

To me, as a medical student, the first few scenes of the new season are pretty striking, and they resemble what modern-day emergency medicine looks and sounds like. From your point of view, how accurate is it?

I’ll say off the bat, when it comes to capturing the full essence of practicing health care — the highs, the lows and the frustrations — The Pitt is by far the most medically accurate show that I think has ever been created. And I’m not the only one to share that opinion. I hear that a lot from my colleagues.

OK, but is every shift really that chaotic?

I mean, obviously, it’s television. And I know a lot of ER doctors who watch the show and are like, “Hey, it’s really good, but not every shift is that crazy.” I’m like, “Come on, relax. It’s TV. You’ve got to take a little bit of liberties.”

As in its last season, The Pitt sheds light on the real — sometimes boring — bureaucratic burdens doctors deal with that often get in the way of good medicine. How does that resonate with real doctors?

There are so many topics that affect patient care that are not glorified. And so The Pitt did this really artful job of inserting these topics with the right characters and the right relatable scenarios. I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a pretty relatable issue in season two with medical bills.

Right. Insurance seems to take center stage at times this season — almost as a character itself — which seems apt for this moment when many Americans are facing a sharp rise in costs. But these mundane — yet heartbreaking — moments don’t usually make their way into medical dramas, right?

I guarantee when people see this, they’re going to nod their head because they know someone who has been affected by a huge hospital bill.

If you’re going to tell a story about an emergency department that is being led by these compassionate health care workers doing everything they can for patients, you’ve got to make sure you insert all of health care into it.

As the characters juggle multiple patients each hour, a familiar motif returns: medical providers grappling with some heavy burdens outside of work.

Yeah, the reality is that if you’re working a busy shift and you have things happening in your personal life, the line between personal life and professional life gets blurred and people have moments.

The Pitt highlights that and it shows that doctors are real people. Nurses are actual human beings. And sometimes things happen, and it spills out into the workplace. It’s time we take a step back and not only recognize it, but also appreciate what people are dealing with.

2025 was another tough year for doctors. Many had to continue to battle misinformation while simultaneously practicing medicine. How does medical misinformation fit into season two?

I wouldn’t say it’s just mistrust of medicine. I mean that theme definitely shows up in The Pitt, but people are also just confused. They don’t know where to get their information from. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t know what the right decision is.

There’s one specific scene in season two that, again, no spoilers here, but involves somebody getting their information from social media. And that again is a very real theme.

In recent years, physical and verbal abuse of healthcare workers has risen, fueling mental health struggles among providers. The Pitt was praised for diving into this reality. Does it return this season?

The new season of The Pitt still has some of that tension between patients and health care professionals — and sometimes it’s completely projected or misdirected. People are frustrated, they get pissed off when they can’t see a doctor in time and they may act out.

The characters who get physically attacked in The Pitt just brush it off. That whole concept of having to suppress this aggression and then the frustration that there’s not enough protection for health care workers, that’s a very real issue.

A new attending physician, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, joins the cast this season. Sepideh Moafi plays her, and she works closely with the veteran attending physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle. What are your — and Robby’s — first impressions of her?

Right off the bat in the first episode, people get to meet this brilliant firecracker. Dr. Al-Hashimi, versus Dr. Robby, almost represents two generations of attending physicians. They’re almost on two sides of this coin, and there’s a little bit of clashing.

Sepideh Moafi, fourth from left, as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, the new attending physician, huddles with her team around a patient in a fictional Pittsburgh teaching hospital in the HBO Max series The Pitt.

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Part of that clash is her clear-eyed take on artificial intelligence and its role in medicine. And she thinks AI can help doctors document what’s happening with patients — also called charting — right?

Yep, Dr. Al-Hashimi is an advocate for AI tools in the ER because, I swear to God, they make health care workers’ lives more efficient. They make things such as charting faster, which is a theme that shows up in season two.

But then Dr. Robby gives a very interesting rebuttal to the widespread use of AI. The worry is that if we put AI tools everywhere, then all of a sudden, the financial arm of health care would say, “Cool, now you can double how many patients you see. We will not give you any more resources, but with these AI tools, you can generate more money for the system.”

The new installment also continues to touch on the growing corporatization of medicine. In season one we saw how Dr. Robby and his staff were being pushed to see more patients.

Yes, it really helps the audience understand the kind of stressors that people are dealing with while they’re just trying to take care of patients.

In the first season, when Dr. Robby kind of had that back and forth with the hospital administrator, doctors were immediately won over because that is such a big point of frustration — such a massive barrier.

There are so many more themes explored this season. What else should viewers look forward to?

I’m really excited for viewers to dive into the character development. It’s so reflective of how it really goes in residency. So much happens between your first year and second year of residency — not only in terms of your medical skill, but also in terms of your development as a person.

I think what’s also really fascinating is that The Pitt has life lessons buried in every episode. Sometimes you catch it immediately, sometimes it’s at the end, sometimes you catch it when you watch it again.

But it represents so much of humanity because humanity doesn’t get put on hold when you get sick — you just go to the hospital with your full self. And so every episode — every patient scenario — there is a lesson to learn.

Michal Ruprecht is a Stanford Global Health Media Fellow and a fourth-year medical student.

Lifestyle

In Beauty, Private Equity Is Hot Again

Published

10 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

As strategic firms slow down their shopping sprees and venture capital dollars dry up, PE firms’ reputation for asset stripping is a thing of the past. Founders are now often hoping for private equity buyouts, but want to be sure there can be a true partnership.

Lifestyle

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Published

21 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Two fiction books about good friends coming from different circumstances. Two biographies of people whose influence on American culture is, arguably, still underrated. One Liza Minnelli memoir. These are just a handful of books coming out in the first few months of 2026 that we’ve got our eye on.

Fiction

Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza, Feb. 3

Garza, who won a Pulitzer in 2024 for memoir/autobiography, actually first published Autobiography of Cotton back in 2020, but it’s only now getting an English translation. The book blends fiction with the author’s own familial history to tell the story of cotton cultivation along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Crux, by Gabriel Tallent, Jan. 20

Tallent’s last novel, My Absolute Darling, was a harrowing coming of age story about a teenage girl surviving her abusive survivalist father. But it did find pockets of beauty in the outdoors. Tallent’s follow up looks to be similarly awestruck by nature. It’s about two young friends, separated by class and opportunity, but bound together by a love of rock climbing.

Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy, Jan. 20

The former iCarly actress’ bracing and brutally honest memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was a huge hit. It spent weeks on bestseller’s lists, and is being adapted into a series for Apple TV+. Now McCurdy’s set to come out with her fiction debut, about a teenage girl who falls for her high school creative writing teacher.

Kin, by Tayari Jones, Feb. 24

Similarly to Crux, Kin also follows two friends across the years as options and opportunities pull them apart. The friends at the center of this book are two women who grew up without moms. Jones’ last novel, 2018’s An American Marriage, was a huge hit with critics.

Seasons of Glass & Iron, by Amal El-Mohtar

Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories, by Amal El-Mohtar, March 24

El-Mohtar is an acclaimed science-fiction writer, and this book is a collection of previously published short stories and poetry. Many of the works here have been honored by the big science-fiction/fantasy awards, including the titular story, which is a feminist re-telling of two fairy tales.

Nonfiction

A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, by Gisèle Pelicot, Feb. 17

Pelicot’s story of rape and sexual assault – and her decision to wave anonymity in the trial – turned her into a galvanizing figure for women across the world. Her writing her own story of everything that happened is also a call to action for others to do the same.

Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, by Andy Beta, March 3

For decades, the life and work of Alice Coltrane has lived in the shadow of her husband, John Coltrane. This deeply researched biography hopes to properly contextualize her as one of the most visionary and influential musicians of her time.

Football, by Chuck Klosterman, Jan. 20

One of our great essaysists and (over?) thinkers turns his sights onto one of the last bits of monoculture we’ve got. But in one of the pieces in this collection, Klosterman wonders, how long until football is no longer the summation of American culture? But until that time comes, there’s plenty to dig into from gambling to debates over the true goat.

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli, with Michael Feinstein, March 20

Minnelli told People that previous attempts at telling her story “didn’t get it right,” so she’s doing it herself. This new memoir promises to get into her childhood, her marriages, and her struggles with substance abuse.

Tom Paine’s War: The Words that Rallied a Nation and the Founder of Our Time, by Jack Kelly, Jan. 6

If you haven’t heard, it’s a big birthday year for America. And it’s a birthday that might not have happened if not for the words of Thomas Paine. This new book from historian Jack Kelly makes the argument that Paine’s words are just as important and relevant to us today.