As church leaders and parents seek to support Gen Z, understanding their emotional challenges, struggles and aspirations is key for meaningful connection.

This month’s State of the Church release produced in partnership with Gloo reveals a generation logging in online yet longing for authentic community, wrestling with anxiety yet seeking purpose and navigating adult pressures while hoping for a better world.

With intentionality, the Church can bring a unique perspective to mental health discussions concerning Gen Z. Church is also one of the places where the kind of rich community and support that Gen Z desire is naturally facilitated.

Explore the latest research in this series to grow your understanding of Gen Z’s mental health and lead and minister in a way that speaks directly to their needs and priorities.

This content is part of Barna's State of the Church initiative, produced in partnership with Gloo.

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Craving Connection: Understanding Gen Z’s Relationship with Technology

As digital natives, Gen Z’s relationship with technology is deeply engrained in how they process and show up in the world, making technology a crucial part of conversations about this generation’s mental health. This is also a topic that’s front of mind for parents as 60 percent of parents tell Barna they are concerned about their child’s daily amount of screen time.

Based on our research, nearly all Gen Z use social media daily (97%, with 64% checking throughout their day), meaning significant hours spent online. A recent report from Common Sense Media also found that 50 percent of teens receive at least 237 notifications on their devices every day, resulting in constant disruptions and distractions.

Barna’s Gen Z Volume 3 report shows Gen Z is aware that ballooning screen time could be a negative thing—85 percent admit that their generation spends too much time online, and 68 percent agree “I wish I spent less time online.” More tellingly, over half (54%) strongly agree that in-person relationships are more valuable than digital ones. Gen Z recognize their own overreliance on technology even as they participate in it.

There's an opportunity to help young people stay rooted in the real world and engage beyond the screens they’ve grown up with. Church community—with its models of authentic connection through worship, service, discipleship and fellowship—can offer Gen Z something more: an opportunity to be transformed through the power of being fully present and active participants in their physical communities.

Personal Flourishing Is a Top Priority for Gen Z

Gen Z approaches life with a focus on well-being and self-improvement. When asked about their personal goals, their priorities speak volumes: being happy ranks highest (65%), followed by financial stability (53%) and maintaining good mental and emotional health (49%). These three priorities directly align with key dimensions of human flourishing measured in the Barna ChurchPulse assessment—a valuable tool that church leaders can access via Barna Access Plus to better understand and support young congregants.

Gen Z’s priorities reflect a generation navigating a complex world, seeking personal security and fulfillment in tangible ways. Gen Z’s emphasis on happiness and well-being also demonstrates their desire for personal flourishing over traditional markers of success like career or family, which is very different from previous generations.

Beyond personal goals, they also want systemic change when it comes to mental health. When asked to select the top causes they care about (from a list of 22 provided by Barna), nearly half (47%) say “accessible mental health support” (third on their list overall).

By meeting Gen Z where they are—focused on happiness, stability and mental health—churches can introduce them to a faith in God that addresses their immediate concerns while inviting them into something larger than themselves.

Gen Z's Emotional Challenges Mark a Unique Opportunity for the Church

Uncertainty, loneliness and isolation are common realities among Gen Z. Based on a 2024 Barna poll, 39 percent of Gen Z say they frequently feel uncertain about the future, with an equal number reporting anxiety about important decisions. This is more than double the rate of frequent uncertainty and anxiety among Boomers and Elders (16%).

Alongside this, nearly one in three Gen Z (29%) reports frequently feeling lonely—again, a significant contrast to older generations, where only 4 percent of Elders and 8 percent of Boomers experience persistent loneliness. Similarly, one in four Gen Z (26%) frequently feel isolated, compared to just 5 percent of Elders, 8 percent of Boomers and 15 percent of Gen X.

These are persistent emotions shaping how Gen Z navigates life.

The data reveals a generation wrestling with questions about their purpose and place in the world, even while having unprecedented access to (and interest in) mental health resources. They possess a broader vocabulary for emotional struggles than previous generations did—yet this awareness doesn’t eliminate their uncertainty and anxiety.

Church leaders, however, can find encouragement: in our ongoing research of Gen Z, we see that young people with deep, engaged Christian faith consistently report less frequent issues with emotional well-being compared to their peers.

Looking ahead, the data invites churches to create comprehensive approaches to Gen Z support that integrate meaningful spiritual formation with mental health resources, creating environments where young people can flourish emotionally and spiritually.

Editor's note: Discover how the Gen Z in your church are faring right now by deploying The Getting to Know Gen Z Assessment. There's also an accompanying parent assessment you can deploy to learn where parents of teens may need extra support.

Growing Pains: Gen Z’s Difficult Jump Into Adulthood

For Gen Z, the leap from teenager to young adult is a giant one. Our research reveals a dramatic shift between Gen Z teens (ages 13–17) and Gen Z young adults (ages 18–24) marked by intensifying internal struggles as they face the realities of adulthood.

Here are three areas to watch:

Overwhelm: The percentage of Gen Z who always feel overwhelmed triples from adolescence to young adulthood (31% vs. 10%). Additionally, while only 7 percent of Gen Z teens report always feeling uncertain about the future, this jumps to 29 percent among young adults.

Self-Criticism: Gen Z young adults are more than twice as likely as Gen Z teens to always feel critical of themselves (38% vs. 16%). This self-judgment can also manifest as perfectionism, especially among young women—56 percent of female young adult Gen Z report always or usually feeling they need to be perfect.

Fear of Failure: Gen Z young adults are nearly three times more likely than teens to always feel afraid to fail (38% vs. 14%). And while 17 percent of Gen Z teens report always feeling pressure to be successful, this more than doubles to 41 percent among young adults.

This all paints a picture of young people struggling to find solid footing. Having weathered the pandemic during formative educational years, they’re now starting life as an adult amid economic pressures like recession and inflation. For ministry leaders, this transition represents a critical opportunity. Young adults need robust support systems and guidance that addresses both their practical challenges and deeper questions.

Gen Z & Trauma: Supporting a Generation Through Difficult Experiences

Many Gen Z face genuine traumatic experiences that require our compassionate response, yet they also need guidance to develop resilience when navigating life’s ordinary challenges and disappointments.

Nearly one in three Gen Z (31%) tells Barna they’ve personally experienced a traumatic event. Our survey defines this as “extreme violence, abuse or a near-death experience producing intense fear, helplessness or horror.”

Age, Gender & Ethnicity Differences

Personal experiences with trauma increase dramatically among Gen Z young adults compared to teens (41% vs. 16%). Female Gen Z are also significantly more likely than male Gen Z to report experiencing trauma (34% vs. 28%). Asian Gen Z stand out as being the least likely to say they have experienced physical, psychological or emotional trauma (14% vs. 33% of white Gen Z, 32% Black, 32% Hispanic and 29% of other ethnicities).

The Church’s Response

Gen Z is coming of age in a very emotionally and mentally aware culture, stressing the importance of the messages communicated to young people about dealing with difficult circumstances and experiences.

Expert interviewees for Barna’s Gen Z Mental Health & Well-Being report stress that, at the extremes, current culture has become oversaturated in the language of self-help and self-diagnosis.

An article in Psychology Today also notes, “Over the last few years, ‘trauma’ has become one of those household terms everyone talks about. It has infiltrated our language, our narratives about the world, our relationships, and, in some cases, our sense of identity. The price of increased awareness and lower stigma, which are definitely positive developments, is that our understanding of what trauma is (and what it’s not) might be diluted or distorted.”

How the Church frames and talks about suffering and mental well-being matters. By growing in knowledge on the topic of mental health and building relationships with mental health professionals in the community, Christian leaders can help young people reframe their difficult experiences from a negative self-fulfilling prophecy to a time for lament and envisioning a hopeful future.