maslow

a magazine for human needs

Author: Chloe Mansola

  • Is the UK’s generational divide growing?

    Is the UK’s generational divide growing?

    A new report argues that the UK is facing a stark level of age segregation – in how we live both online and in the real world. Its authors argue we need a new approach to connection, cohesion and care 

    The growing generational divide in the UK has led to declining trust among neighbours, weakened social ties, huge financial strains on young people and a growing sense of isolation and loneliness on both sides of the age scale, according to a new report.

    The report, Divided Kingdom, published last month by Intergenerational England, found that the UK is experiencing a stark level of age segregation, both in how we live and how we interact online.

    A “deepening divide fuels mistrust between generations and means we risk losing the well-evidenced benefits of intergenerational connection,” Bobby Duffy, Professor at King’s College London and Director of the university’s Policy Institute, says in the report. “Now is the time to act for our health, communities and shared future.”

    “When we fail to integrate values and insights from younger generations, we risk stagnation. Wisdom does not only flow from the top down. The iconic “Okay, Boomer” meme served as a warning that cultural deafness leads to disconnection.”

    Deborah Heiser PhD, TEDx speaker and CEO/Founder of The Mentor Project, told Maslow: “When we fail to integrate values and insights from younger generations, we risk stagnation. Wisdom does not only flow from the top down. The iconic ‘Okay, Boomer’ meme served as a warning that cultural deafness leads to disconnection.”

    The Divided Kingdom report claims that young people in the UK are facing a wellbeing crisis, compounded by structural issues such as digital overwhelm and a cost-of-living crisis that disproportionately affects younger generations. 

    The report claims that one in five children and young people aged eight to 25 in England have a probable mental health disorder, with rising levels of anxiety, depression, and disengagement from school and community life.

    Loneliness is increasingly a generational issue, not just a matter of lacking social networks of our peers, the report claims. Loneliness increases the risk of early death by 26 per cent, and social isolation has the same health impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness has also been shown to double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. 

    Despite clear benefits, regular intergenerational interaction is limited in the UK. Only seven per cent of care home residents report regular interaction with anyone under age 30, according to Care England (2023). Just 17 per cent of UK adults regularly engage with people from a different generation in community spaces. 

    Home sharing: an affordable and bonding solution

    Caroline Cooke, founder of Share and Care Homeshare, the largest and most experienced homeshare organisation in the UK, says, “We set it up because my dad was living with dementia, my mum had mobility issues, and I thought ‘God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there could be something like au pairs for the elderly’ and realized there were versions of home shares around the world.”

    The concept of home sharing – a homeowner with an affordable spare room to offer to a sharer who can offer around 10 to 15 hours a week of care and company – has been around since the 1980s and Share and Care was established in 2006. “The care may involve getting the shopping, cooking a few meals a week, changing light bulbs, carrying heavy things,” Caroline says.

    Home shares rely on the concept of two parties helping each other though they consider much more than that; when matching people always take personalities into account. “We want to create a real connection between the two, classical music or a love for East Enders,” Caroline says.

    “Living with a woman in her 80s has taught me such a lot about life, and inspired how I’d like to be and who I’d like to become when I’m in my 80s.“

    Home shares address the huge cost and wellbeing issues facing young people. The Intergenerational England report found that economic challenges are compounding the sense of disconnection between generations. Renters spend around 40 per cent of their income on housing. These financial strains, the report claims, intensify the barriers between generations. While finding a way to cope with these financial pressures, in a homeshare, young people are giving something back as well. 

    “One of our sharers was an NHS nurse,” Caroline says, “at the end of three years she was able to put a deposit down on her own home which she never would have been able to do if she had been paying normal rent.”

    One 30-year-old Share and Care user says: “living with a woman in her 80s has taught me such a lot about life, and inspired how I’d like to be and who I’d like to become when I’m in my 80s.”

    Another user, 49, says, “Living with someone with dementia gave me a completely new insight. I’ve learned how to see the real person behind the dementia mask and above all I’ve learned immensely about myself. All in all, this experience gives me a sense of purpose which I am grateful for.”

    Liz and M, a home sharer and home owner. Pic: Share and Care

    Caroline remembers one homeowner who was a retired professor with dementia. “He still wanted to have value, so Share and Care matched him with a mature PhD medical student in her late 20s. They shared for a year-and-a-half. While she was off at university he had a wonderful library, he’d go through his books and the news and at dinner they’d discuss what he’d read and he’d help her with her studies,” she says. “Another elderly lady would help her sharer with dating advice, they’d discuss whether to swipe left or right.” 

    Another homeowner helped her sharer learn how to propagate plants, Caroline says, “Even if it’s just learning a favorite recipe, some words of wisdom never go amiss,” she says. Home sharing is a daily chance to learn about the past instead of just living in the present. In fact, 96 per cent of sharers and owners reported improved quality of life.

    Home shares, social mixing and day to day connections with people  on the opposite side of the generational spectrum are good for our mental and physical health, our bank accounts and repair the harmful cultural tensions between generations. 

  • The corporate girlies and finance bros who are clocking out of the rat race

    The corporate girlies and finance bros who are clocking out of the rat race

    Why are twenty-somethings more motivated by work-life balance, meaning and financial independence than status and what does this mean for young people’s careers?

    “If you do end up in a corporate job you don’t care about, obviously you’re not going to care about climbing the career ladder,” says Alex*, 25, who works in corporate software engineering in Amsterdam.

    Morally speaking, Alex does not feel aligned with the company’s investments and purposefully tries to keep his personal time completely independent of his career. He isn’t alone. The quiet quitting trend – people actively disengaging from their jobs by fulfilling only their jobs basic requirements – pointed to a huge amount of gen Zs that want to completely uninvest from their professional lives. 

    Outside of work hours Alex has started a film podcast with a friend and is learning jiu jitsu. He recently tried to get out of corporate life and go down the PhD route and though that didn’t work out, one possible eventual escape plan is still academia.The reason young people might be switching off and becoming disillusioned from the corporate world is laid out in Deloitte’s gen Z and millennials report on attitudes to money, meaning and well-being.

    The report, published in May, found that while the vast majority of gen Zs value learning when choosing their employers, they are not interested in promotions or management. Only six per cent of gen Zs said their primary career goal is to reach a leadership role. Instead, they prioritise finding meaningful work, wellbeing and money; “a ‘trifecta’ that can be hard to find,” the report states. “They have high expectations for their employers… and many feel their managers are not meeting their needs”.

    Info: A Person Tearing Apart a Piece of Paper. Pic: Pexels

    The report noted the generation’s lack of interest in the distasteful demands of leadership. Gen Z do not see the time and energy required outside of work hours for such promotions as worth the career reward, the report says. Alex feels the findings of the report apply to him. “Young people also see what it takes to get there and don’t want to do it,” he says. “I think they don’t want to be managers. You have to be shitty to people and get them to do what you want.”

    Corporate environments have also changed since the time millennials and gen Z were moving up that hierarchy. A lot of companies now pretend there is no clear-cut internal power ranking, Alex explains, a trend acknowledged by the BBC when they reported that companies were implementing organisational changes to flatten the pecking order. “It’s like the upper management is this elite club, so if there’s less of a clear hierarchy there’s less to strive for,” Alex says. So, after ending up in a meaningless job you don’t care about, your leadership ambitions out the window, what is there to aim for? 

    Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author, has made headlines with his new book, Moral Ambition, directed at the skilled and educated young people who he says consistently get lost in what he calls the “Bermuda triangle of talent” – consultancy, corporate law and finance.

    In the book, Bregman argues young people should channel their ambitions into solving the huge moral problems facing our own and future generations, and put their ideals to work. Bregman finds historical examples of such a channeling of energy, like the British abolitionists in the late 18th century who were largely business owners. But is it realistic to expect young people to decide to prioritise moral ambition over material concerns? 

    “Ambition is now a part of the morally satisfying, financially unrewarding path-less-travelled. Moral ambition is a material challenge.”

    Despina, 25, tried to put Bregman’s principles into practice. After graduating from a Russell Group university, she became a project manager for a healthcare NGO in Athens, Greece. While she says she was doing a huge amount of socially meaningful and morally satisfying work, she was being asked to put in more time and effort than she felt would normally be expected from someone in a nine to five, and for very little pay. Since she was living at home at the time, the issue of low pay didn’t concern her. “I felt so helpless knowing the scale of some of the issues I care about, but at least while I was working there, I felt like I was doing something,” Despina says. “I didn’t care about the pay but that’s because I was lucky and could live at home. I’m not sure I would have felt the same if I had to pay rent.”

    Beyond her finances, the lack of work-life balance expected of her by the organisation was unsustainable. “I did not feel satisfied with the work-life balance, and the moral satisfaction didn’t help, because most of my overtime and stress came from bureaucratic processes and internal organisational issues, not from the actual work itself,” she says. This balance was also off during Despina’s fieldwork with the NGO. “We were working extremely long days, but then it actually felt worth it, because I was having a tangible impact on something. So there, I didn’t mind, but most of the time it wasn’t like that.”

    Alistair Stirling, founder of Stirling Careers Consultancy agrees with Deloitte’s findings. “Those two things,” meaning money and work-life balance, “do seem to be the two main things for gen Z,” he says. “They’re definitely very careful about what they want to do. I think they would definitely look at the background of the organisation, and if they don’t like it, not apply. It’s a factor.” 

    “In terms of moral satisfaction, as a freelancer, I set my own guidelines. I don’t apply for jobs at companies that make or use weapons, I don’t apply for jobs at companies that have committed wage theft. I do a general background check on the company. I find a lot more ‘purpose’ in the stuff I do outside of work around community organizing.”

    Aaron Yin, 30, influencer and social organiser who quit his corporate job. Pic: Aaron Yin

    Aaron Yin, 30, a TikTok and Instagram influencer, went viral last year for a similar take on corporate careers. “I don’t want to make more money to have to spend that money on more therapy,” he says in the post, which has now amassed over 185,000 views. He quit his corporate sales job in Autumn of 2024 and became a freelancer but outside of his paid work is very politically active on social media as a sort of community organising influencer. The latter is what he finds more purpose in, he says. He now lives paycheck to paycheck and has exhausted all his savings.

    “Mentally though, I feel great,” Aaron says. Aaron does a general background check on every company he applies to work with. “In terms of moral satisfaction, as a freelancer, I set my own guidelines,” he says. “I don’t apply for jobs at companies that make or use weapons, I don’t apply for jobs at companies that have committed wage theft. I find a lot more ‘purpose’ in the stuff I do outside of work around community organizing.”

    Alice Stapleton, London based career coach, tod Maslow that, while her gen Z clients are driven to earn well, they are also looking for meaningful work that makes a difference. “Most are willing to compromise on money (to a degree) in order to find work that they enjoy, is reflective of their values and what they want to stand for in this world,” she says.

    Alex’s situation is an example of Bregman’s picture of gen Z. Young people become trapped in corporate fields because they’re simply the ones that pay enough. “I agree that people end up getting swallowed up by corporate jobs,” Alex says, “but the reason is that it’s the only option that provides any economic safety.” While being morally driven to a spiritually rewarding field, the material conditions required by those jobs block the talented young people Bregman is addressing.

    For gen Z, ambition is no longer a corporate or entrepreneurial instinct. Ambition is now a part of the morally satisfying, financially unrewarding path-less-travelled. Moral ambition is a material challenge. “What I see is an enormous waste of talent,” Rutger told the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast. The choice for gen Z seems to be between wasting their talent on a nine to five they hate or wasting time and money on a healthy conscience.

    *Name changed for anonymity

  • Why book talk is the new small talk

    Why book talk is the new small talk

    The silent and walking London book clubs introducing lonely young people to books and friends

    Every Friday at 7pm, Andrew logs onto his computer and, in the company of 10 to 15 relative strangers, settles into an hour of uninterrupted reading of one of the four or five books he has on the go at all times. 

    This week, it’s Stephen King’s Black House. In this silent book club, people meet up online and spend one hour reading, with their microphones muted… in absolute silence. They talk about their book before and after the allotted silent time – but for 60 minutes, they read their personal books, alone, simultaneously.

    The London Silent Book Club is part of an international collection of Silent Book Clubs with offshoots in over 55 countries. Readers meet up either in person or on Kumospace – a video conferencing platform – and introduce themselves and the books they’re reading. There are a few more London Silent Book Club groups that meet in person but less frequently at Kings Place.

    Meanwhile, across the city, dozens of Londoners stride across Hampstead Heath discussing Emily Rhodes’ pick that month. Emily, the organiser of Emily’s Walking Book Club, which started in 2012 as an extension of her work as a bookseller at Daunt Books, wanted to combine walking with her and her customers’ mutual love of books.“Maybe we could have a book club,” she thought, “but instead of sitting inside, the landscape could somehow inform our discussions.” Since then, once a month, a friendly, bookish group around 75 to 100 people of all ages meet up in Regent Park and Hampstead Heath for a walk and talk about the literary pick. In sunny May, about 35 arrived at the Heath to discuss Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts.

    Emily’s Walking Book Club during a meeting. Pic: Emily Rhodes

    These clubs are part of a larger and well-established trend. Summer 2024 was ‘book girl summer’, a time when books became a gen Z accessory. The fad rode on the coattails of the popularity of reading content creators on BookTok and BookTube (reading content on TikTok and YouTube) and celebrity it-girl book clubs like Kaia Gerber’s and Dua Lipa’s.

    Given the widely reported on global loneliness epidemic, the rise of book clubs could become an antidote. In May, a study by The Queen’s Reading Room, Queen Camilla’s charity promoting reading, found that reading for five minutes can reduce stress by 20 per cent, and that reading fiction can significantly reduce feelings of loneliness.

    The National Literacy Trust’s research on reading and empathy also found that one in five people read to feel connected with the world, one in 10 read because it helps them spend time with others and one in three said reading helps them understand the views of others. Reading, in reducing stress and encouraging connection and empathy, provides young people with an opportunity for community building and self-fulfilment.

    In their first meeting this June, the London Silent Book Club held a delightful post-reading rundown. The meeting chat pinged every few minutes with links to recommendations and book launches; one member’s cat even made an appearance. “Cats and books,” joked Beena, the club’s co-organiser, “cats and books.” Beena joined the club after her first cat died, and she had her first Christmas alone in lockdown. She struggled with the loss greatly.

    Each member has a unique story about why they started attending. “I was very ill at the time,” Andrew says, “and started reading more and saw the book club online. I tried for many years to read at home on my own and it never worked; I don’t remember one single day that I was able to. I always had other thoughts in my mind.”

    “The books are sort of a common ground. It’s very hard to make small talk with strangers, but this is big talk.”

    The book club motivated Andrew, who studied literature. From reading 25 books a year before joining, he now reads up to 45. “Getting to know the people there and managing to read more and socialise more helped me in my personal journey”, he says. “Generally,” Andrew smiles, “the talking lasts longer than the reading.”

    Naomi, in her twenties, loves that the Silent Book Club guarantees an hour of reading a week – not a given in a world of infinite doom scrolling and diminishing attention spans. Research suggests that the more time spent online, the more removed from any kind of community bond. According to Sprout Social young people between the ages of 18 and 24 spend the most time online of any age group, averaging six hours, followed by those 25 to 34 with almost five hours.

    The infamous loneliness epidemic, now a consistent cultural talking point, seems to have contributed to the rise of book clubs. The Office for National Statistics reported in January 2025 that four in 10 young adults report feeling lonely at least “some of the time.” Both the Silent Book Club and Emily’s Walking Book Club are at least partially reliant on the socialising opportunity they provide.

    Becky, screen name ‘Becky Bear’, a sci-fi reader in her late twenties, confided in the Silent Book Club, with her slight Southern American twang, that she’s a very introverted person. “So this is like my social hour,” she says.

    Ali, currently reading a book of Beatnik poetry, also emphasised the social side of the reading group. “I think we’re going through a loneliness epidemic… for me, I’m consumed by loneliness, I don’t mind sharing it, I’m an open book. It’s just somewhere to be regularly,” he says.

    Andrew took advantage of the moment. “For the first few years of my hosting, it was always different faces… This is the first time I’ve seen so many people coming regularly for so long… I’d like to thank you all for that.” Every single member thanked him as well. This is much more than a book club.

    The pub table during the Bookworms Book Club meeting. Pic: Olivia Downes

    Members of the ‘Bookworms’ book club, all aged between 25 and 30, praised the experience for introducing a non-academic, non-professional and non-romantic commitment to their lives, while discussing Annika Norlin’s Colony. One member says, “I read the book differently knowing [they] were going to discuss it”.

    There is a social side to this book club as well as the others. “As you grow up people kind of silo off and you never get to combine groups,” Cami, 30, says. “But with the book club, it’s not about meshing groups; it happens naturally. You don’t have to make small talk, because there’s always going to be something to talk about. You can just cut to the good stuff.”

    On the Heath in May, members of Emily’s Walking Book Club chatted away, some bravely introducing themselves and others demurely finding their old acquaintances, until a hush fell as Emily began the meeting.

    Reading from her notes, which she always prepares in advance, Emily welcomed old and new faces from diverse backgrounds, with readers ranging from their mid-twenties to their mid-seventies. At regular intervals throughout the walk, these groups reshuffle, ensuring maximum social mixing.

    These group changes also allowed for a better interchange of ideas. In one group, a 23-year-old young woman, who had studied Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing at university, spoke about how different Whereabouts was to her other writing. In my next group, a man in his sixties who had come with his wife compared the book to Middlemarch. Something for everyone.

    Emily often hears visitors say that the book club is the first thing they do when they move to London. People make friends and move on to other things. “One German lady met this New Yorker and then they went off on holiday together,” Emily says.

    But why a walking book club, not simply a walking club or a social club? “The books are sort of a common ground,” Emily explains, “it’s very hard to make small talk with strangers, but this is big talk.”

    *Upcoming dates for Emily’s Walking Book Club can be found on Substack and the London Silent Book Club organise meetings on MeetUp.