We’ve turned exhaustion into entrepreneurship – and Gen Z is paying the price

The 'TikTok economy' dresses it up so that working two jobs and editing brand videos at midnight is the norm, then we’re told to be grateful because at least it's “flexible”.

What used to be a celebrated side hustle culture has become something more stark, because the same feeds that preach empowerment and wellness now sell escape routes from a system that no longer works for so many.

This simple truth behind side hustles is that most people aren’t chasing dreams, they’re just trying to stay afloat in a country where post-Brexit wages stall and the cost of everything else rises.

We’ve turned survival into a social feed spectacle - but it's no longer about building a business empire from your bedroom, but scrabbling for money to pay for rent, bills and food.

Gen Z didn’t invent this grind, they certainly didn't ask for it but have inherited a fractured, difficult world and have grown up adept at navigating through it.

They understand the mechanics of attention better than any other generation. If they’re going to live in a world that constantly demands visibility, they may as well use it to their advantage.

This means they film, document and post because visibility now feels like the only form of opportunity or even security, that remains. The internet has become their CV, shop window and safety net all in one.

But you can’t influence your way out of inflation; The cost of living crisis has exposed the limits of personal branding as a solution to structural problems. It’s not laziness or entitlement that is driving this generation online, but pragmatism and their own lived-in reality.

They know the old paths are blocked to home ownership, steady careers, affordable higher education, and they’re the first generation due to be less well-off than their parents. So they build new routes through life, however makeshift they may be.

This is a robust and resilient generation who have learned to find a way. This innate inventiveness is easy to overlook when you only see the Insta filters and Tiktok trends.

What comes next won’t be just another productivity hack or morning routine trend.  It's likely to be deliberate actions like logging off earlier, protecting downtime and refusing to monetise every hobby. Real empowerment will come from reclaiming rest and redefining success on saner terms.

Young people aren’t lazy, but can see through the false promise that constant activity equals progress and as much as they want to work, they also want to live. Born into uncertainty and shaped by a lockdown adolescence, they’ve learned to live for today and seek visceral human connections, through music, sport, friendship and everything else that makes being young in Britain still feel worthwhile.

They know how to create from scarcity and there’s something admirable in their practical optimism and the sense that if the system won’t build for you, you build anyway. Britain could learn from that.

Because if exhaustion really is our national work ethic, perhaps it will be the youngest generations who remind us that rest, imagination and community are not luxuries, but the foundations of any future worth having.

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James Kirkham is the Founder of ICONIC

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