Millionaire podcaster Mel Robbins hits back at Gen Z’s lazy label—she says they’re stuck in a world their baby boomer parents wouldn’t even recognize

Gen Z has been branded a “lazy” generation of workers, marked by their Tik Tok addiction and work-from-home allegiance. But multi-millionaire podcast personality Mel Robbins hit back at critics who slam the next generation of workers—and even encouraged them to step into their shoes and see if they’d like it. “We sit here and we look at twentysomethings and we’re like, ‘Oh, they’re weak or addicted to social media, or all anxious,’” Robbins said in a video posted to her Tik Tok last year. “Have you stopped to consider what it’s like to be a twentysomething today?” Robbins’s empathy for older Gen Z and young millennials is in stark contrast to the negativity clogging the feeds of young people. Whole Foods’ former CEO John Mackey said young people “don’t seem like they want to work”; Whoopi Goldberg criticized Gen Z and millennials for not “bust[ing] their behinds” like her generation did, and that they only want to work four hours a day. Actress Jodie Foster deemed her Gen Z employees “really annoying” and difficult to work with. But Robbins asserted that older generations wouldn’t know what it’s like to navigate adulthood in the 2025, like homeownership being “out of reach,” a ballooning generational wealth gap, and colossal student loan debt. “The average 20-year-old today is under so much stress and pressure and chaos right now,” Robbins said. “And it’s not stress and pressure and chaos that existed five or six years ago.” Robbins’s advice for Gen Z: ‘If you feel lost, I’m not surprised’ It’s tough out there for 20 somethings. They’re finding out the hard way that following the exact formula of their parents—going to a prestigious school, completing internships in undergrad, and catapulting into a lush job market—is broken. Gen Z wound up with the short end of the stick, Robbins said. “The world is in chaos—and most twenysomethings had parents that lived in a very predictable, stable economy,” Robbins continued. “They went to a corporate job, they reported to the of