Generation Z in London in times of social crisis: a phenomenological exploration of the experience of joy of living during national lockdown

This research project explored the experience of joy of living during the times of the COVID-19 Pandemic for eight young adults of Generation Z living in London. The exploration also covered the young adult’s generational self-identity and their views about the world of today. Generation Z or Gen Z is the generation of young adults born between 1995 and the early 2000s. The research aims were to identify what would motivate young adults to choose a “joy of living” philosophy of life and to get insight into the identity and values of this particular generation. The study particularly explored the participants’ experience of being a young adult in the world of today, their experiences of existential paradox and the possibility of choice for joy of living in the times of social crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection and the analysis was conducted using structural existential analysis, a qualitative phenomenological method that helped explore the experience of joy if living in crisis within the four existential realms of the participants (personal, relational, physical and spiritual).

The findings of this research study hold valuable potential to generate social impact. The results could encourage the young generation and other individuals in their search for joy of living. The results also reveal meaningful insights into generational identity and inter-generational communication. TRIBE which is an acronym for the core themes of the findings is proposed as an existential framework in working therapeutically with young adults.

This is a novel research topic for the fields of psychology and philosophy. The potential challenges and purposefulness of the project are also discussed in the sections of this thesis. The thesis consists of four core chapters, the Project Rationale, the Scoping Literature Search, the Systematic Literature Review, the Research Study and a concluding section of Final Thoughts. The systematic literature review and the research study chapters are stand-alone articles written in the format of academic articles as required by psychology journals.