Young people are describing pervasive numbness, lack of motivation, and an absence of drive or purpose.

Their struggles reflect the fragmenting of the social values and truths on which inner conviction depends.

Learning to be a friend might provide them, and us, some firm footing.

Feelings of emptiness and estrangement seem to be spreading in contemporary society, especially among the young. Why this is happening was the basis for an article, “A Brief History of Purpose-Seeking,” that I published in the January/February 2026 issue of Psychology Today. Not long after it came out, I received an astute letter from Sobia Mahmood, a Toronto-based registered psychotherapist, who gave me permission to quote it. She said she felt compelled to write because the article “articulated something I’ve been observing clinically for some time.”

Ms. Mahmood explains: “I work with children and adolescents, as well as adults, and increasingly I find myself sitting with young teens who describe pervasive numbness, lack of motivation, and an absence of drive or purpose. What stands out is that some of these youth do not identify a clear history of trauma or deprivation; some have supportive families and considerable intellectual capacity.”

She then gives the type of example that many other people who work with youth have reported: “a bright adolescent who knows she could excel academically if she applied herself, yet she sees little meaning or value in doing so and reports feeling this way since early childhood. She often questions the point of conventional paths such as a 9-to-5 career, sentiments that echo much of the discourse circulating on social media.”

Following on one of the points in the article, Ms. Mahmood also wonders if what she is “seeing clinically reflects a fragmentation or erosion of the internalized convictions that once helped structure identity and purpose.” Such inner convictions, I argued in “Brief History,” require external and stable........

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