The Intimacy Economy: Why Gen Z’s Emotional Protectionism Won’t Save Them

A generation that livestreams their trauma but considers hand-holding ‘cringe’ has built a romantic culture designed to produce the very loneliness it fears

Screens up, emotions down. This image captures the essence of Gen Z’s emotional protectionism, where digital interactions often replace the messiness — and magic — of real-world intimacy.

There’s a peculiar paradox unfolding in the bedrooms and group chats of Britain’s youth. A generation that will livestream their mental health struggles, crowd-source their career anxieties, and publicly dissect their trauma with the casual fluency of Sunday supplement columnists has decided that holding hands on a first date represents an unacceptable level of emotional exposure. Sex? Perfectly reasonable. Hand-holding? “There would be outrage,” according to one 18-year-old. “There would be uproar.”

One might be forgiven for thinking we’ve stumbled into a Restoration comedy reimagined by algorithm, where the codes of courtship have become so baroque that participants require a lexicon just to navigate basic human connection. Sneaky links. Zombies. Breadcrumbing. Cushioning…