I’ve had this blog for 11 years now, and over that time, I’ve received my fair share of intense emails. Some of them are thoughtful and engaged, but others—well, others have been what I can only describe as emotional dumping grounds. People projecting their entire inner world onto my inbox, often with a level of rawness that suggests they’re not quite equipped to process what they’re feeling. It took me a while to realize that some of these people were very young. They often hide their age, pretending to belong in spaces meant for a more mature audience. They use aliases, mimic adult language, and speak with a confidence that suggests they’ve already figured things out. And that confidence is part of the reason I’ve chosen to put some of my writing behind a paywall. Not because I don’t want to share, but because not everyone is ready for the level of depth I’m offering—and some people need to demonstrate a basic level of investment before they can truly receive what’s being given.
I remember being young and believing I was ready for adulthood, convinced that I had already outgrown my peers and that the world just wasn’t moving fast enough for me. That hunger for maturity is part of growing up.
But what I’m seeing in the current generations—Gen Z and Gen Alpha—goes beyond adolescent impatience. There’s an alarming sense of entitlement to adult spaces, adult information, and adult treatment, coupled with a lack of respect for authority and a dismissal of boundaries that used to be understood as protective, not restrictive. It’s easy to blame parenting, or screens, or the collapse of traditional institutions. And those factors matter. But there’s something else at work—something invisible that’s shaping these generations in ways that go beyond social or familial influence.
The Disappearing Space for Young People
One of the most overlooked factors in this shift is the dissolution of cultural spaces that were once designed specifically for pre-teens and teenagers. When I was growing up, there were entire television networks, magazines, and even sections of stores dedicated to the adolescent demographic. Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network produced content that was aimed directly at that in-between age—shows that were silly enough to be fun, but thoughtful enough to actually shape identity. They dealt with friendship, insecurity, first crushes, and the awkwardness of growing up in a way that felt grounded and relatable. They weren’t trying to be adult, and they weren’t talking down to kids. They were meeting them exactly where they were.
Those spaces have largely disappeared. Streaming services don’t prioritize that demographic in the same way because they’re chasing broader audiences and binge-worthy content. The result is that young people are being pushed either into sanitized preschool programming or straight into adult content with no bridge in between. Because they’re developmentally not ready for the themes they’re consuming, they end up absorbing behaviors and attitudes that belong to a much older stage of life. They’re learning to talk like adults, want like adults, and expect like adults before they’ve even had the chance to be children. That’s not their fault—it’s the environment they’ve been given. Without dedicated spaces to be young and figure themselves out in safety, they leap into the deep end and try to swim in waters they don’t yet understand.
The Planetary Signatures of Gen Z and Gen Alpha
To understand what’s happening, we have to look at the astrological backdrop these generations were born into. Gen Z, roughly defined as those born from the mid-1990s to around 2010, came of age under some of the most intense planetary transits in recent history. They are a Pluto in Sagittarius and Capricorn generation, meaning they’ve grown up in a world where truth is treated as subjective, institutions are collapsing, and authority is constantly being questioned. They’ve never known a world where adults were automatically trusted, and their skepticism has been earned through watching repeated failures in government, religion, and finance. This has made them deeply cynical but also fiercely independent, often rejecting traditional pathways altogether in favor of creating their own systems.
Gen Alpha, born from roughly 2010 onward, inherited an even more extreme version of this energetic terrain. Pluto, the planet of power, transformation, and structural collapse, moved through Capricorn for most of their early years and has now entered Aquarius, where it will remain for the next two decades. Under Pluto in Capricorn, we saw the dismantling of traditional hierarchies—trust in institutions eroded, and adults lost their automatic claim to respect simply by virtue of age. Under Pluto in Aquarius, that dismantling accelerates, but it now takes on a collective, almost ideological quality where questioning authority becomes a form of identity, not just a stance.
Meanwhile, Uranus in Taurus has been shaking up the material world—the body, the senses, and the physical structures we once took for granted. For both Gen Z and Gen Alpha, this has meant growing up in a world where the very concept of “natural” feels fluid. Gender, sexuality, biology—nothing feels fixed to them, and they’ve absorbed the message that they have the right to define themselves however they wish, often very early and without much counterbalance. Uranus in Taurus also governs entitlement to resources, which in their experience are usually just a tap or a click away. They’ve never known a world where information wasn’t free, where you couldn’t instantly access whatever you wanted, and where you had to earn your way into certain spaces. That has created a sense of entitlement that is not just psychological but structural.
Neptune in Pisces, which has been active since 2012 and will continue until 2026, adds a layer of blurred boundaries and dissolving distinctions. This is the planet of illusion, merging, and spiritual bypassing. Under its influence, everything flows together—child and adult, fantasy and reality, self and world. For Gen Alpha, there’s no firm line between where they end and the rest of the world begins, which makes them more open to different identities but also less able to understand that certain things are not appropriate for their age. Boundaries feel arbitrary to them, not protective, because they can’t quite grasp the consequences of what they’re absorbing or asking for. For Gen Z, Neptune in Pisces has made them highly intuitive but also prone to projection and confusion, often mistaking intense emotions for spiritual truth.
The Sephora Kid Phenomenon and Beyond
You’ve probably heard about the “Sephora kids” phenomenon—children as young as eight or nine using intensive anti-aging serums designed for adult skin, burning their delicate barriers because they’ve been consuming content meant for women in their thirties. That is a perfect microcosm of what is happening culturally. Gen Alpha is bypassing childhood entirely and heading straight for the worries and preoccupations of much older people. They are not just playing dress-up; they are adopting anxieties that their brains are not developmentally equipped to handle, and they are doing so with a sense of entitlement that says no one has the right to stop them.
This same pattern shows up in how they approach identity. Gen Z and Gen Alpha have grown up in a culture where gender is treated as fluid and self-determined, where they are told that their feelings are the ultimate authority on who they are. That is not inherently wrong, and for many young people, a supportive environment is necessary and affirming. But when combined with the planetary energies of blurred boundaries and collapsed authority, it can create a situation where children are making decisions about deeply serious matters before their brains or bodies have had time to catch up. There is a reason most developmental psychologists agree that identity formation takes time—it requires a certain level of cognitive and emotional maturation that cannot be rushed by good intentions. The insistence that children should be taken at their word, without room for the questioning or hesitation that comes with growth, is a direct reflection of the Neptune and Uranus transits dissolving the natural hesitance that used to accompany childhood.
Disrespect for Authority and the Collapse of Boundaries
Gen Z and Gen Alpha have also been raised in a world where traditional authority has been repeatedly discredited. They have watched adults fail them—in politics, in the environment, in economics—and they have internalized the message that no one is inherently more trustworthy than anyone else. That is not entirely unreasonable, but it is also not a sustainable foundation for a society. Without the ability to recognize genuine authority, or at least experience, they are left navigating a world where every opinion feels equally valid and every demand feels equally justified. This is where the planetary influence is most visible. Pluto in Aquarius is dismantling power structures, but it has not yet given rise to new ones that are grounded and trustworthy. We are in the messy middle, and both Gen Z and Gen Alpha are being raised in that gap, absorbing the chaos without any clear roadmap for how to navigate it.
The Spiritual Cost of No Boundaries
All of this has a spiritual dimension as well. When you don’t have boundaries, you cannot truly receive anything of depth. The spiritual path requires a degree of humility and surrender that is impossible when you believe you already know everything, or that your feelings should always be honored without question. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up with a spiritual bypass built into their very worldview. They believe they are special, that their intuition is infallible, and that they have access to truths that previous generations were too closed-minded to see. And sometimes that is true, but more often it is a narcissistic projection that keeps them from actually developing the kind of grounded wisdom that comes from years of real experience.
This is why I have put some of my content behind a paywall. It is not about exclusion—it is about filtering. It is about making sure that the people who are ready to engage with depth are the ones who find it, and that those who are not ready do not drown in material they cannot yet integrate. This generation needs boundaries. They need to be told no. They need to understand that not everything is for them, not yet, and that protection is not oppression. It is a hard message to deliver, especially when the cultural consensus says otherwise, but it is a necessary one.
The Long View
I don’t believe Gen Z or Gen Alpha are doomed. Every generation has its challenges, and every generation emerges with its own unique gifts. But I do believe we need to be honest about what we are seeing and what is behind it. The entitlement, the boundary-pushing, the confusion—these are not just parenting failures or screen addictions. They are the result of a planetary climate that is unprecedented in its intensity and complexity. We are living through a time when the very structures of identity and authority are being renegotiated, and the children born into this era are the ones who will have to figure out what comes next. They are not going to do that without guidance, and they are not going to do it without being told that they do not have to have it all figured out by age twelve or sixteen or even twenty.
I am not writing this to condemn them. I am writing this to remind myself—and anyone else who is paying attention—that there are forces at work beyond what we can see, and that understanding those forces is the first step toward navigating them with more grace, more patience, and more discernment.
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