Laziness is a behavior that young people have long excelled at. Recently, Gen Z has given the lying-around-in-bed kind of laziness a name: “bed-rotting.” The trend has hundreds of millions of views on TikTok. Gen Z claims that bed rot helps if you feel burned out from work, school, or social demands; one might binge-watch a TV show or snack all day on potato chips during a bed-rot session.

The bed-rot trend brings to mind what’s perhaps a cousin of laziness: uselessness. Wesley J. Smith wrote a post here last year about the transhumanist Yuval Harari’s theory that AI/human hybrids will take over the world. Harari hypothesized that those who refuse to join their minds with computer programs will become “useless people,” at which point we must figure out “what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless,” he said. “My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games.”

Smith remedies the uselessness theory with love:

Love isn’t something that transhumanists generally talk much about. I think that’s because it can’t be generated by taking a pill, editing genes, or melding with a computer algorithm. It isn’t transactional. The ability to love comes from being loved and practicing the virtues. No high-tech shortcuts. How boring.

Technology has already created a “useless” class, one that trends toward laziness and away from work, hobbies, or routine. It goes without saying that human lives are not ever useless, but one feels useless after a day spent vegging in bed.

Promotion of such lazy behavior, instead of behavior that refuels the mind or evokes the human capacity to love (social interaction, physical exercise, intellectual stimulation), furthers Gen Z’s mental-health crisis. Sixty-one percent of Gen Zs report feelings of anxiety or nervousness, and 42 percent report feeling hopeless and depressed, compared with 23 percent of individuals from older generations. Anxiety is no doubt made worse by the feeling of uselessness, and worse, the despair that a desire for uselessness causes. Lying around in bed staring at a screen is not a path toward solace or finding meaning.