Doomscrolling Is Wrecking Gen Z Savings, New Research Finds

Gen Z Savings is taking a hit from something that has nothing to do with pay stubs. New research from Canada Life and Deloitte Canada finds that young workers are saving for retirement at the same time they are raiding it — and that the doomscrolling habit so many carry in their pockets is quietly bending long-term financial behavior. The findings, released in October 2026, suggest that asking early-career workers to lock money away for four decades misses how they actually picture an uncertain future.

The study behind the warning drew on nearly nineteen hundred Canadian respondents, two in five of them Gen Z, using a randomized controlled experiment, with Deloitte following up through focus groups of Gen Z corporate employees, according to Canada Life's announcement. The headline finding reframes a familiar story: for this generation, cost-of-living pressure is only half the problem. The other half is that the future itself feels hard to imagine, so Gen Z savings behavior has become less about a distant retirement date and more about building the flexibility to adapt as circumstances change.

How Doomscrolling Bends Gen Z Savings

That is where the doomscrolling numbers get uncomfortable. Each additional hour of doomscrolling per day was linked to a lower chance of setting up automatic contributions toward long-term savings, according to the research. Workers who spend more time dwelling on worst-case futures were also measurably less likely to own or enroll in long-term savings at all — imagining the end of the world cut those odds by roughly one-sixth, said Michelle Hilscher, Deloitte's senior manager of behavioural economics, as reported by Benefits and Pensions Monitor. Gen Z, the study found, is about twice as likely as the rest of the population to consume dystopian content several times a week — a media diet that lines up with weaker Gen Z Savings habits.

The money is not just failing to go in; it is leaking out. Canada Life's claims data shows Gen Z employees pulling cash from their retirement accounts at a higher rate than millennials did at the same age, and at a still higher rate than Gen X, according to the company's announcement. Yet the same dataset complicates the gloom: today's thirty-year-old saves more and holds a bigger retirement balance than a thirty-year-old did in 2018. The generation is not refusing to save — it is saving on terms that match a shakier sense of the future.

What Redesigned Gen Z Savings Plans Look Like

In response, Canada Life is opening its workplace savings plans to shorter horizons. Employees can now direct their own contributions toward short- and medium-term goals while the employer match or contribution is still set aside for retirement. The rollout includes a practical toolkit — an assessment, communications guidance, templates and short-form video — plus a TikTok campaign aimed at lifting Gen Z Savings participation, according to the company's announcement.

Julia McGillis, the company's executive vice-president of workplace benefits and retirement, said retirement saving "may need to feel different too" for people who experience the future differently. Kate Nazar, senior vice-president of workplace retirement and savings, argued that asking young workers to plan decades out is a tough sell when even the next ten years feel uncertain. The research suggests tone matters as much as product: young workers responded most to messages about resilience, agency and empowerment — not fear. One twenty-six-year-old participant summed up the appeal of practical control, saying they wanted to know "what is within my control," according to the research. A TFSA offered alongside the retirement plan, payroll deductions, and plan reviews every few years round out the features Canada Life is pushing to employers.

Why This Matters Beyond Canada

For anyone tracking Gen Z Savings trends from a cubicle, the takeaway is less about one insurer and more about a shift in how employers are being told to talk to young workers. The old pitch — sacrifice now, retire at sixty-five — assumes a stable horizon. The new pitch meets people where their anxiety lives: emergency cushion first, near-term goals second, retirement running quietly in the background through the employer match. It is the same instinct visible in the broader drift toward cautious, low-drama investing we have covered in our Investing GenZ reporting, including the generation's swing toward steady ETFs over speculation.

The counterpoint deserves airtime. Retirement purists argue that every dollar diverted to short-term goals is a dollar that stops compounding for decades, and that redesigning plans around anxiety could normalize raiding retirement accounts rather than fixing the insecurity underneath. Canada Life's bet is the reverse: that plans which ignore how young workers feel will simply be opted out of, and that a flexible plan still beats an abandoned one. Whether the experiment works will show up in the numbers the industry already watches — auto-enrollment rates, early withdrawals, and Gen Z Savings balances at thirty-five. For now, the message is simple: the generation most likely to doomscroll its way to despair is also the generation most open to saving, as long as the saving feels like something they control.