Existential Dread Is Quietly Eating Gen Z's Retirement Savings

Young Canadians are not just being squeezed by the cost of living. New research from Canada Life and Deloitte Canada finds that Existential Dread — the ambient sense that the future may not arrive at all — is eroding retirement savings among young workers, playing as significant a role as cost-of-living pressures. The findings, reported by Wealth Professional in October 2026, suggest that the apocalypse content filling Gen Z's feeds is quietly costing them money.

The study drew on roughly 1,900 Canadian respondents, about two in five of them Gen Z, and used a randomized controlled experimental design to measure how Existential Dread changes financial behaviour. That design matters: instead of merely correlating screen time with thin savings, the researchers tested whether feeling that the future is bleak actually causes people to put less money aside.

The numbers behind the dread

The insurer's 2024 claims data show that Gen Z employees withdraw from registered retirement savings plans 12 per cent more often than Millennials did at the same age, and 42 per cent more often than Gen X. The study found that the behavioural data help explain the gap: Gen Z averages 74 minutes of doomscrolling a day, roughly 70 per cent more than the rest of the population — about four and a half extra hours a week. Each additional hour of daily doomscrolling corresponds to a 4.4 per cent lower probability of setting up automatic long-term savings contributions, while thinking about the end of the world one extra time per month is tied to a 4 percentage-point lower likelihood of holding long-term savings products.

And the effect is not limited to the young: Deloitte's senior manager of behavioural economics, Michelle Hilscher, told the outlet that across all generations, dwelling on the end of the world makes people 16 per cent less likely to own and enroll in long-term savings. In the researchers' framing, Existential Dread is not just a mood — it is a measurable drag on the decision to save.

The study found a stark cultural backdrop as well. Gen Z is twice as likely as the rest of the population to consume dystopian content several times a week, and 140 per cent more likely to discuss the end of humanity with friends and family that often. One in eight Gen Z respondents said they believe humanity will go extinct within their lifetime — perhaps the bluntest self-report of Existential Dread in the data.

Dread versus affordability

The obvious objection is that young workers simply cannot afford to save — a case made sharper by stubborn inflation and a generation rethinking what financial success even looks like. The study's answer is that both forces are real: Existential Dread matters as much as the price of rent, and it has been the under-covered half of the story. That reframes the problem: if Existential Dread is doing as much damage as tight budgets, then the way savings are pitched to young workers has to change too.

Fear-based campaigns backfire with Gen Z, who read them as manipulative; what resonates instead is resilience, agency, and small concrete steps. Kate Nazar, Canada Life's senior vice-president of workplace retirement and savings, said planning decades ahead is hard when the next 10 years feel uncertain — but when shown options that fit their reality, Gen Z workers can and do want to save. Messages that name Existential Dread honestly, then answer it with agency, tend to land better than warnings designed to scare.

What actually moves the needle

For young workers and the employers trying to keep them saving, the fixes are unglamorous. Auto-enrolment and default contributions work because inertia does the heavy lifting: employees who start at 2 to 4 per cent of pay tend to stay exactly there, which is why auto-escalation — nudging the rate upward over time — helps balances grow without demanding willpower. Framing matters as well: a tax-free savings account pitched to a 24-year-old as a resilience tool for whatever comes next may land better than the same account sold as a retirement vehicle — a flexibility mindset echoed by young workers redesigning their careers around independence.

Julia McGillis, the insurer's executive vice-president of workplace benefits and retirement, said the company sees an opening to make savings solutions more relevant, more accessible, and more flexible, with more choice built in. Canada Life has already begun acting on the findings, announcing more flexible workplace savings options — letting employees direct contributions to shorter-term goals while the employer match stays earmarked for retirement — plus a toolkit for employers, according to its news release.

The takeaway for Gen Z readers is blunt: the feeds are not neutral. If an hour of apocalypse content a day measurably lowers the odds of building long-term savings, then doomscrolling is not just a mood problem — it is a money problem. Existential Dread may feel abstract, but the savings gap it leaves behind is already showing up in the data.