Future You Has Notes
Pew Research Center counts anyone born from 1997 onward as Gen Z, so the oldest members turn 29 this year. Millennials had side parts and skinny jeans, and Gen X had frosted tips. Some of Gen Z's choices will just look dated in old photos. Others will land in a dermatologist's chart or on a credit report. Here's 20 habits that future you might want to reconsider.
1. Fast Fashion Hauls
Shein and Temu made it normal to order a few dozen pieces of clothing in one box and film yourself opening it. The clothes are mostly polyester, which is made from petroleum and doesn't break down in a landfill.
2. Nicotine Pouches
Zyn pouches sold out in stores across the US in 2024. Each one sits under your lip for up to an hour and delivers nicotine with no smoke or vapor to give it away.
3. Dry Scooping
Dry scooping means dumping powdered pre-workout straight into your mouth and chasing it with water. A single scoop of some brands carries 300 milligrams of caffeine or more, close to the 400 milligrams the FDA considers a reasonable daily ceiling for healthy adults. The powder can also get inhaled into your lungs on the way down.
4. Celebrity Energy Drinks
Prime Energy launched with 200 milligrams of caffeine per can, more than two 8.4-ounce cans of Red Bull. In 2023, Senator Chuck Schumer asked the FDA to investigate the brand over how heavily it was marketed to kids.
5. Chasing a Base Tan
The American Academy of Dermatology describes every tan as your skin reacting to DNA damage from UV rays. The Skin Cancer Foundation attributes about 90% of visible skin aging to the sun.
6. Nasal Tanning Sprays
TikTok helped popularize nasal sprays containing melanotan, a synthetic hormone that darkens skin without sun. Health regulators in Australia and the UK have warned that the products are unlicensed and can cause nausea and changes to moles. Most of it is sold online with no approved manufacturer behind it.
7. Gel Manicures
Researchers at UC San Diego exposed cells to radiation from UV nail dryers and reported cell death and DNA damage in a 2023 Nature Communications paper. The tests used human and mouse cell lines in dishes, so the long-term risk to real hands is still unclear.
8. Maxed-Out Earbuds
The World Health Organization estimates that more than a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss from unsafe listening habits. Noise-induced hearing loss is permanent, and it builds slowly enough to miss until the damage is done. Your iPhone will even send you a warning when your headphone volume has been too high for too long.
9. Scrolling Until 2 A.M.
Short-form video is built so the next clip starts before you decide to put the phone down. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends at least seven hours a night for adults.
10. Fine-Line Tattoos
Tiny, delicate tattoos photograph well at 22. Ink spreads under the skin over time, and thin lines placed close together can blur as the tattoo ages.
11. Rizz and Friends
Oxford University Press named rizz its Word of the Year in 2023. Ask any millennial how on fleek sounds today. Your kids will be quoting your old texts back to you at Thanksgiving.
12. The Skull Emoji
Gen Z uses 💀 to mean something was so funny it killed you. Millennials did the same thing with 😂, which Oxford Dictionaries named its Word of the Year in 2015.
13. Posting Everything Publicly
Hiring managers pay attention to your social media presence. In a 2018 CareerBuilder survey, 70% of employers said they screen job candidates on social media.
14. Getting News From TikTok
Pew's 2024 numbers put the share of US adults under 30 who regularly get news on TikTok at 39%. Of the popular news influencers Pew studied separately, 77% had no background or affiliation with a news organization.
15. Letting ChatGPT Do the Homework
By early 2025, 26% of US teens told Pew they had used ChatGPT for schoolwork, double the share from 2023. Writing an essay yourself is how you learn to build an argument on paper.
16. Sports Betting Apps
The Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, and most states have legalized it since. Betting apps now sit on the same phone as your group chat and send push notifications in the middle of games.
17. Buy Now, Pay Later for Everything
Services like Klarna and Afterpay split purchases into four payments, and people now use them for groceries and takeout. Klarna even partnered with DoorDash in 2025 so customers could split food delivery orders. Stacking several plans at once makes it easy to lose track of what's due and when.
18. Dodging Phone Calls
Letting every call go to voicemail works fine until a recruiter or your landlord needs to reach you. A missed call from an unknown number might be spam, or it might be a phone screen for the job you applied to last week.
19. Skipping the Driver's License
Federal Highway Administration data shows a smaller share of teenagers getting licensed at 16 than in past decades. Rideshare apps make that easy in a big city. Moving somewhere without transit at 28 can turn learning to drive into a sudden emergency.
20. Vaping
Disposable vapes turned nicotine into something you can hit in a school bathroom without anyone smelling it. The CDC's 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey counted about 1.6 million middle and high school students still using e-cigarettes.
