Inside the Lives of Estranged Gen Z — and the Communities They’ve Found to Cope

Welcome to Group Project, a series on the many ways young people are building and engaging with community. From queer resistance to finding new hobbies to forging alternate paths, working together is more important than ever. Here's how young people are getting off their phones and seeking community IRL.

* Indicates that names have been changed for privacy.

TikTok creator Gabbi Hegedus says she hasn't spoken to her biological father in five and a half years. He had been in and out of her life since she was 3 years old, when her parents separated. When Hegedus went to college, she says he stopped reaching out to her completely.

"Me reaching out to him and just never getting a response or a call was hurting me more than helping me. So eventually, I just stopped doing that all together. As soon as I stopped trying, that's when there was no other contact again," she tells Teen Vogue in a Zoom interview.

Years went by and the Lexington, North Carolina native began dabbling with social media content creation on TikTok, mainly lifestyle videos. But in 2022, after a big move from her home state to San Diego, Hegedus felt compelled to make a different kind of video. Hegedus talked about her estrangement publicly for the first time.

"My fiancé was on FaceTime with his dad showing him our new apartment and it hit me. '[My dad] doesn't even know what state I live in.' So I posted that, essentially saying that feeling was weird," she says. "I think within an hour or two, it had over a hundred thousand views." Eventually, that video would reach 1.2 million views.

“I got really overwhelmed at first..I didn't want this to be part of my identity. But the comments I started to get were like ‘thank you for saying this, this is exactly how I feel.’ I started getting DMs from girls who were in high school and younger asking me [for] advice,” Hegedus says. "I was kind of shocked. I think it had 15,000 saves. What’s interesting is that half the people were in the same situation as me and the other half were significant others of people who were going through that."

The self-proclaimed Millennial/Gen Z-cusper had found, or maybe even helped create, an online community of estranged young people that she didn't even know existed, and it turns out, that community is pretty big.

At least 27% of adults over the age of 18 are estranged from a relative, according to a survey published in the 2020 book Fault Lines by Karl Pillemer, a Cornell professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology.

Research on estrangement has been, up until recently, sparse, particularly when it comes to estrangement data that focuses specifically on Gen Z (which is odd, considering that another study found that the average age of first paternal estrangement is 23 years old). But where the data lacks, the topic of toxic family dynamics seems to be increasing rapidly among younger generations.

There’s rapt interest in the lives of public figures with strained familial relations, like Miley Cyrus and father Billy Ray and Vivian Wilson and father Elon Musk (not to mention the explosive popularity of books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson and I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.)

Then, there’s social media. The phrase “parents estrangement” on Instagram populates an endless flow (probably hundreds or thousands) of quote and advice posts and videos that range from a couple hundred to millions of views per post. On TikTok alone, the phrase “no contact” is attached to at least 299,000 posts. The subreddit /EstrangedAdultchild boasts over 51,000 members.

It appears that for the first time, estranged people, especially the younger ones, are not just feeling seen after consuming media or reading a book on the topic. They've finally dedicated spaces to go to share their own stories with one another — and they’re going there to cope.

Whitney Goodman, a content creator and licensed therapist with a focus on toxic family relationships, runs an Instagram account called @sitwithwhit dedicated to unpacking estrangement among other therapy topics from a clinical level that has over half a million followers.

Followers can simply visit her page for static posts that explain how to handle difficult familial dynamics or videos with experts she interviews on her podcast that break down topics such as “When parents and adult children disagree about politics.” Or, they can join one of her support groups or chats, including an online community she founded for estranged people called “Calling Home” and an Instagram Broadcast support channel from her page named “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature, Narcissistic, and/or Abusive Parents.”

Goodman says her clients and followers range in age because estrangement impacts people across generations, though she can see that some of her younger clients have a different definition of what family is supposed to be in their lives than the older ones.

“There's certainly much more of a culture of ‘this is something that I'm able to do. I'm allowed to assert more authority over my life’,” she tells Teen Vogue.

In other words, young people are not the first to experience family estrangement, but they're not going to keep quiet about it, and they certainly don't want to experience this dynamic alone.

Callum*, a 23-year-old college student, says his estrangement from his family happened quickly. The Los Angeles resident identifies as transgender, and says that his immediate family’s invalidating behavior toward his expressed gender identity through both their politics and their micro-aggressions towards him played a big role in his decision to cut off contact with them when he was 21.

“One day I was just like ‘I’m going to leave, because I can’t take it anymore,’” he tells Teen Vogue in a Zoom interview from his dorm in LA, explaining that he was experiencing suicidal ideation at the time. “The thing that honestly made me be able to go was me thinking, ‘if I do nothing, if I stay here in this environment with these people, I guarantee I don't get better and they don't change. If I leave, I at least ensure I can get better.’ Me leaving wasn't just for myself. I think it was for them on some level too.”

“I felt like I had two options and it was to end my life or rip it up into a million pieces,” he adds. “At least if I made a mess of it, I could clean it up, you know? So I was like, ‘I'm gonna choose to make a mess of it.’”

Callum now pays for his college education on his own and has a support system in the form of a friend group, sharing that he spends holidays with his girlfriend or friends. But something was still missing; it’s a feeling that’s pronounced during those times of year, he says, but also in the small moments, like someone mentioning in passing that they need to call their mom.

"Obviously friends are a community, but it's really difficult when their lives look so different from yours,” he says, explaining what led him to make a post on Reddit, seeking out a place to vent, and advice, among other estranged Gen Z. “I just wanted to be affirmed I wasn’t crazy for feeling the way that I was feeling.”

While his post did get a few replies, Callum felt they were mostly from older people who kind of “mothered” him instead of forming solidarity with him. It was a reply to a comment on another platform that helped him feel the most seen.

“There was a girl on TikTok and we exchanged a couple words. She was sharing about how she was from Texas and her parents put her in conversation therapy, because she’s gay. Eventually she went to college and she half ghosted them or semi-estranged herself. And that was the closest I felt to being understood by somebody, especially in that relationship to estrangement.”

“There was a lot of commiserating over things our parents would say about us being queer. But also, ‘I feel alone,’ craving family, not just in a sense of craving community…” he pauses for a minute then clarifies: "Craving…‘shit, I wish I had a f*cking adult to talk to right now.’”

LGBTQ+ young people are more than twice as likely to be homeless due to estrangement or strained relationships with family than their straight cisgender peers. Queer youth of color are even more likely to face familial rejection. For estranged youth who may also be trans or queer like Callum, or deal with religious, geographical, or racial disparities, the desire to find people who just get it can be even stronger.

Ronan* also identifies as trans, but he tell Teen Vogue that, despite others’ assumptions, that wasn’t the only factor that played a role in his choice to go "no contact” when he came out at 20 years old. His southern, ultra-religious upbringing, and controlling mother contributed, in his opinion.

“Coming out was the catalyst [for estrangement] — I was not respected as a person, period,” he says over Zoom. “I was being forced to go to church. [My mom] was taking my phone away, controlling my friends and who I could spend time with. I was getting depressed and asking for mental health care and she wouldn’t even let me pick my own therapist… My parents told me that the world as a whole was going to be so unkind and brutal and soul-crushing if I ever stepped out of their love and care.”

Ronan says that once he realized he was being manipulated, he decided to cut contact and leave home, putting faith in people to help him break free (by letting him crash on their couch for a while). Afterward, he posted to Reddit seeking support with the estrangement.

“It’s been four years now since I’ve [first joined] Reddit. I joined before estrangement, mostly talking to people about my trans identity. [But] becoming estranged I felt really lost. I couldn't talk to people in my life, I couldn’t talk to people at my job and really explain the hardships, the heartache. I joined [subreddits] and those spaces really gave me language for what I was feeling. Having people say ‘yeah, me too.’ It was all the validation that I needed.”

Lately, though, Ronan seeks out another kind of support — not just help in going through the initial break in communication, but remembering why he initiated it in the first place.

“I turn to the space now as a reminder of why I'm estranged,” he says. “Last year I learned my mom had [a] heart attack. Kind of being hit with the idea of her mortality, I feel lost all over again. So I just needed to be in this space and ask questions: Am I the only one who feels like my memories are warped or not valid enough? Am I a bad person? And that’s really what the space is for. It makes all the questioning more bearable.”

Reddit isn't the only outlet that has proved itself as a community resource for young estranged people. Goodman is one of a handful of clinician-turned-creators who have tapped into the void that Hegedus accidentally found and that Callum and Ronan sought out, and this small group of people have dedicated a large portion, if not all, of their social media content to discuss estrangement and toxic family dynamics or trauma, creating community that way.

Tennessee-based trauma psychotherapist Matthias Barker, LMHC, is one. He posts across platforms from Facebook to YouTube, but his TikTok account boasts a healthy 2.9 million followers. It’s where he posts videos explaining, and sometimes validating, estrangement and relationship trauma from a clinical point of view. His approach is a little different; a type of community for estranged people who may want to re-connect someday with the people they’re estranged from, or learn how to love them on their own terms.

“I think I know what it’s like to be the adult kid, but I'm not actively trying to go villainize all parents,” he tells Teen Vogue, explaining that he works with both estranged adult children and estranged parents. “If we’re going to heal, we’re going to heal together. We have to hold a nuance.”

He says that his community fills a void that therapy alone, and AI services like ChatGPT, may not be able to do.

“I think a lot of us feel sad when we try to explain to our friends what's going on and if friends don't relate, then we feel like alone and almost kind of weirdly othered. And so my thing is, share with someone who gets it," Barker says. "The group I made is kind of that on steroids. It's like, it's sharing it with other adult kids who get it and parents who get it. But a therapist is a great example of that too.”

Violetta Fernandez is a Latina therapist and estrangement content creator who often provides a race-based-lens for her followers and clients navigating estrangement and parental abandonment, something she personally has dealt with. It’s a space that’s incredibly important for the Latinx community, a population known for being a culture of strong family ties, though many times to a fault, especially for women.

Fernandez witnessed this need be met in the real time, shortly after she started posting videos to her therapy-focused TikTok account latinxestrangement.

“[The follower growth] was fast. It tended to be more daughters [almost 90% women ages 24-35],” she says, referencing the term “marianismo,” which means a cultural expectation to uphold certain gender roles.

“There’s a lot of values where marianismo, collectivism is a protective factor… However what becomes an issue is when families start to weaponize these values as a means to control and police and punish family members, including their own children,” she says.

Despite the communities that are populating online, some estranged young people think there could be more connection. Ronan had a great experience finding a “stand-in” mother-figure to help during his top surgery recovery on an app for LGBTQ+ people looking for volunteers to fill-in for loved ones during small or big occasions. Though he did think an app like that would be useful for the general estranged population, too. “I might work on that,” he jokes.

Callum is still longing to find a place where he’s completely understood by his own peers as both a trans and estranged person, but Hegedus, however, is inspired by the community she found from her own post.

“It definitely helped feeling less lonely in it,” she says.

She says emotions related to her estrangement with her dad became stronger as she prepared for her wedding, but feeling inspired by the 1 million people who she says engaged with her post, she doesn’t want to keep them to herself anymore.

“I want to post about it more,” she says. “I think about when I have kids. I want to be on TikTok until I'm a grandma and I want to talk about what that part is like, you know? These big milestones and how that impacts me, because it's going to forever. And I think that that's totally okay and will probably help [other] people to share.”