SCOTTSDALE, AZ — A teenage member of Generation Z, whose name is sealed by court records, was persuaded to attend several therapy sessions after her parents grew concerned with her lack of anxiety or depression.
"Doc, what's wrong? She seems so normal!" the young woman's father said. "I wake up every morning with a crippling panic attack that makes me lash out at the people I love, but she doesn't have that. Why could that be?"
"We're very concerned," her mother added. "She seems perfectly adjusted on the surface and that's what scares me. Does this mean she's a serial killer? Hannibal looked pretty well-adjusted since he was a doctor — no offense — but he ate people. Is she going to eat people?"
The therapist, a part-time social worker at the local YMCA, first clarified that she was not a doctor before prescribing a brand-new iPhone 15 Pro Max loaded with TikTok and Instagram. "Welp, here's your problem," said the licensed therapist. "It would seem that your own anxiety has sabotaged your daughter's. You were so afraid of her being stalked by strangers on the Internet or having her identity stolen by Russian spies that you never gave her a phone. She needs to spend some real quality time on social media."
"Brilliant!" the girl's father lamented. "How could we have missed it? We'll buy her a phone immediately!"
The helpful therapist wrote them a referral to a psychiatrist who could prescribe the abnormally normal Gen Z teen some anti-depressants. "If she's not sad now, she will be," he assured her parents.
At publishing time, the Gen Z teen is now a recovering normal.