It feels like almost everyday that you hear at least one adult mention how long it took them to walk to school and back. Not only do they have to emphasize the fact that they had to walk over the hill and then back over, they somehow find a way to tie in how lazy and irresponsible our generation is. It’s a common lecture that all of us have heard multiple times, but does every adult really appreciate what our generation does behind the scenes? Aside from playing video games and spending hours on our phone everyday, Generation Z is racing for the leading spot in volunteer work. 

The average teen volunteering rate is nearly twice the adult volunteering rate. Nearly 55% of youth (ages 12-18) volunteer, while adults are just a mere 29%. Youths are volunteering nearly twice as much as adults. And in total, youth contribute an astounding 1.3 billion hours of community service per year, according to an Issue Brief by NSG. 

Unlike common belief, volunteering isn’t only limited to food banks and habitat for humanity. It can be almost anything under the definition ‘freely help or offer to do something’. A lot of people I meet ask me why I personally volunteer often if I’m not getting paid, or they just assume that I’m just doing it for college hours.

The reality is that you don’t actually get anything out of volunteering. If you want to put it even more bluntly, you get absolutely nothing out of it. But every single time you volunteer, even just for even the smaller things like helping out at food banks or raising money for an important cause, you’re making the world just a little bit better. When you start volunteering for even bigger and more advanced organizations, you could be saving lives and improving people’s quality of life all over the world. At some point, it becomes a lot more than just hours tallied up for college resumes. Generation Z is making the world we live in a better place, day by day.