The True Price of Apathy and Nonchalance

TikTok’s “nonchalance” trend is taking over social media, and teens have adopted the word in the past year as the viral idea has been spreading in popularity since 2024. Nonchalant people project a low-effort presence, and they don’t talk much. They don’t get super emotional about anything. They are relaxed and low-key about everything. Basically, their life philosophy is: “like, whatever.”

This trend may not seem like a big deal. Why does it matter that teens are acting too cool to care? Compared to other trends, like the 2018–2019 Tide Pod Challenge, where teens filmed themselves ingesting a laundry detergent pod in order to gain views on their social media accounts, how could this be worse? People were hospitalized because of that trend, so this seems pretty harmless, right? Wrong.

Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel spoke passionately about the dangers of this position in his April 1999 speech delivered at the White House, “The Perils of Indifference.” He says:
“Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor—never his victim.”

Indifference is a slippery slope into wickedness. It’s inhumane, as Wiesel argues, not to care about anything or anyone. Teens may think this position starts off as harmless, even a mild form of protection, but soon that urge toward indifference will go to the extreme and create a generation of unempathetic people. Indifference is harmful to others, and it’s harmful to oneself. Not caring leads to isolation and self-deception, despite indifference supposedly prioritizing self-preservation. One’s self-esteem will lower significantly, and growing apathy will lead to wrongdoing because one does not stand up for what is right. A trend of indifference (nonchalance) is extremely dangerous because if a critical mass of people decide they don’t care about others, then the world will remain broken. What makes the world better is passion and the desire to make things better.

I think COVID and quarantine played a big role in forming how we relate to our emotions, and that formation was driven by fear. COVID may have contributed to the rise of nonchalance because there were no communication skills developing in those years, and the little things added up: school wasn’t as hard, teachers were overwhelmed, and there was no hands-on learning, field trips, or labs. Everyone was sad and disconnected, and many of us gave up because life felt overwhelming. I know teens who were in such despair that they couldn’t complete their high school degrees. The trend of nonchalance is a natural extension of how we felt then, carried into the rest of our lives.

Quarantine affected so many people in my generation because we didn’t have to put in any effort to talk to people in real life. The rise of AI has made it worse. Instead of asking classmates for help or for the notes you missed, students are asking AI for the information they missed. We increasingly live in a world where many teens feel like they don’t need people to help them, and they don’t want to be bothered to care about life or help others.

What is seen as a cool trend, and starts as a defense mechanism, can quickly become a mindset that disconnects people from others and from themselves. In a comedic context, like TikTok, nonchalance can seem harmless and funny. In reality, it numbs empathy and discourages natural emotions. When people stop caring, they stop standing up for what's right—and that’s where the real damage begins. This same generation that embraces “nonchalance” can also choose kindness, connection, and courage. If caring becomes cool again, we can live in a world that feels more hopeful and human.