The "Hope Hat" and Social Anxiety

BV Newsroom

By Mark Yadchuk

Fair Oaks, CA - September 17, 2025

Most people have heard- and are perhaps sick of- the stereotype that Gen Z is antisocial and is less inclined to make friends. We’ve heard this stigma from countless studies, like the one from the National Anxiety Center that indicates that about 60 percent of Gen Z experiences anxiety symptoms(which includes social anxiety). Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans(of all generations) that experiences anxiety is just about 18 percent, according to a CDC study done in 2022. This sort of statistic should be alarming- but this problem was not as prevalent as I thought it would be while I was running an activity at the Hope Club Table.

This chart shows the amount of people actually diagnosed with anxiety, but does not account for people who experience significant symptoms like the 60 percent statistic mentioned in the paragraph above. Graph from https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence. Chart: Zach RauschSource: National Survey on Drug Use and HealthGet the dataEmbed Download imageCreated with Datawrapper

I am the president of the Bella Vista Hope Club- a club that is focused on providing a safe space to talk about mental health and figuring out how we can become better people. My bit on Club Rush day to advertise the Hope Club is to fill a top hat with little slips of paper. Each slip has a small act of kindness, and if you do what the paper says, you get an Oreo. This year, the slips I included were “Call someone just to say you love them”, “Pick up a random piece of trash”, “High five someone you don’t know”, “Dap someone up”, “Get someone else to come to our table” and “Take a photo with me, post it on your social media story, and include the caption ‘Join Hope Club’”. On Club Rush Day, I didn’t really know what to expect- but I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

People seemed way more receptive to the idea of a person they don’t know asking them to draw from a top hat than I thought. I don’t have any cold hard statistics, but I would estimate that about 95 percent of people who I approached at least drew from the top hat. From there, probably about 70 percent of people ended up doing the action on the slip, and received their Oreo. A smaller number of people actually signed up for our club, but that’s understandable and unrelated to this article.

It is also worthy to note that not all of the slips had the same level of engagement. The ones that people were a lot more receptive to doing were “Pick up a random piece of trash” and “Dap someone up.” That’s probably because those are the ones that require less of a social step. You can pick up a piece of trash without talking with anybody, and you can dap up your best friend who you’ve known since the 4th grade.

So, the other actions were where the percentage of people that did the action went down. “Get someone else to come to our table” and “Give a random person a high five” were the most unpopular ones, since that requires you to take another social step and go talk to a stranger. However, there were still a good number of people that actually went out and did this, but many others opted to just cheat their way out of it and do it with someone they knew.

The action where you needed to post a photo with me on your Instagram was the least drawn- that’s just unfortunate luck. However, out of the 3 times it was drawn, 2 people actually took the time to take out their phones, take a picture with me, post it on their story, and add a caption telling people to join Hope Club. 

But what shocked me the most about this experiment was the amount of people that actually took out their phones to “Call someone just to say you love them.” About 80 percent of people who drew this action took out their phone and called someone that means a lot to them and said “I love you.” Before the experiment, I thought that this was the action that people were going to struggle with the most. It actually seemed to be the most approachable one for the students who participated.

So, to relate this back to social anxiety- it seems that people are simply not as inclined to talk to strangers anymore. That shouldn’t really be news to anyone, but the Hope Hat activity proves it. Other students who didn’t know me probably only drew from the Hope Hat because of the context of Club Rush day and the fact that they found it interesting- it isn’t everyday that a stranger offers you a tophat full of mysterious paper slips. But when that slip told someone to go have an interaction with a stranger, less than half of people actually did it. When that slip told them to do something with someone they already knew well, they did almost all of the time. When that slip told them to do something with me, like the Instagram post, the results were somewhere in between. I was no longer a stranger to them, but I wasn’t exactly someone they knew- so not everyone was inclined to do something like that Instagram post or join my club.

My main takeaway is that most students at Bella Vista High School are very social with their friends. They will absolutely dap them up, bring them to some random table on Club Rush Day, or even call them just to say “I love you.” But when I asked them to go interact with a stranger, they were less receptive- but still, many more than I expected went out and did it. Sure, the Oreo might have motivated them, but I can say, at least from this experiment, that the statistics that 60 percent of us have anxiety might be overemphasized.

Yes, there are plenty of students that have serious anxiety and may need help from mental health professionals. Yes, there are many people that have more trouble making friends and struggle with having interactions with strangers. Yes, we are significantly more anxious than previous generations. But about a couple hundred Hope Hat drawings and 4 empty Oreo boxes later, I can at least conclude that students are definitely still very sociable with their friends and will even interact with strangers given the right context.