When times are tough, more and more millennials are turning to the stars for help.
Eleanor Kibrick, an Ottawa astrologer, said millennials are finding comfort in astrology. Annually since 2014, the American Psychological Association has found millennials to be the most stressed generation.
It is no surprise to Kibrick this stress has led many to look to the zodiac for help. Millennial women are most notably becoming interested in astrology today.
In 2017, women’s magazine The Cut reported a 150 per cent increase in readership of horoscope content compared to the year prior.
Social media apps and websites such as Co-Star and Café Astrology have also gained great followings in recent years. Female social media personalities like Astrology by Mecca, followed by over 27,000 people on Twitter and featured in publications such as Teen Vogue and Refinery 29, have helped spread the reach of astrology among the millennial masses.
As Julie Beck of The Atlantic puts it, “astrology is perfectly suited for the internet age.”
Lauren Attersley, a fourth-year student at Carleton University who grew up with a mother who believes in astrology, said she thinks young women today are attracted to astrology because it is quite personalized.
“It’s a way of someone saying something about you,” she said. “It’s talking about yourself, and it’s a way of someone, or some tool, knowing you.”
While not as intense in her astrological practice as her mother, Attersley said she primarily uses astrology in her life to judge relationships; a use Kibrick said she sees often.
“You can’t really befriend 600 people and have real relationships,” Kirbrick said, referencing social media culture. “(Astrology) helps them be more real, and helps them understand that they are valid, their patterns are valid, their relationships are valid, and it takes commitment and work.”
Many believe one element in the growth of millennial interest in astrology is due to a lack of involvement in organized religion. Gabriella Cunha, a third-year Carleton student with an interest in astrology, grew up in a home without any religious affiliation.
“I love the way that I grew up, but I definitely look for something to believe in,” she said. “You definitely do need something, but nothing in the area of religion for me is that, or could ever be that.”
Unlike Attersley, who primarily looks at people’s signs for astrological advice, Cunha said she began using astrology by looking at birthday horoscopes.
“Way back in high school, I got a book with every single day of the year, and analysis on every page,” the linguistics student said. “I would get obsessed going through it and labelling every day with people who I knew who were born on that day.”
Inessa De Angelis, a first-year student at the University of Ottawa, similarly reaches for horoscopes for her astrological practice.
“It’s a gentle reinforcement that what I’m doing will work out, and that I should continue working hard and pursuing my passions.”
De Angelis sees horoscopes as a stagnant force in the everchanging, fast paced lives of young women today.
“In the kind of world we live in today, horoscopes are constant; they’re continual, and based,” she said. “In an unstable world, people like that kind of reinforcement that stuff is going to work out for them.”