German discount retailer Penny released a Christmas ad that gives a tear-jerking nod to the irreplaceable time Gen Z has lost due to the pandemic.

German discount retailer Penny released a Christmas ad that gives a tear-jerking nod to the irreplaceable time Gen Z has lost due to the pandemic. Titled “The Wish,” the three-minute video depicts a late-night conversation between a teenager and his mother, who expresses her wish to give her son back the time spent in lockdown: “I wish you wouldn’t hang out at home all the time, I wish you would sneak out at night, that we wouldn’t know where you were,” the mother tells her son as scenes of COVID-less life play out on-screen. Though everyone has lost nearly two years to the pandemic, Gen Z—now casually called “the lockdown generation”—has had to give up a particularly formative time in their lives, missing major milestones and rites of passage. “The Wish” has struck a chord across Western Europe: the video counts 16 million views on YouTube and has garnered over 5,000 comments from parents and young people praising Penny for the honest depiction. (MarketWatch)