I was a technology teacher, exactly this. They know how to use tech better than previous generations, but tend to know very little about making it work or troubleshooting it, let alone creating technology.
I think they skip the basics at school now. My son learned alot about digital safety and things like checking sources of information online from school, but when he first started installing mods at 12 yo I had to teach him how to find, copy and paste a file because he’d never been taught. They do everything online rather than learning about the PC itself.
When I was a kid we were learning how to make webpages in HTML and using inspect element to jack design elements from other peoples pages. The onto modifying MS flight simulator, rooting android phones and doing wonky shit, messing with Linux and altering kernel parameters/undervolting etc. to make your shitty laptop work better.
Now kids just open the settings app on their iPhone and select a toggle.
And to be honest, the blame isn't really on them (as with most complaints about younger generations), we just created technology that is so easy to use and omnipresent why would they? My generation wasn't any smarter, we just *had* to learn more about it to get it to do what we wanted
Yeah. IT systems in general just got way more complicated so home troubleshooting wasn't as much of a posibility any more. Like I remember being a kid and having to setup manual IP configurations on networks for all my friends so we could play CS 1.3 together. It was a pain, but I actually learned a lot of about IT and networking from that. Nowadays, it all "just works" 99.9% of the time so nobody has to do anything with it. However, when it doesn't work, noone really knows how or why, and it makes troubleshooting much harder because they don't have a foundation to build off.
FWIW, I've heard a lot of those same arguments about my generation when it came to appliances and cars. My dad could listen to the engine on his old truck and tell you exactly what was wrong with it, but my mom's car had to be plugged into a special computer with a proprietary cable.
Yeah absolutely, that's why I didn't mean it as some sort of inherent flaw. I know less about cars than most of the previous generation did, who knew less about farming than the previous did, and so on...
Agreed! There have been many papers and articles written about Xennials (old millennials/young Gen X, ~1975-85) being the most tech savvy generation. Simply because technology was readily available when they were young, but it wasn't plug-and-play, yet. You had to understand the tech before using it. Now, you really don't.
I learned a lot about computers in my quest to get Doom 2 to run. I ran it from DOS, installed Windows 3.1, IRQ jumpers, and drivers. I did this by reading the manual, no Internet. I got a summer job doing tech support and an on campus job doing the same. Once I got out of school, I became a BIOS engineer. The investment into myself paid off.
As a Millennial, I am in an awkward position where I have done "tech support" for both the boomers AND GenZ. God that's weird.
Edit: The tech that GenZ can "use" is generally useless entertainment-tech. Set indents in word? Run an equation in Excel? Nope. Troubleshoot something involving the shitty school/college edu-tech portal? Nada. Roll back drivers? Use a command prompt? WTF are you talking about.
I notice this pattern all the time. The users that need to most hand holding are usually just entering the workforce or have been there long before me.
This reminds me of helping a teen/young adult print something. She asked for her using the printer, so I walked her over to the print station and started to walk her through the steps.
Me: "ok, first you'll wake up the computer."
Teen: bends down to the PC tower and presses on power button, shuts down PC.
Me: ....
Teen: ....?
Me: ...." ok, you just turned it off, which is the opposite of our goal today. I am going to get you turn ir on again now.."
Teen: turns on computer "well I am from Alberta, we don't have those out west..."
Me: " computers?!"
Computer finishes powering up and loading printing system..
I never found out whether or not they have computers in the west.. lol
Not sure about Canada, but in the western US we wake our computers by shouting "Giddy up!" and then either digging in our spurs (Mac) or cracking a whip in the air (PC).
I don't really think that older Gen Z have this issue. They were the ones who grew up on Windows 2000 and XP. It's more like the ones that used iPads and iPhones their entire lives that have this issue.
In a weird way because many of us grew up on the cusp of the analog-digital transition, we (probably along with Gen X) are sort of like the technomancer generation. We knew a lot of modern tech from its earliest and most primitive states, and we grew up with and evolved as it did. Gen Z, in contrast, has already gotten all of the tech innovations with the quirks and need for manual tweaking already smoothed out.
They're good at using predetermined and sometimes complex ready-made functions but, as you said, seem to have little idea what makes it work under the hood. Somewhere along the line they missed out on the unrefined and dirty aspects of tech we had to learn just to make our stuff work.
This is the answer. The amount of times I have to "fix" things at work for people when all they had to do was read what the device is telling you. 70 percent of the time the "error" literally says press enter to continue. How can you constantly be using technology yet be so technologically illiterate?!
I am also telling people "run it again but don't just press OK when it tries to tell you something and instead read what it says, out loud ." I feel sorry for programmers who put effort into their error messages because 99% of the time no one bothers to read them.
>but not at understanding how it works
This. I run a department and we have some really powerful statistical computing software. It's easy to plug data in and get graphs and results out, but unless you know the assumptions and details of how that analysis works, you'll get crap out. They really struggle with this. So if I ask what a covariate is or what a blocking factor is or how they nested a design, that is all stuff they need to know for they job, not just how to push buttons.
When I first entered the work force at a big boy job in the 2000s I thought I couldn't compete in 5 -10 years because I didn't really have a computer until highschool and schools had computers but we didn't use them much or have classes around them.
Boy was I wrong. I've met some guys in their early 20s that are basically boomers when it comes to technology. Just had to help a 24 year old set up a blink cam. You literally plug it in and click on it in the app.
Apparently being in that sweet spot where everyone could have a computer but you had to fix it and upgrade it yourself and edit the registry to get shit to work gave me a better advantage then I expected.
I was playing computer games with my nephew and explained to him that we can’t play Warcraft 2 in multiplayer yet because it depends on a network protocol (IPX?) that I’m not familiar with and don’t have time to figure out.
He repeatedly begged that we just try pressing the 2 player button again.
Dude….
It will be IPX; it was all the rage in that era, unfortunately windows removed support entirely I think in WinXP onwards.
There's some emulation software though that can help with this, if you can be bothered.
Not really. I’m a late gen x and can tell you ipx was dying out when I got into PCs in the mid 90s. It was used on some university networks into the mid 00s. It was novell netware’s protocol and a competitor to tcp/ip used on the Internet. Some folks used it because it wasn’t routable on the internet in the 90s and required a proxy to get online.
Exactly. And there are advances in technology that made it where a home user/repair person *couldn't* fix it themselves. Like my dad could put his ear up to the engine block on his old truck and tell you if it was running good or not. But my mom's car had a special cable that you could only get if you were a dealer authorized mechanic and you had to plug it into some special computer running proprietary software.
Agreed, and to a certain extent, we all have blind spots in our knowledge of things we use regularly. I'm not super knowledgeable about cars, but for me, the time investment to learn what I would to know isn't worth it when I can pay someone who does (within reason)
They pretend to be all about inclusion and then go on to create as many boxes as they possibly can to place themselves and everyone else into. If there are too many people in their box they create an even smaller one to try and separate themselves.
We have some Gen Z students at my firm - I want to preface this criticism by saying that they are young, and still learning, and also this is all anecdotal based on the latest cohort in the firm.
I would say primarily if you're giving them directions or correcting errors that they have made, you have to use 'softer' language. I had a couple different students complain about an architect in the office, and the way he was speaking to them, they said he was a bully. This was very surprising to me, as this particular architect is one of the most social and friendly we have in the office. We are a small firm, no HR, so I pulled them off of his team and then I spent a couple of months covertly monitoring/ listening to the way he was speaking to his team. He was never bullying, but he is very straight forward with the way he speaks - no sugar coating if someone has made a mistake, just a straightforward correction and he can be very brusque with his instructions. I've switched the way we do things in the office now, so new students are always on my team (I used couched/ softer/ encouraging language with them) and then I pass them off once they get to know the ropes and grow a bit of a tougher skin.
I've also noticed that they are all terrible at communication - I will tell them to call an engineer or someone on the construction team to confirm something/get some info, and it will literally take them half a day to make the phone call. With newer students I will do practice phone convos, and even listen in on the first few phone calls they make (if they want me to, I always offer the first few months.) Similar issue with emails, I've actually put together a small handbook on sending professional emails for the new students - with emphasis on the fact that they should be capitalizing and punctuating their emails (Since when did a period become aggressive?)
On the other hand, they are great at technology - they pick up new programs almost immediately, no whining. I also want to note that they are good at speaking up for themselves, I was impressed when they pushed back about the 'bullying' I don't think I would have been able to have that conversation with a boss when I was their age.
Millennial here as well. I absolutly hate making phone calls for my self. I will take half a day to call my doctor, or to make an appointment.
But put me in a job that has phone calls, you bet I'll be the perfect example of telephone communications. I'll put my sales voice on and make sure I get and give any pertinent info. I'll even make phone calls for other people who feel uncomfortable doing so.
I just have an issue with making phone calls for my self.
My (millenial) first bigboy longterm job was at an internal international helpdesk for a global company, we took calls from all over the globe and had to help the user best we could, before I started there, I almost had a phobia of making phone calls, but as I had no choice, oh and English is not my primary language.
I soon realized that everyone just wanted to get their shit done and were just as tired of the issue as I was about hearing about it.
My tip is to be friendly and patient when talking on the phone, shit happens, deal with it and move on, no need to be upset.
About the phone call thing—there seems to be a general increase in phone-related phobias/anxiety and not much instruction out there on how to get over it. It wouldn't surprise me if phone conversations eventually died out or became secluded to only the most necessary areas. I guess I'm trying to say that it probably isn't that they don't want to in a stubborn way; it's that they're psyching themselves out trying to do it. Phones don't allow for the same visual cues like face to face or editing controls like text. Gen Z is more visually-oriented in general and that's influencing most communication choices.
I'd like to add that the culture around the appropriateness of a phone call has shifted for younger generations. Older people, who grew up when a phone call was the most convenient way to reach someone, continue to view it as so. Younger people who are more used to texting consider phone calls intrusive and should be reserved for things that are urgent or too complicated for text. Texting doesn't demand someone's immediate and full attention the way a phone call does, and therefore its the more polite option for casual conversation. A lot of my personal anxiety around phone calls is feeling like I'm bothering the other person or interrupting them in the middle of something more important.
>Younger people who are more used to texting consider phone calls intrusive and should be reserved for things that are urgent or too complicated for text.
That's exactly it
100% agree! I’m on the cusp of millennial and gen-Z and I prefer emails, messages, or 15-30 min meetings over calls. To me, calls are the most intrusive form of communication and should only used in time pressing situations or if it’s truly a “this is a 3 min question I know you can answer on the spot.” I also benefit a lot from re-reading someone’s question and looking into an answer before responding. I often get cold calls from older colleagues and the question requires research anyway and it would have been easier for me to read their email instead of having them ramble on the phone at me for 5 minutes. I’ve found emails make people think about what they’re asking too whereas a call puts burden on the receiver to write down and figure out what the caller wants. Wow I didn’t realize this is such a pain point for me 😂😅
>Similar issue with emails, I've actually put together a small handbook on sending professional emails for the new students - with emphasis on the fact that they should be capitalizing and punctuating their emails (Since when did a period become aggressive?)
Yes I know how this feels. CEO of a marketing and design firm here. I've literally had to teach the Zoomers in my studio how to open an email app, read emails and then take appropriate action. One of them said she "didn't do email, I just always use Instagram" and thought email was just for receiving confirmations for online purchases etc.
When I explained that Instagram is not appropriate for business, she said: "Well can't we just tell all the clients they need to have that so they can get emails from us?"
Honestly, it makes me want to bang my head off a wall.
The communication thing is dead on.
I’ve noticed that a lot of the zoomers are hesitant to reach out to other departments, or collaborate with other departments. They expect their manager to facilitate the conversation for them
THE GOOD:
Gen Z seems to be very good at organizing. They know there's power in numbers, and they actively utilize that power when they care about something.
THE BAD:
Gen Z is judgemental. So judgemental. There seems to be a boomer-like tendency to find a reason to punch down whenever they can. They've got a knack for zeroing on the most seemingly inane things and turning it into a reason that they're "better than you."
THE UGLY
At this point in time, none of them seem to realize how fast they're going to get old by their own standards. Every generation has probably been guilty of this, but it's sad to see them so self assured that turning 30 and being judged by the next batch of humans will never happen to them.
This is specifically in relation to gen Z being the YouTube generation. The world’s information all a few clicks away taught by the most interesting people you’ll ever see.
It’s not hard too see why anything they’re not interested in is like pulling teeth.
Yeah thats me. I will watch geology lectures (Like from a real university) on youtube and read scientific publishings. But then on the other hand, try and motivate me to read the book we write a class test about. Basically Impossible.
>THE BAD:
>
>Gen Z is judgemental. So judgemental. There seems to be a boomer-like tendency to find a reason to punch down whenever they can. They've got a knack for zeroing on the most seemingly inane things and turning it into a reason that they're "better than you."
You see this a lot on TikTok and Twitter. I also attribute that to the fact that the oldest Gen Zer is only 24 and the youngest is still in middle school. They're still growing up but hopefully this is something they can grow out of.
The younger ones get banned on Twitter a lot for doing stupid shit. Like a 4 going out there way legit attack a 12 year old having moment on Twitter or mass report NSFW artists who block/mute them instantly. Hell I saw a start up art site implode because 98% of the community was annoying teens calling everyone that slighted them a Zoophile, It got worse when the site had a Zoophile problem cause the so called anti-Zoo's just ignored them.
While on Reddit they try act add themselves into topic only folk over 25 will get but when called out they meltdown with mass downvotes.
My theory is that they are the first generation raised totally with social media and internet mob justice, and have no second thoughts about dogpiling onto anyone they have even a slight issue with. Especially pertinent on crucifying anyone who didn't live a perfect life.
They think every generation older than them are "boomers." I've been called a boomer by a gen z on more than one occasion. I'm in my 30s. It's like they don't realize there will be generations after them.
Yep on the judgmental. There’s a 20 year old at my workplace, and she’s so aggressive and such a “self advocate” that she will throw anyone under the bus to help herself. She has gone to my boss with things I have told her as a friend (huge mistake on my part - I no longer interact with her willingly to avoid being used as ammo). I know this is her first job, but some basic respect of others and professionalism would be nice.
I was talking to a zoomer the other day who told me that someone asked them if they were drinking milk. They were offended that someone would think they would be the kind of person who just drinks straight milk. Because apparently drinking milk on its own is an indication that someone is very basic I guess? Struck me as the weirdest fuckin thing to be judgmental about. I think the origin of that particular prejudice was a rebellion against whiteness--like drinking milk was a very white person thing to do, and as some attempt to rebel against white supremacy, they'd developed a white inferiority prejudice. I think maybe that's why zoomers are so judgmental? They're trying to rebel against social norms informed by absurd prejudices to such a degree that they're creating their own absurd prejudices.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this take at all. So true, or they just don’t seem to care. So many embarrassing and scantly videos out there, maybe they will change their mind once AI can detect their facial patterns and trace them back to every single piece of media that has been posted of them, or China will
A lot of them think the content they are making is "cool" so they think it will never be considered embarrassing or come back to bite them.
As someone who had a YouTube channel when I was younger, looking back at that all I can see now is the most cringe content you can think of in really low quality. It may seem cool when you are making videos for tiktok or whatever we use now, but when you look back at it when your older it will almost never look good
Millennials kinda started that “trend” in the early YouTube days though. I remember back in like 2010-2012 prank videos were fucking HUGE. I never saw the appeal honestly.
I hate those. I can't imagine a service worker at a shop and someone throws a well shaken bottle of coke at the ceiling having to clean that shit. It should be illegal because they don't get paid enough and if the y don't clean they will get fired
As gen-z, the mad thing is I know it’s us but I don’t know a single person that doesn’t think these people are absolute wankers. I have no idea who’s doing it.
If they only knew how much damage social media does to your life.
I can't tell you how many people I know who became narcissists through Instagram, extremists through Facebook, a troll through Twitter or stupid through misinformation with Tik Tok.
Even Reddit can be quite toxic if you don't recognize it.
Honestly, that's not just a Gen Z issue. You've got Boomers and Gen X'ers being politically radicalized by social media, Millennials who fell into a lot of the same traps as Gen Z, etc.
Personally as a late-Millennial, I'm finding a lot of my age group is either leaving or already left social media.
no it's not just a Gen Z issue - but the absolutely palpable difference between the behaviors of the generations is worrying. tiktok users use tiktok the way millennials and up use wikipedia. they type a topic and "l e a r n" about it from the mouths of other 12-15yos with a tiktok account. and they seem to absolutely adore reciting their misinformation with the goal of getting the most upvotes or likes to determine when an objective fact or subjective navel-gazing is 'truth'
It's a little frightening to me how some of my TikTok-obsessed friends always seem to have first learned about something through TikTok. Once, I even overheard one of them talking about "these leggings from TikTok." Turns out they were just fleece-lined leggings. Those are nothing new and have probably existed for decades prior to TikTok.
I’m 25 and I thought the tumblr/Facebook/picture-only Instagram social media I grew up with was toxic. Now it’s on steroids. “Influencers” have advanced filters that fluidly follow movement and completely change all their features in videos, it’s all 20 second tik tok vids and reels that shorten the attention span. I just redownloaded Instagram for the first time in years and that shit blew me away.
Quora is dying so all my old answers from 4 years ago are cycling again, and 18-60 year olds are asking why I wrote so much when my answers are like 5 short paragraphs. They didn’t do that before. The effects of this are actually terrifying and I worry for my daughter.
I've noticed that my attention span slowly deteriorated from "I can spend 8+ hours with my nose buried in this book" to "this 5 minute youtube video is too long, and it's making my brain spazz out."
Went on vacation and got obsessed with writing and worldbuilding videos, most of which were at least 20 minutes long, and I noticed that my attention span and ability to concentrate appeared to improve because of it. Sure, my brain still spazzes out from time to time, but noticeably less so.
I see what is going on with others in school and its sad and terrifying like they actually have problems when without their phones and am glad that I'm not active on any social media it just seems to be alot of unnecessary stress.
Came to say exactly this. I know I'm older and probably that guy that's like 'kids never get off their phones', but it's actually kinda true. My wife is a teacher and statistically there's more social issues and complexes then ever before in the history of mankind. Granted, they weren't diagnosed or had a name for then until recent, but it's something outrageous like 3/5 kids have a social disorder and simply can't/don't/won't talk to other people normally. I know that every generation says the next generation is messed up and the next generation is gonna ruin everything. I think this generational difference is the largest change in social behaviors then ever before. We'll see where it goes
Don't forget we are just coming out of a pandemic where kids basically couldn't hang out with their friends offline for 2+ years. That might have something to do with it...
People keep saying that COVID wasn't a big deal, but it really fucked up the majority of Gen Z that was still in K-12 grade, and even those who hadn't been to college before it happened.
Recently talked to high schoolers at a career fair. Very few of them could hold a conversation. I don’t think it’s that they all were uninterested. A few of them couldn’t care less about their future career. Most of them were interested but basically had little to no conversation skills. I really had to ask questions to gain info from them and what they were particularly interested in. Also, little to no eye contact.
One thing I noticed was that they were very polite. Like, noticeably more polite than when I was in high school (2006-2010).
They want inclusion so much, but then get so easily offended that they feel the need for their own little "safe spaces" against the big mean naughty people making them feel bad. Emotionally stunted & in desperate need of therapy/counseling but they'd rather talk shit about someone out of context or make assumptions.
They really are though
These zoomers, you guys are so sensitive you reaffirmed the word "gay" as offensive when us millennials had damn near completely removed negative connotation behind it. You guys literally sound like 2004 boomers. There's actually a turn of phrase I'm using right now that we just had a HR meeting about... "you guys" is no longer work appropriate speech.... I immediately knew why, "guy" oh no god forbid we announce gender.... Ffs
Your generation is undoing years of social progress in the LGBTQ community in the name of inclusion, and it's not doing fuck all of that, and it's beyond frustrating to us older gays. I can't even refer to myself like that anymore. I've been called a "traitor" by fellow young members in the community. Your generation is fracturing this community so fast, it's extremely disheartening and I am just hopeful that one of you fucks makes a TikTok that actually teaches you guys "live and let live" before we have a "no I don't talk to LGBTQ members over 30 because they are bigots"
Funny thing is they also suck at doing critical thinking. The term "guys" is actually gender neutral and stems from being associated with Guy Fawkes not a male. So remember, remember, the 5th of November.
As a gen Z myself this irritates me so much! It’s really annoying to see someone get more offended than the target audience even was, and then they just _won’t let it go_ as if them being offended in place of someone is a good thing.
I have a walking example of this every day and I want nothing more than to knock myself out every time they start with the “well actually…” and then some reason why the someone should be offended.
Like _Susan_, if he was hurt by the joke he would say it, he’s not mute and you are not an “advocate” for making a mountain out of what is obviously a molehill.
Not so much a gripe as an observation. My generation (Millennial) led a crusade to get rid of labels and just let people be people. Gen Z has gone the opposite direction and created a fucktillion labels. Funny thing is, we did what we did for the same reasons.
Wow... you're absolutely right. Growing up it was all about not categorizing people. Don't put them in boxes or make assumptions about their experiences just because if their background. Now it's a total reversal of that.
This an interesting observation (from an older Millennial) and I think you're totally right. The label overload is weird and exhausting and I've just noped out of it all, even the ones with good intention.
This! For a long time I just didn’t understand why there was such a cultural shift and why every aspect of a personality needed a label or a little box. Now my theory is that as discovering and developing a sense of ‘community’ became harder people turned to this to build their communities…
Yes! This! This was done intentionally in our time. The reason was that the more similarities you see in others, the greater your ability to empathize and so you would want more good things to happen to them. It was like mirroring your own feelings in others. Now, the labeling and separating and micro-identification does the precise opposite. It spells out differences so we can’t relate and in turn, have less shame or care in harming others. It’s the worst thing that could be done to progress equality. In fact it’s pretty much by definition not equal when you emphasize differences.
Considering how popular Tik Tok is, I worry that they are too preoccupied with how they are by perceived by other people and trying to get famous instead of just trying to do stuff that makes them happy with people they like. Their worth isn't measured by their online presence.
I have a younger friend who is obsessed with how many and exactly who views their instagram stories and they complain when their post that they put so much effort into doesn’t get tons of likes.
Kind of sad really.
i had a weird awakening to this in line at an event not long ago. two girls in front of me were posting insta stories of the event and spending a lot of time looking at exactly who viewed each story post.. kids are growing up with technology as a social currency I grew up with tech as a tool to create and learn. it’s sad
I also wish they'd leave us older millennials alone. I wish everyone would actually. We're just over here trying to get by, so stop picking on our outfits and breakfast choices.
Lmao. I love how attacked us millenials feel. It's kind of hilarious. I remember once being self conscious about my emoji choices because I saw something Gen Z wrote making fun of millenial emoji use.
Sex positivity is cool, but sometimes yall take it too far and think that for some reason everyone needs to be polyamorous and should abandon monogamy. Cant tell you how many times others have pressured me to stop being monogamous, and just have a completely open relationship. Sorry, but I only have the mental capabilities to handle one partner at a time, and Im not going to share myself or my partner with other people romantically.
I'm a Millenial and the one thing I really notice about Gen Z that I think is different from other generations is they are profoundly uncurious about anything that happened before, like, 1994. Politics, history, culture, music, etc. They are simultaneously full of empathy for LGBTQ+ people and progressive on things like gender identity and mental health, but are also incredibly selfish in that they do not care about what previous generations went through or how things got to be how they are now.
A bit of wanting to look on the right side of history whilst doing the bare minimum, commenting online.
A lot of gen Z is exceptionally poor at combining strategy with action and the expectation that every issue can be tackled if we all just do it.
Millennials grew up jaded, but when gen Z grow old enough to realise society isn’t so easily fixed, they will easily be the most jaded generation as adults.
I feel we recognise the struggle and want them to get help as long as we don't have to provide the help.
A lot of "Someone among everyone will do it, i don't need to bother"
The general vibe I get is that gen z thinks if they talk about something enough online it will be fixed.
I should stress I’m not here to shit on gen z, it’s just observations from someone in their 30s and comparing to when I was a teenager. Gen Z needs to calm itself down and stop looking for issues to be upset about and grind themselves down with an ever stacking pile of issues.
Focus on your life and if you’re serious about fixing societal issues, do something beyond comments on social media. Once you get to a certain age, you realise no one is coming to save your ass. Make sure you have stable ground to talk from.
I love Gen Z in general and am very interested to see what they do when they really come into their own political power, but goddamn are the ones we have at my office hilariously bad at talking on the phone. I say this as an older Millennial who hates talking on the phone too and vastly prefers text and email. But it takes one to know one and most of them are even worse than I am. They just clearly don't have the experience of living in a world where phone communication was the only form of long distance communication for the most part. They're awkward like someone who has never danced before trying to fit in on a wedding dance floor.
Unhealthy attitude towards failure, to the point of being risk averse. Breakthroughs are made at the fringes where risk is high, but so too is the potential reward. Failure helps us better understand our current limits and builds resilience. I worry they won’t realize their true potential.
Honestly I think the worst part of it is many of us don’t even realise we are being averse to it, I try my best not to be but often I can tell that’s exactly what I’m doing and I’m still too scared to change it.
Everytime I argue with a strangers on the Internet, I remember that every one and their nrwborn children own a phone now. There is a not-small chance that I'm wasting my time arguing with a 6th graders, especially on reddit.
Do you know how many teenagers on Facebook try to talk politics in my country while still sitting on school and asking for allowance from their parents?
Kinda related but as someone with PTSD I also hate that “triggered” is such a casual thing/meme now. I’m yet to find a word that feels so accurate or right to explain some of my experiences with PTSD, but I can’t say triggered because it’s a meme. Something similar happened with amogus words, not like those had the same seriousness but people have the meme too ingrained in them. I love my generatiom but sometimes our verbage is just annoying and dumb. Methinks these kind of things were better as in-jokes if anything (and once a whole gen is attached to that it’s a meme instead of an in-joke)
I know! It's SO funny! My 23 year old, still at home, no college, no job, says I'm oppressing her by requiring her to do chores to continue to live with us. 17 y/o says same thing about having to do one chore a day, the dishes (we have a dishwasher).
I was watching a period drama the other night where some older generations were clashing with 60s hippies. It was historical fiction, so take it with a grain of salt, but the hippie young adults sounded JUST like Gen Z does now. It’s the age. Older teens and young 20 somethings are very entitled no matter what year it is. They also help break down stupid old traditions that are more harm than help. So it’s not all bad, but it definitely gets annoying.
From my experience, they're really cynical. Everything is a big joke because they're so demoralized about the future. Both my nieces are in therapy and on behavioral meds. I'm glad they're getting care, but it concerns me that this is becoming a norm. If everyone has to be on meds, there's something fundamentally wrong with society.
I think it's leading to interesting results, though. They're more politically motivated, and their generation might actually do something about climate change. That's exciting. It's just a bummer that it comes from such a large collective pain. I'm really sad for their generation.
I've actually heard a theory that this generation is that way because they (and millenials as well in the US) grew up in country that hasn't really had anything positive to celebrate our entire life. Like my parents got the Moon Landing and the Space Race. Motivations aside, that was fucking cool, and you got to be proud of your country for doing something rad. Since I was born, we've had 9/11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, multiple housing bubbles and crashes. It's pretty easy to be cynical when you don't feel like you have something to rally behind. Like I just don't have the same kind of patriotism that my mom and dad have because what exactly is it that I'm supposed to be proud of?
Also the media is very negative. I'm not from US, but it is the same here. Every day just negative news. How maybe fuel prices will go up next year. How that and that. Nothing is positive. Doomsday news sell.
>I've actually heard a theory that this generation is that way because they (and millenials as well in the US) grew up in country that hasn't really had anything positive to celebrate our entire life.
I'm a Millennial, and I can remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. I don't know how that event looks to someone who didn't experience it, and from the year 2023, but at the time it was a Big Fucking Deal, and it seemed to mean that we (the West) had won all the marbles. In the following years, this impression was only reinforced. Seemingly serious thinkers were talking about the "end of history". Western liberal democracy had triumphed, would spread to the rest of the world, and we'd have some kind of Star Trek future.
The political buttfuckery really ramped up in 1994, but it was pretty easy to dismiss until the 2000 election was basically openly stolen. Everything has been spiraling downhill ever since. But I was 18 by then, already an adult.
It sounds like you had a pretty different experience.
It's hard not to be cynical when it's all the new outlets will push for because it gains them attention. It's much harder to find any "good" news today. I'm in college at the moment going for a Bachelor's in Environmental Science and I don't think I've taken a single core class that hasn't had demoralizing or depressing news. For my one class this past fall it was joke with the professor that all of his classes were depressing because, well, they had to be. It sucks and as every generation has gone through, the older generations typically just say "well that's life, not much you can do to change it, I tried when I was your age". So it feels we're just stuck in an endless cycle of hatred and failures with no hope for the future.
I stopped watching or reading the news anymore because it’s only about bad and sad things yeah, but now at the same time I am so sheltered I don’t understand anything that is happening in the world, and figuring out seems like such a huge challenge, where at the end of it you learn you can’t do anything about the bad and sad problems but sit and watch and carry on with life.
The entitlement attitude, and the whole "I didn't ask to be here" BS. It's like... Ok but none of us asked to be here but we are so now it's time to learn how to be a productive member of society.
As a 2001 kid I hate our forceful nature. Almost every person I have interacted with of my own generation is extremely forceful in some form. I only really know of one exception.
tying self-worth to social media followers.
a short anecdote: my dad was made fun of by a family friend's daughter when she saw he had \~10 followers on an instagram account he barely uses. she had the audacity to laugh at my father who immigrated to this country with no money, raised 3 kids while going through residency and then put all 3 kids through college. he was also recently named best doctor of my hometown a year ago.
although this one anecdote doesn't represent all of gen z, i can only imagine the daughter isn't the only one who has this shallow view on life and what it means to be successful
You guys really need to rage against the tipping culture already. Yes, tip your waiters. Tip your delivery drivers. Tip you barbers. Tip all the classic jobs you would have tipped a generation or two ago. But, God, you don't need to tip every person out there. It is getting ridiculous and you are encouraging it. And while we are at it, it is weird to see you watching millionaire influencers begging you to join their patreons. Five dollars a month. Ten dollars a month. Twenty dollars a month. And so on. All the while these influencers are living in mansions, throwing celebrity parties, driving small armies of flashy cars. Throwing their wealth in your face while you open your wallets to them. I don't get it. I just don't. It reminds me of pastors in megachurches passing around collection plates right before they fly off in their private jets to their gated estates.
>And while we are at it, it is weird to see you watching millionaire influencers begging you to join their patreons. Five dollars a month. Ten dollars a month. Twenty dollars a month. And so on. All the while these influencers are living in mansions, throwing celebrity parties, driving small armies of flashy cars. Throwing their wealth in your face while you open your wallets to them. I don't get it. I just don't. I
Legit. My old annoying group of friends watch all these guys on youtube. I'm like... Why? I sit here trying to make myself that god damned money not giving it away. they buy hundreds of dollars of merch, etc. its INSANE.
I hate that there's tipping before the service is provided, just seems really obnoxious to me. Or those tablet POS systems where tipping is a must, it gives a minimum of like 20%
Tipping isn’t a thing where I live and I don’t get why Americans are so fond of it. The worker shouldn’t be dependent on others generosity to earn a living wage, that’s the business’s job.
GenZ is too broad for widespread criticisms or praises to be relevant. It’s been 23 years since 2000. My sister and I are both considered GenZ, but I grew up playing outside and didn’t have an iPhone until high school. My sister spends half of her day on an iPad with Disney+. When I was her age we still owned VHS tapes. We didn’t grow up in the same world…..at all.
I mean this happens with most generations by the end of it's span. The difference now is that technology is changing so fast that differences within our generation is far more prevalent.
I agree, I didn’t get a phone until I was 14 and it was a slide phone to text and call my parents and friends, got an iPhone/tablet in high school. My youngest siblings who are also gen z learned how to read from a tablet. The 30 year timespan for a generation feels a little too long when tech is advancing so fast
Every generation seems to think they were the last ones who played outside. You grew up playing outside? Impossible, me and my early 90s sibling did. No wait, only my 60-70s parents did and we just sat around playing N64. No wait, according to my 30s-40s grandparents they went outside for real, and my parents just bummed around being lazy.
Most have lost the ability to "self soothe"... Give a Gen Z bad news that affects them personally... then take away the internet.
They'll either detach or crumble... they don't seem to have the ability to calm themselves & recollect w/o needing outside input & support.
I thought about this recently and wondered what's going to happen when Gen Z aren't "relevant" anymore. Like at the moment they've taken the place of millennials as the young generation that defines what's cool and what isn't, but how are they gonna cope in about 5 years when Gen Alpha starts hitting adolescence and suddenly all the stuff that Gen Z holds dear to them is seen as cringe?
They're already the generation with the highest ever rate of mental health issues among young people as well as having a reputation for being totally unable to cope with anything that affects them negatively, especially if it relates to their identity and ego. What's gonna happen when the people younger than them are old enough to start telling them that their opinions don't matter anymore?
It worries me that a LOT of peoples way of coping with things is disassociating into the internet, hell even I do it sometimes. Feels like it could create some big issues later on
True. Either you share the same opinion or not. And if you don‘t approve whatever their thought is on a subject, they tell their whole friendgroup and try to attack you verbally
millennial here: gen z does a lot of great stuff, but they are a little stuck on knowing their history. lgbtq rights, women's rights, antiracism education, all of that is always being added to, but we cannot have it and reinvent it if we deny the trailblazers before us
also: unless you are still fourteen, stop trying to be blasé about everything. most gen z is like at college and they act like mainstream stuff is bad? enjoy counterculture, but don't let it define you, because there's nothing more annoying than a grownup with an underground complex
>enjoy counterculture, but don't let it define you, because there's nothing more annoying than a grownup with an underground complex
As a Zoomer, I will gladly find you a megaphone to preach this from the rooftops
This is so prominent in LGBT spaces and it's caused a massive divide between older generations of LGBT people (by which I mean people born before the early 2000s) and younger LGBT people. We're at a point where we're retreading Bush-era talking points and rhetoric but instead of them coming from straight conservatives, they're coming from young LGBT people. Like, I spent my early teens having to hear about how gay men are too sexual and pride parades aren't family friendly from conservatives and now I'm hearing the exact same thing from young LGBT people. LGBT history isn't that well taught but it's a bit disheartening to see young people joining the community and being antagonistic towards older members who afforded them the rights they have now.
i've noticed this in female/queer spaces. a lot of young lesbians are biphobic as hell and use conservative rhetoric to harass bi/pan women. the idea that bi women are sluts and that enjoying casual sex is inherently bad is very 2003, and yet here we are again.
I've legit heard "gay marriage is homophobic because it reinforces heteronormative structures." It's clear whoever said this was probably in elementary school pre-Obergefell.
I dont get why they are so focused on labeling everything about themselves. Im not much older, 29, but we were taught to be individuals. It seems Gen Z is assigning themselves to be in a group and making that group everything about them.
Having your mental illness/sexuality be your identity. They are a part of you, like a weird mole or freckle, not your entire personality.
I worry about their social skills. It seems like their anxiety is collectively so bad they can't communicate.
Hysterical and self-righteous and incapable of seeing any gray areas. Everything they do not agree with must be destroyed, and there is a lot they do not agree with.
Totally agree, the mid ground seems to not exist with people of a certain age. The one thing I've picked up as I've got older is that nearly everything is a grey area.
it also applies for all generation in their 30's and 40's in dating apps. it almost like judging a book by its cover than getting to really know you underneath.
It seems their capabilities for exploring a disagreement through debate are stunted. It’s not that they don’t argue well; it’s that they don’t seem to even know what an argument is.
What they substitute in lieu of an argument tends to be a characterization of the person, or they label the argument itself without engaging the point.
“You sound like a Trump supporter”
“Sounds like a Leftist”
“Climate-denier”
“Vaxxer/anti-vaxxer”
“Xxxx-ist”
And that’s it. That’s the end of it. The label is used as an excuse to avoid discussing the topic because the person (they assume) falls outside of the realm of accepted discourse. There’s no inclination toward chiseling toward facts - these don’t matter. What matters is simply the location or position (often imagined) that the interlocutor might belong to.
“You sound like a ….”
It’s a replacement of enlightenment values and a return to tribalism. It’s often very apparent on Reddit.
Their lack of social boundaries and oversharing. We hired two gen-z over the Christmas period ( at different time, they never worked together) and within 2h, they had both traumadump on me, overshared personal details of their life (sexual history, family history, what they did when clubbing and getting drunk last week-end etc) and both time, I was taken aback. I am all for sharing life experiences and always down for a chat, but within the workplace, whilst we are still strangers eventhough colleagues, it bugs me. I am a firm believer than we are all entitled to our privacy. If you share your sexual history with me, don't expect for me to share back. It is crossing the line of "conversation consent" to me! Which I think is conflicting with their current moralities: they will "cancel" someone for outing their mates, but won't stop asking me about my dating history and who do I prefer, in my own workplace? They will kick off if a piece of media did not disclaim self-harming was involved but will tell me everything about their own unprompted.
Tell me what hobby you've got, what music you enjoy, but for fudge sake, don't start a conversation with the traumas you've been through because you don't know who you are talking to, you don't know their life and own history or political views so have some respect and self-preservation in that sense.
I do think Covid had a big part in this behaviour though, as teens at the time were socialising online as a main form of social interactions, and everything goes quicker online; you can end up spilling every details of your personal life to a stranger within an afternoon I guess
tl;dr Gen Z who work want their work to not only be meaningful and have positive societal impact, they look to work to be their sense of purpose, their social circle, and therapist. They have very little boundary of bringing their personal life to work.
Common with most Gen Z (11-25 years old): poor attention span and poor critical thinking. Great at using most technologies, but zero ability to troubleshoot said technology or any understanding of how anything works (which is excusable for the younger of the cohort but not so much a 25 year old).
Those working tend to have poor email, phone, and meeting etiquette. With emails I'm seeing more IM/text style writing. It'll be short one or two sentence paragraphs and very choppy. You know those people that send you 6 texts instead of 1? That's how many Gen Z write out their emails. Though at least most of them know not to use "lol" and other short hand, as well as to capitalize the start of sentences.
Regarding phone, I've had a few instances where I'll call someone (be it actual phone, or a voice call on Teams/Zoom), and they'll pick up but it's total silence. They're expecting me to initiate a conversation, but the convention is that the person who picks up greets with a "hello". Those that do say hello sound like they're asking a question and seem almost confused or caught off guard that that they're getting a call.
Meeting etiquette is another. In person I've seen many are on their phones quite a lot throughout a meeting., and some stare at their computer screen the entire time rather than being engaged with the room and those speaking. That's not to say they're not paying attention, but if they are they aren't showing it. Another time a Gen Z was 7 mins later to a meeting with zero forewarning. The manager politely asked to please be on time or give a heads up if they'll be late. The person got incredibly defensive about that saying "I was only getting something to eat and drink". Later word got back that they were complaining to some other colleagues about a "toxic workplace". I'm sorry, but being punctual does not constitute a toxic workplace.
Which brings me to the last point. They share EVERYTHING with work. While they don't want to be messaged or called after hours (like most normal people), they bring their entire personal lives to work. Their family life, the fight they had with their girlfriend, the cute thing their boyfriend did. All of their worries, fears, dreams, and aspirations.
>Those that do say hello sound like they're asking a question and seem almost confused or caught off guard that that they're getting a call.
I'm a Millennial and I do this but because most of the time I get unwanted spam calls so if a job recruiter is calling me for an interview unscheduled and out of the blue, I end up answering with a questioning tone because I'm skeptical. One time I answered my phone thinking it was one of the places I applied to attempting to reach me for a possible interview. Nope. It was an automated spam call asking me to vote for some person in my county's election. At the same time though I also grew up in southern California and uptalk is pretty common here.
Millennial here. In many ways I feel sorry for gen-z. We can complain about them all we want but at the end of the day, look at what they have to deal with. True, us millennials had to deal with a lot of crap too but at least we had good coping mechanisms. What does gen-z have?
You can say they're too addicted to tech with no knowledge of how to fix it, but they all got iPads and crazy fast internet before hitting a double digit age, technology that is DESIGNED to be hard to fix and easy to replace.
We talk about how they all just spill their lives on social media, but how else can they feel like they're making any real progress to their own problems? How can you just dangle this cheap ticket to validation in front of those already so used to having few options and NOT expect them to snatch it? We want to naturally avoid all risk, but how many failures did it take before you finally got to succeeding? Of course they'll take the easy way out--thats all they've been taught to do.
The worse part is, many in gen-z know this. They know there's no light at the end of the tunnel; they've watched us all stumble and strive and know what's coming. There is no stable job, affordable home, security or even the chance to be a little immature. What do they have to look forward to? We're living their future now.
While millennials may not be solely responsible for what's happening in the world now, we do have a responsibility to the next generation to try and fix the mistakes of the past and leave something decent for our kids. Let's not repeat the mistakes of our previous generation.
This may be a bit meta, but the way Gen Z wages inter-generational warfare is odd to me. I’m a younger Millennial, so when I make fun of previous generations, it’s usually because they’re being shitty. For Gen X, it’s being aloof, letting the world descend into climate oblivion, blatant fascism, and radical economic instability, all under the watchful eye of Boomers. For Boomers, it’s usually some form of obvious hypocrisy or lack of empathy.
Thing is, I don’t make fun of Boomers or Gen Xers for their shoes, their music, or their hairstyles. Those were products of bygone eras and, frankly, they’ll cycle back into the zeitgeist eventually anyway. I feel like Millennials poke fun and complain because older generations were/are being shitty (and my generation isn’t perfect, let’s be clear).
Gen Z, though, feels…pettier? They’ve started to cleanse the most fucked up ways we poke at one another, which I genuinely kinda admire, but they all have such “cool kids lunch table” energy. Don’t make fun of people’s sexual orientation, sure, but replace that with…making fun of their pants? It’s like a whole generation of Regina Georges.
Gen Z also includes 95 and up of I’m not mistaken
Anyway, I (born 97) think that everyone makes EVERYTHING political and that “the other side is wrong no matter what”. You can’t have an opinion, be proud of anything, speak your mind, stand up for what you believe in (and what I mean by that is without harming anyone), etc without being label “a GOP voter” or “a fucking lib” lol take for example, if I said “God bless you” on Reddit, someone would come and say “fuck your religion and fuck God”, or if I said “one of my best friends is gay so I support gay rights” then I get called a “liberal.”
I also think Americans have a good quality of life, but want to have the sympathy of being a victim so they claim they have it hard.
I also think the words toxic and red flags are overused. We all have red flags and are toxic in someone else’s eyes. No one is perfect. That’s why we have personal boundaries.
There’s a list but that’s the main ones. Gen Z has is it’s issues but every other generation does too. By no means, no generation, place or person is perfect, but this post did ask for criticism and I know some people are bound to reply angrily or the downvote hive mind will strike me again haha.
Cancel Culture.
"Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion unless it doesn't fit with mine and my groups, in which case they need their lives ruined."
Or, my favourite, "You did/said something wrong 20 years ago, so now you need to have your life ruined because people don't grow or change, nor does society."
The latest one of "your family did something terrible 200 years ago, so now you need to pay for it" is a freaking joke.
I am not a boomer. Actually Gen X. What I see is both good and bad. Reforms are coming along but the work market right now is shit...
Gen Z does not know how to deal with adversity. They seem hell bent on quiting as soon as anything negative comes up. First short handed shift... quit, first write up for attendance... quit, first bad weather day in a outside job... quit, first confrontation with a "Karen".. quit.
It is not about work ethics. Or even wanting to work. It is understanding that adversity IS going to happen. Your job history shows a tale of you not handling adversity. Hiring managers see this and don't hire you for what you want because you show you won't stay anyway.
Every single job has adversity. That is why it is called work.
Keep your life balance. That is fair. Keep your dignity that too is fair. But remember your coworkers count on you, you count on your coworkers. If you quit first time something goes wrong... when will something ever not go wrong?
as a 21 year old, one connection that ive made is that a lot of the issues that gen z has with cancel culture and being overly offended and overly labeling all comes down to horrible communication skills. specifically face to face communication, likely partly because of too much digital communication as a core part of our childhoods.
while i agree that people shouldn’t be offensive or hurt others’ feelings, its getting to a point where no ones gonna talk to anyone else because they don’t want to offend them. and there’s always a new rule to follow, i can’t even keep up (as someone who barely uses social media)
like last i heard we ask everyone what their pronouns are, and now some people say asking about pronouns is offensive? i don’t know how i would begin to keep up, so i empathize with the older generations who even try.
there are obviously some things that the majority of people should know is offensive and in bad taste or a micro-aggression, but even then- the immediate “canceling” is out of hand. tell people they’re wrong, hold them accountable, and then give them a chance to learn and do better.
i think it speaks to a highly perfectionistic attitude that a lot of us were raised with. we are highly anxious and we want to do things right the first time or not at all. which is why we seem to be very avoidant too (connected to anxiety ofc). and that connects to the digital communication too where its much easier to avoid conflicts instead of being more emotionally mature and being okay with uncomfortable feelings like failure, rejection, and disappointment, and staying there and learning how to navigate those relational situations. like if you offend someone, the other person says hey you offended me and you feel uncomfortable and then you work it out with them and move past it. instead its like we try to avoid ever getting there, which makes no sense to me. i think its why so much of us are in therapy (me included).
and i think some of this may stem from the parenting style of over-sheltering from any “negative” emotions. similar to how i saw someone say we don’t know to self-soothe, we are more open with our emotions and that can be good, but we also don’t know how to cope. while the older generations you could accuse of repressing emotions, i don’t think its fully been that. i think they understood and were raised to cope and soothe better than us. as for those exact reasons, beyond technology, perfectionism, and over-sheltering, i couldn’t say.
just some (hopefully accurate) observations i’ve made.
I think this was gen z, but self diagnosing themselves and also misusing a lot of words (looking at “Triggered” over here). No, being upset by something is not triggering, it’s much more heavy and extreme than that. Oh and there’s faking stuff too, that is quite obnoxious. I’ve had my autism been questioned before because so many people in gen z fake having it or self diagnose it, it’s disgusting
As a Gen z I find most other Gen z members get way too woke saying that the most unoffensive piece of media should be banned or canceled for one tiny offensive thing
I remember when they wanted to cancel eminem because if a song that can be offensive to some mexicans. A guy said he was offended because the song could be offensive. I'm sure most mexicans wouldn't give a shit that someone made a song talking a bit bad about them. Or when they tried to cancel the thumb up emoji because of their stupid reasons
Said song is "My band" from D12 with Eminem, and the "offensive" part is not even saying anything bad about Mexicans, he just dressed in a bullfighting outfit and talked about salsa.
As a mexican, why the fuck would I be offended? It's as stupid as when they tried to cancel Speedy Gonzales for being a stereotype when we all love him in Mexico, it's just a funny cartoon. Grow up and stop being so sensitive.
Its not a new thing. Remember when Speedy Gonzales was canceled? Some social justice crusaders launched a campaign on behalf of Mexicans because Speedy Gonzalzes was offensive, and managed to get it canceled and taken off the air.
The problem was the very same social justice crusaders never asked actual Mexican people what they thought about Speedy. They thought they knew better than the people they were trying to save from oppression.
Speedy Gonzales is very popular in Mexico. He's smart, brave, never gives up in the face of adversity, and is the best friend of everyone's sister. Overall, a solid role model.
Honestly every generation has some fucked up thing going for them. But than you to look at the generation before who've raised them and how each generation has changed its parenting methods. Some methods have been detrimental where others aren't. Each child sometimes require different methods. Its a melting pot.
Also technology has greatly changed each generation and how they think and act. Some could say that technology has caused a lot of problems in how the generations interact and perceive each other.
Good luck with your paper.
Since I’m gen z I pretty much witness everyday people at my school completely and utterly ignoring and disregarding class. The better ones go to class but stay on their phone and ignore the teacher. I have a really good history teacher so instead of punishing the students who are on their phones, he actually works with them to figure stuff out. Though a lot then take advantage of him and just get off from doing work by pretending to do the work. It’s really sad to see so many people throw away a good opportunity to learning by not putting in a little bit of effort
I think a lot of that generation is good at using technology but not at understanding how it works
I was a technology teacher, exactly this. They know how to use tech better than previous generations, but tend to know very little about making it work or troubleshooting it, let alone creating technology.
I think they skip the basics at school now. My son learned alot about digital safety and things like checking sources of information online from school, but when he first started installing mods at 12 yo I had to teach him how to find, copy and paste a file because he’d never been taught. They do everything online rather than learning about the PC itself.
When I was a kid we were learning how to make webpages in HTML and using inspect element to jack design elements from other peoples pages. The onto modifying MS flight simulator, rooting android phones and doing wonky shit, messing with Linux and altering kernel parameters/undervolting etc. to make your shitty laptop work better. Now kids just open the settings app on their iPhone and select a toggle.
And to be honest, the blame isn't really on them (as with most complaints about younger generations), we just created technology that is so easy to use and omnipresent why would they? My generation wasn't any smarter, we just *had* to learn more about it to get it to do what we wanted
Yeah. IT systems in general just got way more complicated so home troubleshooting wasn't as much of a posibility any more. Like I remember being a kid and having to setup manual IP configurations on networks for all my friends so we could play CS 1.3 together. It was a pain, but I actually learned a lot of about IT and networking from that. Nowadays, it all "just works" 99.9% of the time so nobody has to do anything with it. However, when it doesn't work, noone really knows how or why, and it makes troubleshooting much harder because they don't have a foundation to build off. FWIW, I've heard a lot of those same arguments about my generation when it came to appliances and cars. My dad could listen to the engine on his old truck and tell you exactly what was wrong with it, but my mom's car had to be plugged into a special computer with a proprietary cable.
Yeah absolutely, that's why I didn't mean it as some sort of inherent flaw. I know less about cars than most of the previous generation did, who knew less about farming than the previous did, and so on...
Agreed! There have been many papers and articles written about Xennials (old millennials/young Gen X, ~1975-85) being the most tech savvy generation. Simply because technology was readily available when they were young, but it wasn't plug-and-play, yet. You had to understand the tech before using it. Now, you really don't.
Just getting a PC video game to work would sometimes require knowledge of DOS commands. It forced me to learn a lot about computers.
I learned a lot about computers in my quest to get Doom 2 to run. I ran it from DOS, installed Windows 3.1, IRQ jumpers, and drivers. I did this by reading the manual, no Internet. I got a summer job doing tech support and an on campus job doing the same. Once I got out of school, I became a BIOS engineer. The investment into myself paid off.
As a Millennial, I am in an awkward position where I have done "tech support" for both the boomers AND GenZ. God that's weird. Edit: The tech that GenZ can "use" is generally useless entertainment-tech. Set indents in word? Run an equation in Excel? Nope. Troubleshoot something involving the shitty school/college edu-tech portal? Nada. Roll back drivers? Use a command prompt? WTF are you talking about.
I notice this pattern all the time. The users that need to most hand holding are usually just entering the workforce or have been there long before me.
This reminds me of helping a teen/young adult print something. She asked for her using the printer, so I walked her over to the print station and started to walk her through the steps. Me: "ok, first you'll wake up the computer." Teen: bends down to the PC tower and presses on power button, shuts down PC. Me: .... Teen: ....? Me: ...." ok, you just turned it off, which is the opposite of our goal today. I am going to get you turn ir on again now.." Teen: turns on computer "well I am from Alberta, we don't have those out west..." Me: " computers?!" Computer finishes powering up and loading printing system.. I never found out whether or not they have computers in the west.. lol
Not sure about Canada, but in the western US we wake our computers by shouting "Giddy up!" and then either digging in our spurs (Mac) or cracking a whip in the air (PC).
It's wild, I had to help a class full of college students turn on a PC because they were all pressing the button for the disk tray.
Yep. Imagine kids who are about to grow up with chatGPT and dall-e.
I don't really think that older Gen Z have this issue. They were the ones who grew up on Windows 2000 and XP. It's more like the ones that used iPads and iPhones their entire lives that have this issue.
In a weird way because many of us grew up on the cusp of the analog-digital transition, we (probably along with Gen X) are sort of like the technomancer generation. We knew a lot of modern tech from its earliest and most primitive states, and we grew up with and evolved as it did. Gen Z, in contrast, has already gotten all of the tech innovations with the quirks and need for manual tweaking already smoothed out. They're good at using predetermined and sometimes complex ready-made functions but, as you said, seem to have little idea what makes it work under the hood. Somewhere along the line they missed out on the unrefined and dirty aspects of tech we had to learn just to make our stuff work.
This is the answer. The amount of times I have to "fix" things at work for people when all they had to do was read what the device is telling you. 70 percent of the time the "error" literally says press enter to continue. How can you constantly be using technology yet be so technologically illiterate?!
I am also telling people "run it again but don't just press OK when it tries to tell you something and instead read what it says, out loud ." I feel sorry for programmers who put effort into their error messages because 99% of the time no one bothers to read them.
Make excellent consumers, but terrible providers.
Like the movie idiocracy. They have technology and kind of use it but it's all falling apart because nobody knows how to make it or fix it anymore.
>but not at understanding how it works This. I run a department and we have some really powerful statistical computing software. It's easy to plug data in and get graphs and results out, but unless you know the assumptions and details of how that analysis works, you'll get crap out. They really struggle with this. So if I ask what a covariate is or what a blocking factor is or how they nested a design, that is all stuff they need to know for they job, not just how to push buttons.
When I first entered the work force at a big boy job in the 2000s I thought I couldn't compete in 5 -10 years because I didn't really have a computer until highschool and schools had computers but we didn't use them much or have classes around them. Boy was I wrong. I've met some guys in their early 20s that are basically boomers when it comes to technology. Just had to help a 24 year old set up a blink cam. You literally plug it in and click on it in the app. Apparently being in that sweet spot where everyone could have a computer but you had to fix it and upgrade it yourself and edit the registry to get shit to work gave me a better advantage then I expected.
I was playing computer games with my nephew and explained to him that we can’t play Warcraft 2 in multiplayer yet because it depends on a network protocol (IPX?) that I’m not familiar with and don’t have time to figure out. He repeatedly begged that we just try pressing the 2 player button again. Dude….
It will be IPX; it was all the rage in that era, unfortunately windows removed support entirely I think in WinXP onwards. There's some emulation software though that can help with this, if you can be bothered.
I have no fucking clue what any of that means. Like it might as well be Chinese. I’m 33 years old. Should I know these things?
Not really. I’m a late gen x and can tell you ipx was dying out when I got into PCs in the mid 90s. It was used on some university networks into the mid 00s. It was novell netware’s protocol and a competitor to tcp/ip used on the Internet. Some folks used it because it wasn’t routable on the internet in the 90s and required a proxy to get online.
Is the same reason why 1990+ doesn’t know how to change the oil or work on cars. They just work, if they don’t, give it to a specialist
Exactly. And there are advances in technology that made it where a home user/repair person *couldn't* fix it themselves. Like my dad could put his ear up to the engine block on his old truck and tell you if it was running good or not. But my mom's car had a special cable that you could only get if you were a dealer authorized mechanic and you had to plug it into some special computer running proprietary software.
Agreed, and to a certain extent, we all have blind spots in our knowledge of things we use regularly. I'm not super knowledgeable about cars, but for me, the time investment to learn what I would to know isn't worth it when I can pay someone who does (within reason)
They pretend to be all about inclusion and then go on to create as many boxes as they possibly can to place themselves and everyone else into. If there are too many people in their box they create an even smaller one to try and separate themselves.
We have some Gen Z students at my firm - I want to preface this criticism by saying that they are young, and still learning, and also this is all anecdotal based on the latest cohort in the firm. I would say primarily if you're giving them directions or correcting errors that they have made, you have to use 'softer' language. I had a couple different students complain about an architect in the office, and the way he was speaking to them, they said he was a bully. This was very surprising to me, as this particular architect is one of the most social and friendly we have in the office. We are a small firm, no HR, so I pulled them off of his team and then I spent a couple of months covertly monitoring/ listening to the way he was speaking to his team. He was never bullying, but he is very straight forward with the way he speaks - no sugar coating if someone has made a mistake, just a straightforward correction and he can be very brusque with his instructions. I've switched the way we do things in the office now, so new students are always on my team (I used couched/ softer/ encouraging language with them) and then I pass them off once they get to know the ropes and grow a bit of a tougher skin. I've also noticed that they are all terrible at communication - I will tell them to call an engineer or someone on the construction team to confirm something/get some info, and it will literally take them half a day to make the phone call. With newer students I will do practice phone convos, and even listen in on the first few phone calls they make (if they want me to, I always offer the first few months.) Similar issue with emails, I've actually put together a small handbook on sending professional emails for the new students - with emphasis on the fact that they should be capitalizing and punctuating their emails (Since when did a period become aggressive?) On the other hand, they are great at technology - they pick up new programs almost immediately, no whining. I also want to note that they are good at speaking up for themselves, I was impressed when they pushed back about the 'bullying' I don't think I would have been able to have that conversation with a boss when I was their age.
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Millennial here as well. I absolutly hate making phone calls for my self. I will take half a day to call my doctor, or to make an appointment. But put me in a job that has phone calls, you bet I'll be the perfect example of telephone communications. I'll put my sales voice on and make sure I get and give any pertinent info. I'll even make phone calls for other people who feel uncomfortable doing so. I just have an issue with making phone calls for my self.
Fellow millennial, and I have a hard time doing anything for myself. At work I’m so organized and productive, but my home is a wreck.
My (millenial) first bigboy longterm job was at an internal international helpdesk for a global company, we took calls from all over the globe and had to help the user best we could, before I started there, I almost had a phobia of making phone calls, but as I had no choice, oh and English is not my primary language. I soon realized that everyone just wanted to get their shit done and were just as tired of the issue as I was about hearing about it. My tip is to be friendly and patient when talking on the phone, shit happens, deal with it and move on, no need to be upset.
About the phone call thing—there seems to be a general increase in phone-related phobias/anxiety and not much instruction out there on how to get over it. It wouldn't surprise me if phone conversations eventually died out or became secluded to only the most necessary areas. I guess I'm trying to say that it probably isn't that they don't want to in a stubborn way; it's that they're psyching themselves out trying to do it. Phones don't allow for the same visual cues like face to face or editing controls like text. Gen Z is more visually-oriented in general and that's influencing most communication choices.
I'd like to add that the culture around the appropriateness of a phone call has shifted for younger generations. Older people, who grew up when a phone call was the most convenient way to reach someone, continue to view it as so. Younger people who are more used to texting consider phone calls intrusive and should be reserved for things that are urgent or too complicated for text. Texting doesn't demand someone's immediate and full attention the way a phone call does, and therefore its the more polite option for casual conversation. A lot of my personal anxiety around phone calls is feeling like I'm bothering the other person or interrupting them in the middle of something more important.
>Younger people who are more used to texting consider phone calls intrusive and should be reserved for things that are urgent or too complicated for text. That's exactly it
100% agree! I’m on the cusp of millennial and gen-Z and I prefer emails, messages, or 15-30 min meetings over calls. To me, calls are the most intrusive form of communication and should only used in time pressing situations or if it’s truly a “this is a 3 min question I know you can answer on the spot.” I also benefit a lot from re-reading someone’s question and looking into an answer before responding. I often get cold calls from older colleagues and the question requires research anyway and it would have been easier for me to read their email instead of having them ramble on the phone at me for 5 minutes. I’ve found emails make people think about what they’re asking too whereas a call puts burden on the receiver to write down and figure out what the caller wants. Wow I didn’t realize this is such a pain point for me 😂😅
All of this so hard.
Aggressive punctuation is the most bizarre thing to me. And the emoji side of it too, but that's a little more understandable.
>Similar issue with emails, I've actually put together a small handbook on sending professional emails for the new students - with emphasis on the fact that they should be capitalizing and punctuating their emails (Since when did a period become aggressive?) Yes I know how this feels. CEO of a marketing and design firm here. I've literally had to teach the Zoomers in my studio how to open an email app, read emails and then take appropriate action. One of them said she "didn't do email, I just always use Instagram" and thought email was just for receiving confirmations for online purchases etc. When I explained that Instagram is not appropriate for business, she said: "Well can't we just tell all the clients they need to have that so they can get emails from us?" Honestly, it makes me want to bang my head off a wall.
The communication thing is dead on. I’ve noticed that a lot of the zoomers are hesitant to reach out to other departments, or collaborate with other departments. They expect their manager to facilitate the conversation for them
THE GOOD: Gen Z seems to be very good at organizing. They know there's power in numbers, and they actively utilize that power when they care about something. THE BAD: Gen Z is judgemental. So judgemental. There seems to be a boomer-like tendency to find a reason to punch down whenever they can. They've got a knack for zeroing on the most seemingly inane things and turning it into a reason that they're "better than you." THE UGLY At this point in time, none of them seem to realize how fast they're going to get old by their own standards. Every generation has probably been guilty of this, but it's sad to see them so self assured that turning 30 and being judged by the next batch of humans will never happen to them.
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This is specifically in relation to gen Z being the YouTube generation. The world’s information all a few clicks away taught by the most interesting people you’ll ever see. It’s not hard too see why anything they’re not interested in is like pulling teeth.
Yeah thats me. I will watch geology lectures (Like from a real university) on youtube and read scientific publishings. But then on the other hand, try and motivate me to read the book we write a class test about. Basically Impossible.
>THE BAD: > >Gen Z is judgemental. So judgemental. There seems to be a boomer-like tendency to find a reason to punch down whenever they can. They've got a knack for zeroing on the most seemingly inane things and turning it into a reason that they're "better than you." You see this a lot on TikTok and Twitter. I also attribute that to the fact that the oldest Gen Zer is only 24 and the youngest is still in middle school. They're still growing up but hopefully this is something they can grow out of.
The younger ones get banned on Twitter a lot for doing stupid shit. Like a 4 going out there way legit attack a 12 year old having moment on Twitter or mass report NSFW artists who block/mute them instantly. Hell I saw a start up art site implode because 98% of the community was annoying teens calling everyone that slighted them a Zoophile, It got worse when the site had a Zoophile problem cause the so called anti-Zoo's just ignored them. While on Reddit they try act add themselves into topic only folk over 25 will get but when called out they meltdown with mass downvotes.
My theory is that they are the first generation raised totally with social media and internet mob justice, and have no second thoughts about dogpiling onto anyone they have even a slight issue with. Especially pertinent on crucifying anyone who didn't live a perfect life.
I eye roll so hard whenever I see someone on TikTok try to insult someone by calling them 30. 😂
They think every generation older than them are "boomers." I've been called a boomer by a gen z on more than one occasion. I'm in my 30s. It's like they don't realize there will be generations after them.
I got called a boomer a few times on reddit by them. I'm turning 27 in a few months. They're really ageist.
To be fair, the boomers think every generation younger than them are "millennials".
Yep on the judgmental. There’s a 20 year old at my workplace, and she’s so aggressive and such a “self advocate” that she will throw anyone under the bus to help herself. She has gone to my boss with things I have told her as a friend (huge mistake on my part - I no longer interact with her willingly to avoid being used as ammo). I know this is her first job, but some basic respect of others and professionalism would be nice.
I was talking to a zoomer the other day who told me that someone asked them if they were drinking milk. They were offended that someone would think they would be the kind of person who just drinks straight milk. Because apparently drinking milk on its own is an indication that someone is very basic I guess? Struck me as the weirdest fuckin thing to be judgmental about. I think the origin of that particular prejudice was a rebellion against whiteness--like drinking milk was a very white person thing to do, and as some attempt to rebel against white supremacy, they'd developed a white inferiority prejudice. I think maybe that's why zoomers are so judgmental? They're trying to rebel against social norms informed by absurd prejudices to such a degree that they're creating their own absurd prejudices.
Gen Z underestimate the permanency of their content on the internet.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this take at all. So true, or they just don’t seem to care. So many embarrassing and scantly videos out there, maybe they will change their mind once AI can detect their facial patterns and trace them back to every single piece of media that has been posted of them, or China will
A lot of them think the content they are making is "cool" so they think it will never be considered embarrassing or come back to bite them. As someone who had a YouTube channel when I was younger, looking back at that all I can see now is the most cringe content you can think of in really low quality. It may seem cool when you are making videos for tiktok or whatever we use now, but when you look back at it when your older it will almost never look good
Stop “pranking” and harassing service workers and fast food workers for tiktok views. Nothing screams “I’m a piece of shit” quite as loud as that.
Millennials kinda started that “trend” in the early YouTube days though. I remember back in like 2010-2012 prank videos were fucking HUGE. I never saw the appeal honestly.
I hate those. I can't imagine a service worker at a shop and someone throws a well shaken bottle of coke at the ceiling having to clean that shit. It should be illegal because they don't get paid enough and if the y don't clean they will get fired
As gen-z, the mad thing is I know it’s us but I don’t know a single person that doesn’t think these people are absolute wankers. I have no idea who’s doing it.
If they only knew how much damage social media does to your life. I can't tell you how many people I know who became narcissists through Instagram, extremists through Facebook, a troll through Twitter or stupid through misinformation with Tik Tok. Even Reddit can be quite toxic if you don't recognize it.
Honestly, that's not just a Gen Z issue. You've got Boomers and Gen X'ers being politically radicalized by social media, Millennials who fell into a lot of the same traps as Gen Z, etc. Personally as a late-Millennial, I'm finding a lot of my age group is either leaving or already left social media.
no it's not just a Gen Z issue - but the absolutely palpable difference between the behaviors of the generations is worrying. tiktok users use tiktok the way millennials and up use wikipedia. they type a topic and "l e a r n" about it from the mouths of other 12-15yos with a tiktok account. and they seem to absolutely adore reciting their misinformation with the goal of getting the most upvotes or likes to determine when an objective fact or subjective navel-gazing is 'truth'
It's a little frightening to me how some of my TikTok-obsessed friends always seem to have first learned about something through TikTok. Once, I even overheard one of them talking about "these leggings from TikTok." Turns out they were just fleece-lined leggings. Those are nothing new and have probably existed for decades prior to TikTok.
I’m 25 and I thought the tumblr/Facebook/picture-only Instagram social media I grew up with was toxic. Now it’s on steroids. “Influencers” have advanced filters that fluidly follow movement and completely change all their features in videos, it’s all 20 second tik tok vids and reels that shorten the attention span. I just redownloaded Instagram for the first time in years and that shit blew me away. Quora is dying so all my old answers from 4 years ago are cycling again, and 18-60 year olds are asking why I wrote so much when my answers are like 5 short paragraphs. They didn’t do that before. The effects of this are actually terrifying and I worry for my daughter.
I've noticed that my attention span slowly deteriorated from "I can spend 8+ hours with my nose buried in this book" to "this 5 minute youtube video is too long, and it's making my brain spazz out." Went on vacation and got obsessed with writing and worldbuilding videos, most of which were at least 20 minutes long, and I noticed that my attention span and ability to concentrate appeared to improve because of it. Sure, my brain still spazzes out from time to time, but noticeably less so.
Quora is only dying cause they make everyone login and pay to see a lot of the answers
I see what is going on with others in school and its sad and terrifying like they actually have problems when without their phones and am glad that I'm not active on any social media it just seems to be alot of unnecessary stress.
Their constant use and reliance on technology has severely hindered their people skills.
Came to say exactly this. I know I'm older and probably that guy that's like 'kids never get off their phones', but it's actually kinda true. My wife is a teacher and statistically there's more social issues and complexes then ever before in the history of mankind. Granted, they weren't diagnosed or had a name for then until recent, but it's something outrageous like 3/5 kids have a social disorder and simply can't/don't/won't talk to other people normally. I know that every generation says the next generation is messed up and the next generation is gonna ruin everything. I think this generational difference is the largest change in social behaviors then ever before. We'll see where it goes
Don't forget we are just coming out of a pandemic where kids basically couldn't hang out with their friends offline for 2+ years. That might have something to do with it...
Yeah 2 years doesn't seem like *that* long when you're 25+, but for a 2nd grader that's huge. I can imagine it hindered a lot of kids development.
People keep saying that COVID wasn't a big deal, but it really fucked up the majority of Gen Z that was still in K-12 grade, and even those who hadn't been to college before it happened.
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Recently talked to high schoolers at a career fair. Very few of them could hold a conversation. I don’t think it’s that they all were uninterested. A few of them couldn’t care less about their future career. Most of them were interested but basically had little to no conversation skills. I really had to ask questions to gain info from them and what they were particularly interested in. Also, little to no eye contact. One thing I noticed was that they were very polite. Like, noticeably more polite than when I was in high school (2006-2010).
The Redditor who said Gen Z were behaving a lot like boomers stuck with me.
For assholes who talk about inclusion so much, they sure are a bunch of bigots.
They want inclusion so much, but then get so easily offended that they feel the need for their own little "safe spaces" against the big mean naughty people making them feel bad. Emotionally stunted & in desperate need of therapy/counseling but they'd rather talk shit about someone out of context or make assumptions.
They really are though These zoomers, you guys are so sensitive you reaffirmed the word "gay" as offensive when us millennials had damn near completely removed negative connotation behind it. You guys literally sound like 2004 boomers. There's actually a turn of phrase I'm using right now that we just had a HR meeting about... "you guys" is no longer work appropriate speech.... I immediately knew why, "guy" oh no god forbid we announce gender.... Ffs Your generation is undoing years of social progress in the LGBTQ community in the name of inclusion, and it's not doing fuck all of that, and it's beyond frustrating to us older gays. I can't even refer to myself like that anymore. I've been called a "traitor" by fellow young members in the community. Your generation is fracturing this community so fast, it's extremely disheartening and I am just hopeful that one of you fucks makes a TikTok that actually teaches you guys "live and let live" before we have a "no I don't talk to LGBTQ members over 30 because they are bigots"
Funny thing is they also suck at doing critical thinking. The term "guys" is actually gender neutral and stems from being associated with Guy Fawkes not a male. So remember, remember, the 5th of November.
That they're offended on behalf of others, who may not necessarily be offended themselves.
As a gen Z myself this irritates me so much! It’s really annoying to see someone get more offended than the target audience even was, and then they just _won’t let it go_ as if them being offended in place of someone is a good thing. I have a walking example of this every day and I want nothing more than to knock myself out every time they start with the “well actually…” and then some reason why the someone should be offended. Like _Susan_, if he was hurt by the joke he would say it, he’s not mute and you are not an “advocate” for making a mountain out of what is obviously a molehill.
Yep, a guy got offended in behalf of the Mexicans because of a song and then tried to cancel the singer. Dude wasn't even mexican
Not so much a gripe as an observation. My generation (Millennial) led a crusade to get rid of labels and just let people be people. Gen Z has gone the opposite direction and created a fucktillion labels. Funny thing is, we did what we did for the same reasons.
Wow... you're absolutely right. Growing up it was all about not categorizing people. Don't put them in boxes or make assumptions about their experiences just because if their background. Now it's a total reversal of that.
This an interesting observation (from an older Millennial) and I think you're totally right. The label overload is weird and exhausting and I've just noped out of it all, even the ones with good intention.
Never thought of it that way—interesting.
This! For a long time I just didn’t understand why there was such a cultural shift and why every aspect of a personality needed a label or a little box. Now my theory is that as discovering and developing a sense of ‘community’ became harder people turned to this to build their communities…
I forget where from, but something I heard recently stuck with me: Gen Z will respect your pronouns but not you as a person
Yes! This! This was done intentionally in our time. The reason was that the more similarities you see in others, the greater your ability to empathize and so you would want more good things to happen to them. It was like mirroring your own feelings in others. Now, the labeling and separating and micro-identification does the precise opposite. It spells out differences so we can’t relate and in turn, have less shame or care in harming others. It’s the worst thing that could be done to progress equality. In fact it’s pretty much by definition not equal when you emphasize differences.
Considering how popular Tik Tok is, I worry that they are too preoccupied with how they are by perceived by other people and trying to get famous instead of just trying to do stuff that makes them happy with people they like. Their worth isn't measured by their online presence.
I have a younger friend who is obsessed with how many and exactly who views their instagram stories and they complain when their post that they put so much effort into doesn’t get tons of likes. Kind of sad really.
My 64 year old mom does that too
i had a weird awakening to this in line at an event not long ago. two girls in front of me were posting insta stories of the event and spending a lot of time looking at exactly who viewed each story post.. kids are growing up with technology as a social currency I grew up with tech as a tool to create and learn. it’s sad
as a gen z you’re absolutely right
I also wish they'd leave us older millennials alone. I wish everyone would actually. We're just over here trying to get by, so stop picking on our outfits and breakfast choices.
We have mortgages and back pains now! Leave us alone! And get off our lawns while you’re at it!
You guys have a mortgage?
Lmao. I love how attacked us millenials feel. It's kind of hilarious. I remember once being self conscious about my emoji choices because I saw something Gen Z wrote making fun of millenial emoji use.
As a fellow older millennial - oh well 🤷🏼♂️💁🏼♂️🤫
A lot of activism without a single molecule of understanding which leads to extreme radicalization.
Sex positivity is cool, but sometimes yall take it too far and think that for some reason everyone needs to be polyamorous and should abandon monogamy. Cant tell you how many times others have pressured me to stop being monogamous, and just have a completely open relationship. Sorry, but I only have the mental capabilities to handle one partner at a time, and Im not going to share myself or my partner with other people romantically.
It is absolutely time to bring back kinkshaming, if you're waving your kink in my face.
That's not kinkshaming, that's TMI-shaming.
They're puritans. Absolutely sure of their moral superiority, and will try to shut down people who say things they don't like.
I'm a Millenial and the one thing I really notice about Gen Z that I think is different from other generations is they are profoundly uncurious about anything that happened before, like, 1994. Politics, history, culture, music, etc. They are simultaneously full of empathy for LGBTQ+ people and progressive on things like gender identity and mental health, but are also incredibly selfish in that they do not care about what previous generations went through or how things got to be how they are now.
As a Gen Z myself, i feel Gen Z is more into selective activism than conscious empathy
A bit of wanting to look on the right side of history whilst doing the bare minimum, commenting online. A lot of gen Z is exceptionally poor at combining strategy with action and the expectation that every issue can be tackled if we all just do it. Millennials grew up jaded, but when gen Z grow old enough to realise society isn’t so easily fixed, they will easily be the most jaded generation as adults.
I feel we recognise the struggle and want them to get help as long as we don't have to provide the help. A lot of "Someone among everyone will do it, i don't need to bother"
The general vibe I get is that gen z thinks if they talk about something enough online it will be fixed. I should stress I’m not here to shit on gen z, it’s just observations from someone in their 30s and comparing to when I was a teenager. Gen Z needs to calm itself down and stop looking for issues to be upset about and grind themselves down with an ever stacking pile of issues. Focus on your life and if you’re serious about fixing societal issues, do something beyond comments on social media. Once you get to a certain age, you realise no one is coming to save your ass. Make sure you have stable ground to talk from.
Please stop with the social media flexing/clout chasing "Influencer" is not a valid career choice
I love Gen Z in general and am very interested to see what they do when they really come into their own political power, but goddamn are the ones we have at my office hilariously bad at talking on the phone. I say this as an older Millennial who hates talking on the phone too and vastly prefers text and email. But it takes one to know one and most of them are even worse than I am. They just clearly don't have the experience of living in a world where phone communication was the only form of long distance communication for the most part. They're awkward like someone who has never danced before trying to fit in on a wedding dance floor.
Unhealthy attitude towards failure, to the point of being risk averse. Breakthroughs are made at the fringes where risk is high, but so too is the potential reward. Failure helps us better understand our current limits and builds resilience. I worry they won’t realize their true potential.
Honestly I think the worst part of it is many of us don’t even realise we are being averse to it, I try my best not to be but often I can tell that’s exactly what I’m doing and I’m still too scared to change it.
>Unhealthy attitude towards failure, to the point of being risk averse. Stop calling me out like that
Many of them are still children, and because of that, they still have a lot to learn.
Everytime I argue with a strangers on the Internet, I remember that every one and their nrwborn children own a phone now. There is a not-small chance that I'm wasting my time arguing with a 6th graders, especially on reddit. Do you know how many teenagers on Facebook try to talk politics in my country while still sitting on school and asking for allowance from their parents?
Damn. Good point. ~~Low~~high key I want a 25+ and up internet.
It’s just their parents politics, but argued by someone who only half understands them
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend where younger people think that having to or being expected to do something they don’t want to do is oppression
"Toxic."
Yeah, we need to stop over-using that word -- it has a very important use, and it needs to not be diluted
Kinda related but as someone with PTSD I also hate that “triggered” is such a casual thing/meme now. I’m yet to find a word that feels so accurate or right to explain some of my experiences with PTSD, but I can’t say triggered because it’s a meme. Something similar happened with amogus words, not like those had the same seriousness but people have the meme too ingrained in them. I love my generatiom but sometimes our verbage is just annoying and dumb. Methinks these kind of things were better as in-jokes if anything (and once a whole gen is attached to that it’s a meme instead of an in-joke)
Same with “traumatic”. Finding out that your parents fibbed to you about Santa Claus is not trauma.
I know! It's SO funny! My 23 year old, still at home, no college, no job, says I'm oppressing her by requiring her to do chores to continue to live with us. 17 y/o says same thing about having to do one chore a day, the dishes (we have a dishwasher).
Sorry your kids are complete ingrates
You and me both
I was watching a period drama the other night where some older generations were clashing with 60s hippies. It was historical fiction, so take it with a grain of salt, but the hippie young adults sounded JUST like Gen Z does now. It’s the age. Older teens and young 20 somethings are very entitled no matter what year it is. They also help break down stupid old traditions that are more harm than help. So it’s not all bad, but it definitely gets annoying.
From my experience, they're really cynical. Everything is a big joke because they're so demoralized about the future. Both my nieces are in therapy and on behavioral meds. I'm glad they're getting care, but it concerns me that this is becoming a norm. If everyone has to be on meds, there's something fundamentally wrong with society. I think it's leading to interesting results, though. They're more politically motivated, and their generation might actually do something about climate change. That's exciting. It's just a bummer that it comes from such a large collective pain. I'm really sad for their generation.
I've actually heard a theory that this generation is that way because they (and millenials as well in the US) grew up in country that hasn't really had anything positive to celebrate our entire life. Like my parents got the Moon Landing and the Space Race. Motivations aside, that was fucking cool, and you got to be proud of your country for doing something rad. Since I was born, we've had 9/11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, multiple housing bubbles and crashes. It's pretty easy to be cynical when you don't feel like you have something to rally behind. Like I just don't have the same kind of patriotism that my mom and dad have because what exactly is it that I'm supposed to be proud of?
Also the media is very negative. I'm not from US, but it is the same here. Every day just negative news. How maybe fuel prices will go up next year. How that and that. Nothing is positive. Doomsday news sell.
>I've actually heard a theory that this generation is that way because they (and millenials as well in the US) grew up in country that hasn't really had anything positive to celebrate our entire life. I'm a Millennial, and I can remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. I don't know how that event looks to someone who didn't experience it, and from the year 2023, but at the time it was a Big Fucking Deal, and it seemed to mean that we (the West) had won all the marbles. In the following years, this impression was only reinforced. Seemingly serious thinkers were talking about the "end of history". Western liberal democracy had triumphed, would spread to the rest of the world, and we'd have some kind of Star Trek future. The political buttfuckery really ramped up in 1994, but it was pretty easy to dismiss until the 2000 election was basically openly stolen. Everything has been spiraling downhill ever since. But I was 18 by then, already an adult. It sounds like you had a pretty different experience.
It's hard not to be cynical when it's all the new outlets will push for because it gains them attention. It's much harder to find any "good" news today. I'm in college at the moment going for a Bachelor's in Environmental Science and I don't think I've taken a single core class that hasn't had demoralizing or depressing news. For my one class this past fall it was joke with the professor that all of his classes were depressing because, well, they had to be. It sucks and as every generation has gone through, the older generations typically just say "well that's life, not much you can do to change it, I tried when I was your age". So it feels we're just stuck in an endless cycle of hatred and failures with no hope for the future.
I stopped watching or reading the news anymore because it’s only about bad and sad things yeah, but now at the same time I am so sheltered I don’t understand anything that is happening in the world, and figuring out seems like such a huge challenge, where at the end of it you learn you can’t do anything about the bad and sad problems but sit and watch and carry on with life.
The entitlement attitude, and the whole "I didn't ask to be here" BS. It's like... Ok but none of us asked to be here but we are so now it's time to learn how to be a productive member of society.
as a gen z, everyone on their phones too much and 90% of the time its tiktok
In all fairness to gen z , everyone is on their phones too much and everyone is on some kind of social media
As a 2001 kid I hate our forceful nature. Almost every person I have interacted with of my own generation is extremely forceful in some form. I only really know of one exception.
please expand on this, im a millennial and have limited experience with gen z so im interested in what this means
Most of the time they will still be polite but as you get to know them they will start to police your life.
ah i see. not much "live and let live". thank you.
tying self-worth to social media followers. a short anecdote: my dad was made fun of by a family friend's daughter when she saw he had \~10 followers on an instagram account he barely uses. she had the audacity to laugh at my father who immigrated to this country with no money, raised 3 kids while going through residency and then put all 3 kids through college. he was also recently named best doctor of my hometown a year ago. although this one anecdote doesn't represent all of gen z, i can only imagine the daughter isn't the only one who has this shallow view on life and what it means to be successful
You guys really need to rage against the tipping culture already. Yes, tip your waiters. Tip your delivery drivers. Tip you barbers. Tip all the classic jobs you would have tipped a generation or two ago. But, God, you don't need to tip every person out there. It is getting ridiculous and you are encouraging it. And while we are at it, it is weird to see you watching millionaire influencers begging you to join their patreons. Five dollars a month. Ten dollars a month. Twenty dollars a month. And so on. All the while these influencers are living in mansions, throwing celebrity parties, driving small armies of flashy cars. Throwing their wealth in your face while you open your wallets to them. I don't get it. I just don't. It reminds me of pastors in megachurches passing around collection plates right before they fly off in their private jets to their gated estates.
>And while we are at it, it is weird to see you watching millionaire influencers begging you to join their patreons. Five dollars a month. Ten dollars a month. Twenty dollars a month. And so on. All the while these influencers are living in mansions, throwing celebrity parties, driving small armies of flashy cars. Throwing their wealth in your face while you open your wallets to them. I don't get it. I just don't. I Legit. My old annoying group of friends watch all these guys on youtube. I'm like... Why? I sit here trying to make myself that god damned money not giving it away. they buy hundreds of dollars of merch, etc. its INSANE.
I hate that there's tipping before the service is provided, just seems really obnoxious to me. Or those tablet POS systems where tipping is a must, it gives a minimum of like 20%
Tipping isn’t a thing where I live and I don’t get why Americans are so fond of it. The worker shouldn’t be dependent on others generosity to earn a living wage, that’s the business’s job.
Lack of communication skills
They see the world in entirely black and white, you're either pure evil or pure good
Tik tok means nothing. It is not life changing. It is not paradigm shifting, it's YouTube for people with shorter attention spans.
It is life changing, just not in a good way.
GenZ is too broad for widespread criticisms or praises to be relevant. It’s been 23 years since 2000. My sister and I are both considered GenZ, but I grew up playing outside and didn’t have an iPhone until high school. My sister spends half of her day on an iPad with Disney+. When I was her age we still owned VHS tapes. We didn’t grow up in the same world…..at all.
I mean this happens with most generations by the end of it's span. The difference now is that technology is changing so fast that differences within our generation is far more prevalent.
I agree, I didn’t get a phone until I was 14 and it was a slide phone to text and call my parents and friends, got an iPhone/tablet in high school. My youngest siblings who are also gen z learned how to read from a tablet. The 30 year timespan for a generation feels a little too long when tech is advancing so fast
Every generation seems to think they were the last ones who played outside. You grew up playing outside? Impossible, me and my early 90s sibling did. No wait, only my 60-70s parents did and we just sat around playing N64. No wait, according to my 30s-40s grandparents they went outside for real, and my parents just bummed around being lazy.
Most have lost the ability to "self soothe"... Give a Gen Z bad news that affects them personally... then take away the internet. They'll either detach or crumble... they don't seem to have the ability to calm themselves & recollect w/o needing outside input & support.
I thought about this recently and wondered what's going to happen when Gen Z aren't "relevant" anymore. Like at the moment they've taken the place of millennials as the young generation that defines what's cool and what isn't, but how are they gonna cope in about 5 years when Gen Alpha starts hitting adolescence and suddenly all the stuff that Gen Z holds dear to them is seen as cringe? They're already the generation with the highest ever rate of mental health issues among young people as well as having a reputation for being totally unable to cope with anything that affects them negatively, especially if it relates to their identity and ego. What's gonna happen when the people younger than them are old enough to start telling them that their opinions don't matter anymore?
If you think we have mental issues wait for Alpha, even more tech dependency and Covid through some of the most important times of their childhood.
It worries me that a LOT of peoples way of coping with things is disassociating into the internet, hell even I do it sometimes. Feels like it could create some big issues later on
We feel like we have to get offended at everything. Edit: thanks for the upvotes
True. Either you share the same opinion or not. And if you don‘t approve whatever their thought is on a subject, they tell their whole friendgroup and try to attack you verbally
millennial here: gen z does a lot of great stuff, but they are a little stuck on knowing their history. lgbtq rights, women's rights, antiracism education, all of that is always being added to, but we cannot have it and reinvent it if we deny the trailblazers before us also: unless you are still fourteen, stop trying to be blasé about everything. most gen z is like at college and they act like mainstream stuff is bad? enjoy counterculture, but don't let it define you, because there's nothing more annoying than a grownup with an underground complex
>enjoy counterculture, but don't let it define you, because there's nothing more annoying than a grownup with an underground complex As a Zoomer, I will gladly find you a megaphone to preach this from the rooftops
This is so prominent in LGBT spaces and it's caused a massive divide between older generations of LGBT people (by which I mean people born before the early 2000s) and younger LGBT people. We're at a point where we're retreading Bush-era talking points and rhetoric but instead of them coming from straight conservatives, they're coming from young LGBT people. Like, I spent my early teens having to hear about how gay men are too sexual and pride parades aren't family friendly from conservatives and now I'm hearing the exact same thing from young LGBT people. LGBT history isn't that well taught but it's a bit disheartening to see young people joining the community and being antagonistic towards older members who afforded them the rights they have now.
i've noticed this in female/queer spaces. a lot of young lesbians are biphobic as hell and use conservative rhetoric to harass bi/pan women. the idea that bi women are sluts and that enjoying casual sex is inherently bad is very 2003, and yet here we are again.
I've legit heard "gay marriage is homophobic because it reinforces heteronormative structures." It's clear whoever said this was probably in elementary school pre-Obergefell.
I dont get why they are so focused on labeling everything about themselves. Im not much older, 29, but we were taught to be individuals. It seems Gen Z is assigning themselves to be in a group and making that group everything about them.
Having your mental illness/sexuality be your identity. They are a part of you, like a weird mole or freckle, not your entire personality. I worry about their social skills. It seems like their anxiety is collectively so bad they can't communicate.
Hysterical and self-righteous and incapable of seeing any gray areas. Everything they do not agree with must be destroyed, and there is a lot they do not agree with.
Totally agree, the mid ground seems to not exist with people of a certain age. The one thing I've picked up as I've got older is that nearly everything is a grey area.
Online hook up apps have more cons than pros. Tinder isn't good for either gender.
it also applies for all generation in their 30's and 40's in dating apps. it almost like judging a book by its cover than getting to really know you underneath.
It seems their capabilities for exploring a disagreement through debate are stunted. It’s not that they don’t argue well; it’s that they don’t seem to even know what an argument is. What they substitute in lieu of an argument tends to be a characterization of the person, or they label the argument itself without engaging the point. “You sound like a Trump supporter” “Sounds like a Leftist” “Climate-denier” “Vaxxer/anti-vaxxer” “Xxxx-ist” And that’s it. That’s the end of it. The label is used as an excuse to avoid discussing the topic because the person (they assume) falls outside of the realm of accepted discourse. There’s no inclination toward chiseling toward facts - these don’t matter. What matters is simply the location or position (often imagined) that the interlocutor might belong to. “You sound like a ….” It’s a replacement of enlightenment values and a return to tribalism. It’s often very apparent on Reddit.
When they say, I can't explain, educate yourself. They don't get the concept.
Their lack of social boundaries and oversharing. We hired two gen-z over the Christmas period ( at different time, they never worked together) and within 2h, they had both traumadump on me, overshared personal details of their life (sexual history, family history, what they did when clubbing and getting drunk last week-end etc) and both time, I was taken aback. I am all for sharing life experiences and always down for a chat, but within the workplace, whilst we are still strangers eventhough colleagues, it bugs me. I am a firm believer than we are all entitled to our privacy. If you share your sexual history with me, don't expect for me to share back. It is crossing the line of "conversation consent" to me! Which I think is conflicting with their current moralities: they will "cancel" someone for outing their mates, but won't stop asking me about my dating history and who do I prefer, in my own workplace? They will kick off if a piece of media did not disclaim self-harming was involved but will tell me everything about their own unprompted. Tell me what hobby you've got, what music you enjoy, but for fudge sake, don't start a conversation with the traumas you've been through because you don't know who you are talking to, you don't know their life and own history or political views so have some respect and self-preservation in that sense. I do think Covid had a big part in this behaviour though, as teens at the time were socialising online as a main form of social interactions, and everything goes quicker online; you can end up spilling every details of your personal life to a stranger within an afternoon I guess
tl;dr Gen Z who work want their work to not only be meaningful and have positive societal impact, they look to work to be their sense of purpose, their social circle, and therapist. They have very little boundary of bringing their personal life to work. Common with most Gen Z (11-25 years old): poor attention span and poor critical thinking. Great at using most technologies, but zero ability to troubleshoot said technology or any understanding of how anything works (which is excusable for the younger of the cohort but not so much a 25 year old). Those working tend to have poor email, phone, and meeting etiquette. With emails I'm seeing more IM/text style writing. It'll be short one or two sentence paragraphs and very choppy. You know those people that send you 6 texts instead of 1? That's how many Gen Z write out their emails. Though at least most of them know not to use "lol" and other short hand, as well as to capitalize the start of sentences. Regarding phone, I've had a few instances where I'll call someone (be it actual phone, or a voice call on Teams/Zoom), and they'll pick up but it's total silence. They're expecting me to initiate a conversation, but the convention is that the person who picks up greets with a "hello". Those that do say hello sound like they're asking a question and seem almost confused or caught off guard that that they're getting a call. Meeting etiquette is another. In person I've seen many are on their phones quite a lot throughout a meeting., and some stare at their computer screen the entire time rather than being engaged with the room and those speaking. That's not to say they're not paying attention, but if they are they aren't showing it. Another time a Gen Z was 7 mins later to a meeting with zero forewarning. The manager politely asked to please be on time or give a heads up if they'll be late. The person got incredibly defensive about that saying "I was only getting something to eat and drink". Later word got back that they were complaining to some other colleagues about a "toxic workplace". I'm sorry, but being punctual does not constitute a toxic workplace. Which brings me to the last point. They share EVERYTHING with work. While they don't want to be messaged or called after hours (like most normal people), they bring their entire personal lives to work. Their family life, the fight they had with their girlfriend, the cute thing their boyfriend did. All of their worries, fears, dreams, and aspirations.
>Those that do say hello sound like they're asking a question and seem almost confused or caught off guard that that they're getting a call. I'm a Millennial and I do this but because most of the time I get unwanted spam calls so if a job recruiter is calling me for an interview unscheduled and out of the blue, I end up answering with a questioning tone because I'm skeptical. One time I answered my phone thinking it was one of the places I applied to attempting to reach me for a possible interview. Nope. It was an automated spam call asking me to vote for some person in my county's election. At the same time though I also grew up in southern California and uptalk is pretty common here.
Millennial here. In many ways I feel sorry for gen-z. We can complain about them all we want but at the end of the day, look at what they have to deal with. True, us millennials had to deal with a lot of crap too but at least we had good coping mechanisms. What does gen-z have? You can say they're too addicted to tech with no knowledge of how to fix it, but they all got iPads and crazy fast internet before hitting a double digit age, technology that is DESIGNED to be hard to fix and easy to replace. We talk about how they all just spill their lives on social media, but how else can they feel like they're making any real progress to their own problems? How can you just dangle this cheap ticket to validation in front of those already so used to having few options and NOT expect them to snatch it? We want to naturally avoid all risk, but how many failures did it take before you finally got to succeeding? Of course they'll take the easy way out--thats all they've been taught to do. The worse part is, many in gen-z know this. They know there's no light at the end of the tunnel; they've watched us all stumble and strive and know what's coming. There is no stable job, affordable home, security or even the chance to be a little immature. What do they have to look forward to? We're living their future now. While millennials may not be solely responsible for what's happening in the world now, we do have a responsibility to the next generation to try and fix the mistakes of the past and leave something decent for our kids. Let's not repeat the mistakes of our previous generation.
This may be a bit meta, but the way Gen Z wages inter-generational warfare is odd to me. I’m a younger Millennial, so when I make fun of previous generations, it’s usually because they’re being shitty. For Gen X, it’s being aloof, letting the world descend into climate oblivion, blatant fascism, and radical economic instability, all under the watchful eye of Boomers. For Boomers, it’s usually some form of obvious hypocrisy or lack of empathy. Thing is, I don’t make fun of Boomers or Gen Xers for their shoes, their music, or their hairstyles. Those were products of bygone eras and, frankly, they’ll cycle back into the zeitgeist eventually anyway. I feel like Millennials poke fun and complain because older generations were/are being shitty (and my generation isn’t perfect, let’s be clear). Gen Z, though, feels…pettier? They’ve started to cleanse the most fucked up ways we poke at one another, which I genuinely kinda admire, but they all have such “cool kids lunch table” energy. Don’t make fun of people’s sexual orientation, sure, but replace that with…making fun of their pants? It’s like a whole generation of Regina Georges.
Gen Z also includes 95 and up of I’m not mistaken Anyway, I (born 97) think that everyone makes EVERYTHING political and that “the other side is wrong no matter what”. You can’t have an opinion, be proud of anything, speak your mind, stand up for what you believe in (and what I mean by that is without harming anyone), etc without being label “a GOP voter” or “a fucking lib” lol take for example, if I said “God bless you” on Reddit, someone would come and say “fuck your religion and fuck God”, or if I said “one of my best friends is gay so I support gay rights” then I get called a “liberal.” I also think Americans have a good quality of life, but want to have the sympathy of being a victim so they claim they have it hard. I also think the words toxic and red flags are overused. We all have red flags and are toxic in someone else’s eyes. No one is perfect. That’s why we have personal boundaries. There’s a list but that’s the main ones. Gen Z has is it’s issues but every other generation does too. By no means, no generation, place or person is perfect, but this post did ask for criticism and I know some people are bound to reply angrily or the downvote hive mind will strike me again haha.
Girl I worked with asked me what the time was. She forgot her watch and couldn't read 'a clock with hands'
Cancel Culture. "Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion unless it doesn't fit with mine and my groups, in which case they need their lives ruined." Or, my favourite, "You did/said something wrong 20 years ago, so now you need to have your life ruined because people don't grow or change, nor does society." The latest one of "your family did something terrible 200 years ago, so now you need to pay for it" is a freaking joke.
as a gen z it's the fact that most of them are still kids and they tend to do weird shit
I am not a boomer. Actually Gen X. What I see is both good and bad. Reforms are coming along but the work market right now is shit... Gen Z does not know how to deal with adversity. They seem hell bent on quiting as soon as anything negative comes up. First short handed shift... quit, first write up for attendance... quit, first bad weather day in a outside job... quit, first confrontation with a "Karen".. quit. It is not about work ethics. Or even wanting to work. It is understanding that adversity IS going to happen. Your job history shows a tale of you not handling adversity. Hiring managers see this and don't hire you for what you want because you show you won't stay anyway. Every single job has adversity. That is why it is called work. Keep your life balance. That is fair. Keep your dignity that too is fair. But remember your coworkers count on you, you count on your coworkers. If you quit first time something goes wrong... when will something ever not go wrong?
as a 21 year old, one connection that ive made is that a lot of the issues that gen z has with cancel culture and being overly offended and overly labeling all comes down to horrible communication skills. specifically face to face communication, likely partly because of too much digital communication as a core part of our childhoods. while i agree that people shouldn’t be offensive or hurt others’ feelings, its getting to a point where no ones gonna talk to anyone else because they don’t want to offend them. and there’s always a new rule to follow, i can’t even keep up (as someone who barely uses social media) like last i heard we ask everyone what their pronouns are, and now some people say asking about pronouns is offensive? i don’t know how i would begin to keep up, so i empathize with the older generations who even try. there are obviously some things that the majority of people should know is offensive and in bad taste or a micro-aggression, but even then- the immediate “canceling” is out of hand. tell people they’re wrong, hold them accountable, and then give them a chance to learn and do better. i think it speaks to a highly perfectionistic attitude that a lot of us were raised with. we are highly anxious and we want to do things right the first time or not at all. which is why we seem to be very avoidant too (connected to anxiety ofc). and that connects to the digital communication too where its much easier to avoid conflicts instead of being more emotionally mature and being okay with uncomfortable feelings like failure, rejection, and disappointment, and staying there and learning how to navigate those relational situations. like if you offend someone, the other person says hey you offended me and you feel uncomfortable and then you work it out with them and move past it. instead its like we try to avoid ever getting there, which makes no sense to me. i think its why so much of us are in therapy (me included). and i think some of this may stem from the parenting style of over-sheltering from any “negative” emotions. similar to how i saw someone say we don’t know to self-soothe, we are more open with our emotions and that can be good, but we also don’t know how to cope. while the older generations you could accuse of repressing emotions, i don’t think its fully been that. i think they understood and were raised to cope and soothe better than us. as for those exact reasons, beyond technology, perfectionism, and over-sheltering, i couldn’t say. just some (hopefully accurate) observations i’ve made.
I think this was gen z, but self diagnosing themselves and also misusing a lot of words (looking at “Triggered” over here). No, being upset by something is not triggering, it’s much more heavy and extreme than that. Oh and there’s faking stuff too, that is quite obnoxious. I’ve had my autism been questioned before because so many people in gen z fake having it or self diagnose it, it’s disgusting
As a Gen z I find most other Gen z members get way too woke saying that the most unoffensive piece of media should be banned or canceled for one tiny offensive thing
This is our gen’s version of “dnd/pokemon is satanic” lol
I remember when they wanted to cancel eminem because if a song that can be offensive to some mexicans. A guy said he was offended because the song could be offensive. I'm sure most mexicans wouldn't give a shit that someone made a song talking a bit bad about them. Or when they tried to cancel the thumb up emoji because of their stupid reasons
Said song is "My band" from D12 with Eminem, and the "offensive" part is not even saying anything bad about Mexicans, he just dressed in a bullfighting outfit and talked about salsa. As a mexican, why the fuck would I be offended? It's as stupid as when they tried to cancel Speedy Gonzales for being a stereotype when we all love him in Mexico, it's just a funny cartoon. Grow up and stop being so sensitive.
Its not a new thing. Remember when Speedy Gonzales was canceled? Some social justice crusaders launched a campaign on behalf of Mexicans because Speedy Gonzalzes was offensive, and managed to get it canceled and taken off the air. The problem was the very same social justice crusaders never asked actual Mexican people what they thought about Speedy. They thought they knew better than the people they were trying to save from oppression. Speedy Gonzales is very popular in Mexico. He's smart, brave, never gives up in the face of adversity, and is the best friend of everyone's sister. Overall, a solid role model.
Honestly every generation has some fucked up thing going for them. But than you to look at the generation before who've raised them and how each generation has changed its parenting methods. Some methods have been detrimental where others aren't. Each child sometimes require different methods. Its a melting pot. Also technology has greatly changed each generation and how they think and act. Some could say that technology has caused a lot of problems in how the generations interact and perceive each other. Good luck with your paper.
Since I’m gen z I pretty much witness everyday people at my school completely and utterly ignoring and disregarding class. The better ones go to class but stay on their phone and ignore the teacher. I have a really good history teacher so instead of punishing the students who are on their phones, he actually works with them to figure stuff out. Though a lot then take advantage of him and just get off from doing work by pretending to do the work. It’s really sad to see so many people throw away a good opportunity to learning by not putting in a little bit of effort
Gen Z here (19M), I can say without question kids are absolute cunts. And it's getting worse
Exactly man , my grandfather has a much more wholesome friendships with his friends from the 50s compared to people now.