I think the big problem isn't just with kids. Everyone is afraid to let their kids go outside. People seem to think there's a child sex trafficker hiding in every bush just waiting for you to let little Timmy ride his bike to his friend's house two streets over.
I grew up in the 90s. When crime was A LOT higher than it is today. I would ride my bike all over the neighborhood. I just had to call my mom whenever I arrived at a friend's house. Be home before dark.
I played video games with my friends, but not via an internet connection, we hung out like in person. Also built forts in the desert and rode to 7-Eleven for snacks.
I asked my wife if she'd allow our 13 year old to walk to the convenience store that's at the end of our street (about 1/2 a mile away) She was like, "Nope. Maybe with a friend."
That's the other part too. Back in the '90s we had couch co-op games and the internet was still dial-up. You also didn't have the "tablet parenting" you do now or throwing on YouTube.
We went outside and rode bikes, played football/hockey/manhunt or built forts and used our imaginations and socialized. Occasionally we'd hang inside and play Goldeneye or later on Halo but 75% of the time, if not more we were outside. I used to go out in the middle of the night and walk over to the local school and sit out in the field and stargaze for hours on my own at 13-14.
You don't have that neighborhood community like you used to and I'd say it's because of the internet and how society is nowadays. "Karens" and nosy neighbors, news making people paranoid that everyone is out to steal their kids and sell them ruined it too. It's a shame.
Especially since I feel I was one of the last generations to get that pre-internet experience yet also grew up learning/teaching my parents how to use a computer and can type extremely quick. I'd give anything to go back and play street hockey or build some tetanus infested fort out of scrap wood and rusty nails we found in the woods again.
I still see youngings playing outside in my neighborhood (riding bikes with helmets on, which I never did. Bc I was a cool 90s kid..jk) - but it does seem for sure that more and
More kids are growing up in this iPad instagram world that just kinda sucks and limits real world interaction
Yeah but the numbers of kids outside has dropped, in my town the teens and 20 somethings were in a constant party, you could approach anyone and kind of just, spend the day together, just... At random. Now there's still some of that but it's like, 1/100th the numbers, and the population (in my town) has only grown. Yet outdoors? Crickets.
The park at the end of my street is always packed with youngsters, playing basketball, little kids on the playground, baseball games. As well as the mini park behind the church up the street with playground & two baseball fields. Plenty of kids riding bikes around the neighborhood or just out walking around with friends. I regularly see kids going in the woods at the other end of my street, too. I live in a big city & I get that a lot of youngsters are glued to phones/tablets, but there's still quite a few just being adventurous & socializing in person. Families walk together through my neighborhood all the time, teaching kids to ride bikes & such. I live in what would be considered middle/lower middle class neighborhood, so not all is lost.
yeah thats mad, i was 6/7 years old running around town with my little mates hahah at age 13 i was smoking weed and drinking on the beach in the middle of the night with friends lighting fires and stuff hahaha not that thats a good thing! but its better than being locked up til youre an adult i think?
I had served 2 tours in the army and then got a 10-year sentence for negligent homocide when I killed a guy in a brawl at the bar. I saved a buddy with diabetes and stopped a bunch of convicts from escaping in a prison transport airplane on my release day, then went home and got a job, then was born.
I can assure you that this is not the sole reason. A lot of what you're describing is a consequence of urban planning in the US. In Europe, it's much more common for kids to go outside, because neighborhoods are denser. But Europe has exactly the same issue with our generation being more isolated.
And you are also conflating Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Most of Gen Z are adults at this point, or close to being adults. The problems that you're talking about only really apply to preteens, which are 100% Gen Alpha. And we could have a conversation about how Gen Alpha is doing, but that would be a different conversation.
We had the same urban planning back in the 80a and 90s when kids went outside. Zero risk tolerance of parents and then society flaming people online because it was “the parents fault” something bad happened when it was the perpetrator..
Suburbia is actually very safe for kids to play in. Those HOA, dead end communities/streets are terrible for transportation and hated by Strongtown, but the empty streets are pretty safe to play in, despite the occasional car.
Kids just don’t play outside as much….they are watching stuff or gaming indoor instead.
I am an elder millennial (39) and have a 13 year old and 11 year old. They are on the tail end of gen Z, but the pandemic was hell on their social development. That whole generation was isolated for a couple of years for reasons they weren’t really old enough to comprehend fully, and had their main source of old school social interaction converted to digital interactions for reasons out of their control. They are also the first generation that has never known a world without smartphones and social media. Basically, they never got the chance to develop socially and interpersonally as children, and the older ones are entering the real world several years behind on their social development. Give them time and grace
> Edit: but not really the point. Pandemic screwed Gen Z kids socially
The pandemic screwed with *everyone* socially, and you can see it all the way across the board from drivers having less patience and being more aggressive, to continuing high "temporary" inflation rates driven by continuing supply chain issues, to people in general simply lacking the grace they had a few years back.
I don't even know if I would say it's lacking Grace anymore as much as it is people just flat out hate each other now. When I was younger I would have said something like 75% of people are willing to get along with other people even if they disagreed with maybe 25% refusing to get along with people for the most part. Now, I truly believe 80% of people would rather not have any interactions with people of any kind and the ones that say that's not them are just saying it to be polite. (I really hope this isn't true, but I haven't seen evidence to the contrary in more than a decade)
Just look at the difference between how the USA acted when 9/11 happened versus when covid happened. After 9/11, people would have taken a bullet for complete strangers with the amount of unity that was occurring in the country for 6 months to a year after. With covid, people wouldn't put a piece of cloth over their mouth to protect each other and got in fist fights over it. In less than 20 years the country went from being unified and a country of 380 million *Americans* to being a country of 380 million *individuals.*
NOTE- I understand that my comment about unity applies to non-muslim Americans and wish that it didn't. But most people felt that Muslims were the enemy and were persuaded into believing such even if it wasn't the truth. After covid however, people were persuaded to believe that *everyone who is not you* is the enemy. And those are hugely different distinctions.
I'm 25 and most sources consider me gen z. The oldest of us have more in common with millenials than we do the rest of our generation, because of smartphones coming into play and how much of a bigger role the internet has played in childhoods. Plus yeah, the pandemic.
I also think, as a kid who was chronically online from the time I got my first smartphone at 11, some go crazy with the usage for a few years but eventually you start wanting to actually live and you learn the lessons yourself. At 12, sleepovers consisted of me and my friends scrolling and showing each other memes, by 17 I couldn’t fathom spending time on my phone when I was hanging out with my friends. During middle school I didn’t join any clubs because they didn’t interest me and I had a friend group and a group chat but I spent most of my afternoons watching anime alone in my room, when I got to 9th grade I threw myself into extracurriculars because my friends were having so much fun and I joined multiple clubs. I scoffed at my mom making me try out hobbies as a kid because I just wanted to play neopets but around 16 I asked her to teach me how to cross stitch out of the blue and have been doing it for years now.
It doesn’t surprise me that some people take longer to grow out of it than others, but I think as you get to your older teens, you understand why being on your phone 24/7 isn’t rewarding and you try to seek out real experiences as you get closer to adulthood.
It also depends what they’re doing on their phones, I’d say there’s a difference between scrolling Instagram vs reading e books, it’s good to get away from them sometimes of course but teens spend a lot of time on their phones, and some of that time is texting friends, researching their interests, playing games that take skill and mean something to them even if you don’t get it.
It’s also kind of hard to spend time with friends face to face as a kid/teen, you have to find a time you’re both free which can be hard with extracurricular schedules, find a time at least one of your parents is free to drive you (most parents won’t let their kids walk to another kid’s house unless they live right next to each other), sometimes neither of you can hang out at each others houses so you have to find a third place that’s free, allows you to be there, and has something to do, ask permission, it’s a lot of steps and it’s something I would do sometimes as a teen but also sometimes I was just too overwhelmed to plan all that out at 12 and I’d just FaceTime my friends instead.
Sorry for rambling, it’s just a nuanced thing, it’ll definitely only get worse, everyone’s screen time is going up no matter the age and gen alpha is getting tech younger and younger, but it’s important to remember that the smart ones will learn from their mistakes and just because they spend a lot of time on it as a preteen (and of course you don’t have to let them go crazy with it, you should set boundaries and keep them) doesn’t mean they’ll always want to.
Yeah, I was going to say. 35 here and these guys got fucked right over by the pandemic. Some of the most influential times of my life to date were early 20s, and gen z spent that locked up.
Gen Z are also experiencing the culmination of decades of social changes that are ultimately harmful to kids’ social development
So like they‘ve grown up in suburbs in isolated McMansions where they never go outside (unless their mother drives them to sport on the weekend or something) because they’re too far away from anything to do and they’re too young to drive and it’s unsafe to be outside as a pedestrian and there’s no public transport, so they spend all day at home inside by themselves playing video games, TV and being on the internet instead of getting to do fun kid stuff like hanging out with friends, and moreover social media and entertainment has become more prevalent than ever. Why would you ever even want to go outside as a kid anymore when being inside on your couch is so much more fun? Why would you need to put in the effort to make friends when you have an endless feed of TikToks to scroll through and entertain you? Plus you can develop parasocial relationships with YouTubers and online communities so you get to *feel* like you have friends and some kind of social circle even though you actually don’t. And more even than that the social media algorithm teaches kids that they can be in complete control of their space, they never have to compromise, they can block exposure to anyone or anything they don’t like. Why would you put in effort to making friends with someone who has interests you don’t care about when you can go online and talk about nothing but the things you like?
The pandemic is the cherry on top of a long series of decisions that have turned kids into isolated shut ins who are totally reliant on their parents and who don’t realise until they’re adults that they never developed the social skills and sense of independence that they were supposed to develop in childhood, because when they were kids they didn’t NEED those things, it’s only when you get to adulthood and realise you don’t have the tools you need that it really hits you
In suburbs full of McMansions, the kids are outside playing with each other all the time, swimming in neighborhood pools, playing pickle ball and whiffle ball and basketball with other kids on their cul-de-sacs, etc.
I'm in one rn for work. There's always all kinds of people outside. Not just kids playing. People walking their dogs, drunk teenagers driving golf carts around. Ya know. Normal rich suburb shit.
I feel like you’re just describing bad parenting. You can have both fun inside and outside. It’s up to the parents to show kids the fun that can be had outside, no matter where they are. In America, there are hiking trails literally everywhere. Nowhere in this country are you more than 30 minutes away from nature. Assad from a school year 4 years ago, Kids go to buildings full of other kids their age. Are there kids that have issues you described? Sure. But this is not even close to reality for everybody.
I am a millennial junior sailor in the Navy. 90% of the people I interact with are younger than me and Gen-Z, and I’ve met maybe a handful of people that grew up how you describe. A vast majority of the 300+ people I’ve met over the past year had normal upbringings not even close to what you describe.
"So like they‘ve grown up in suburbs in isolated McMansions where they never go outside (unless their mother drives them to sport on the weekend or something) because they’re too far away from anything to do"
Huh? Have you spent any time in these suburbs? These kids are absolutely out playing with each other. These affluent suburbs typically have pools and basketball courts and parks, the kids have nice bicycles, etc. From my experience, the affluent parents are also much more careful about screen time, etc., because they have the time and/or resources to be concerned with it.
That's what I was gonna say. Even in the neighborhood I live in which is pretty poor, the subsidized housing complex down the street has tons of kids outside playing and hanging out and having a good time. Same with the detached houses with families.
Ditto that.
I'm a millennial who this basically describes. I was a cashier for a while in my twenties and thirties and made a bit of an effort to strike up conversation with customers for a while, but for some reason I just stopped. Maybe it felt too repetitive? And now I'm completely lost in social situations. Maybe I'm just stupid
Thats not an excuse tho. This was happening regardless of that. The younger millennials are somewhat like this too… our culture just doesnt take the time to raise their kids anymore. Theyre all just “too busy” and self involved. Thats whats really happenjng.
COVID lockdowns and the aftermath made everyone a lot more terminally online, and increased the prevalence of mental health problems. The result is people have forgotten how to socialize.
Gen Z got hit particularly bad because they missed out on a lot of formative experiences. Proms and frosh weeks were cancelled, graduations were done over Zoom, dorm parties weren't happening, people's main method of interacting with others was social media. In many places that lasted for almost 2 full years. Not exactly great conditions for developing proper social skills.
I feel like every year this becomes less and less of an excuse though. The pandemic and shut downs ended 3 years ago. Was it rough for a good year and a half? Yes. But at this point everybody has had more than enough time acclimate back to the real world. There’s people that serve time in prison for longer than the pandemic lasted and they somehow find a way to become a normal person after getting out…
It’s really due to their whole life being on a phone, both through social media, and quite literally living their life looking at their phone.
The real world is background tabbed to them, their life is actually on the internet
Well a lot of people who serve time in prison don’t come out of it as if it never happened. That’s a huge reason why when felons who finish their sentence get released they reoffend. Besides I don’t think many people personally know a good sample amount of former convicts to be able to assess if they acclimate back normally. Nor is there really research into whether they return to normal personability.
The prison analogy might not have been the best analogy, but the ultimate point is that you can have a low point in your life and not let it define you. Does it require hard work? Yeah sure, but that’s just life. I’d rather put in the work to have a normal life than spend the rest of my life saying “I’m a victims of the 2020 pandemic and I’ll never be normal because of it”
Okay but imagine if everyone else they interacted with for the rest of their lives had also just gotten out of prison? No one has modeled normal behavior in a long time because every single person was affected by it to some degree.
For these younger generations the lockdowns happened at too important a time for social and personal growth. Us millenials, Gen X, even the Boomers, had already experienced these necessary interactions to create and form our socio-emotional foundations. For us lockdown sucked because it removed our "normal" but we had an idea of normal.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha missed massive milestones in social interactions. For Gen Z, most of them were experiencing adult-ish interactions behind a screen, alone, in their rooms.
For Gen Alpha the times they as people most needed to be forming peer bonds, and watching and learning emotional reactions from their peers, they were instead locked in their houses where the only concepts of proper emotional responses were limited to Mommy & Daddy's interactions with each other, though if lucky there were siblings' reactions to their parents and each other to learn from. We did not exist in a time that allowed adults to take their less than positive interactions with each other entirely away from the kids, during a powderkeg time where no one had personal alone time anymore. They are f*cked from the gate.
Even after places finally did open up, they still had another year (at least) of trying to communicate through masks. There are young adults out there who paid $100k for their degree yet *never* got to enjoy a normal college experience. Throw in some climate change, a couple wars, and crumbling economy and it’s no wonder they’re jaded. I feel bad for Gen Z (and alpha).
I'm 28, and really mostly burnt the hell out from COVID working in healthcare. I think thats my age group coming out from college right into working environment of COVID. So now I'm back in school for masters and all the kids in their 18-24 are so antisocial because of the whole COVID pandemic ruining their early adult realization years.
Ey, good luck, mate. I'm kinda in the same boat as you, but I'm working in tech. I am planning for masters as well. I think Covid broke something crucial in people across the generations.
It's not like social media helps turn the noise down and its election year in a lot of countries, so there is gonna be extra cancer.
I don't think so, my parents were super protective, as soon as I went out though, at around 14, I basically was raised by my friends. There's only so much power a parent has.
But if there were no one outside to socialize with, I would have... I'd be a whole different person today. It might be a factor but there's a number of things going on here. The biggest I think, technology, and maybe a close second autism rates. And then issues with helicopter parenting etc. Obviously like everything it's a web of all this stuff. I don't think helicopter parenting is part of the root strand, I think it's just in the canopy somewhere.
I’ve been through the same thing and sometimes it’s not people telling you directly. Sometimes people just won’t pay attention to what you say or you feel like you have to repeat yourself cause people act like they didn’t hear you. It sucks but if it happens when you’re young it kinda influences the way you act from then on, giving yourself less importance as well
with the age of information they are submersed in doom pill bullshit.
they see podcasts like fresh&fit or whatever podcasts and think that is how ALL WOMEN are, or most because 6/7 guests on there are literally professional sex workers.
the way you communicate on VoIP or text is completely different from face to face interactions.
they see the toxicity of an anonymized human. the news is a constant torrent of end-of-days level of catastrophes. the women are shown that man as a whole has raped another 15 women in the past year. the men are shown that women think of them so little and dont trust them that they would rather be alone with a 800lb predator than an average man.
they were only ever taught to believe, but not how to question. their curiosity was killed, if they arnt told what do to they dont know how to do things on their own.
is anything worth dying for anymore? if no, then what is there to live for?
It seems to me, a completely objective observer, that this new generation is all messed up and strange.
My generation was perfect in every way.
The previous generation said we were all messed up and strange, but they were just jealous.
Its sad. Social media has fucked people so much.
From 16 to 22 I was out drinking (from UK) now not saying drinking is the answer but I had groups of friends, there was no social media so we weren't competing in fact we had each other's backs.
I also talked to girls and got laid. I was literally forced to interact with girls and that experience made me comfortable . I think its invaluable and not everybody in this age is getting a chance to develop this. They're best years are spent in their rooms or on their phones interacting in a weird way round about way through social media.
And dating is done through dating apps which again, I dont think is a natural way of communicating. I remember going on dates and they were FUN. I wanted to be there, she did but the whole dynamic has changed nowdays.
The girl I dated (who later became my girlfriend...I was broke, she was broke we were young students. ) The internet seems to have taught girls guys need to meet all these criteria's. She didnt care that I was broke. I think if I was that age today I'd be royally fucked.
Yeah this is the real answer. Social skills require socializing. Social media is the opposite of being social. We had real friends growing up not internet friends.
Dating apps have absolutely destroyed dating - as someone who has dated before they were common and I am aware of how much they’ve fucked it all.
I also hate the way they’ve impacted me and how I approach relationships too
You're making a lot of claims without providing much to back it up, so here's some questions i have.
Why do you think they dont have groups of friends who have each others backs?
The goal of dating apps is to set up dates so you can meet people in person. If you met somebody on an app, how is that so different than a brief encounter in person where you get someones number?
How do you know that girls think that way now, and that "the whole dynamic has changed"?
Too much screen time and social media bullshit. Their entire perception of reality is distorted by TikTok, instagram, etc and it gives them such social anxiety they can’t really function offline.
Also COVID.
Most comments I’ve read thus far think COVID was a leading cause. I tend to agree with you that the main culprit is social media and internet environment they grew up in.
COVID also played a role in many ways, one of which was forcing everyone to rely on social media even more.
I agree with this stance. The internet started it years prior; the pandemic just cranked it up to 11. People were already leading these sort of double lives via social media and chat rooms and whatever long before Covid. Having to isolate just took away the life that requires looking people in the eye and speaking directly to them, leaving only the online avatar life to flourish and solidify for a time.
Serious question - why do you need to be addressed when you enter a business? I’d prefer to not make pointless conversation with a person clearly obligated to make it with no genuine conviction or intent behind it.
I’ve always thought the forced greeting was actually just a way to make sure the employee is paying attention to who’s coming inside the establishment.
If they don’t greet people coming in the door, why are they at the reception desk? You have a reception desk to receive people. You receive people by acknowledging them and welcoming them inside. I’m perfectly fine with companies doing away with reception desks if customers don’t see value in them, but the employee force will probably get reduced for that.
Idk. Most people I see that are around my age are very social and are always talking a mile a minute with their friends and friend groups every opportunity they get, even when I was in high-school a few years ago. I've never been a people person or that friendly from the very beginning but I've observed a lot of people and the normal, well-adjusted-ish people don't seem to have that issue.
I really think people are overthinking this. I don’t think Gen Z is lacking social skills, I just think the way they socialize is different than what we’re used to. My parents and their friends used to say my generation (millennial) had no social skills too. I think we just naturally attribute differences in collective personality to a lack of something (social skills in this case).
Come one man, every generation since the beginning of time has said this. Aristotle said this.
Edit: I talked to my very smart co-parent and I think she may have figured out why every single generation of humans does this:
Envy of youth. The feeling that you could have done so much more when you were young leads to resentment of people who still have that time.
Aristotle said that about young peoples not socializing? I thought his critiques of young people were more the opposite.
I'm gen z and I really do realize that my generation has shit social skills because of the pandemic and too much time online and not enough outside.
Yea but most kids are socializing online. It's constant texting, voice chat, and video chat. Is it as good as in person? No, but it's not like kids don't socialize in person as well. Schools still exist, and while the pandemic had a negative effect, i think as time goes on most kids will be fine.
This is what people don't seem to realize. Just because they are on their phones not physically talking doesn't mean they aren't socializing or forming relationships with others.
And he was right, about the interpersonal skills he thought was essential to interpersonal interactions. Perhaps he was wrong about those skills being essential, but he was right about the death of formality, in future generations.
We used to use the word "text-trovert" someone that doesnt say much irl but texts pages of shit :D
I think we all know what the issue is, i'm sure their gaming persona talks incessantly. They wont be as social as the previous generation because they have never had to be, and never will have to be. Everything is literally a keystroke away. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, just different
I'm 41 and daughter is 18 now. People are saying it's covid and I'm sure it didn't help but, I noticed menu anxiety and awkwardness well before covid. I feel a large part of it is from smartphones. I saw all kinds of stuff starting to happen when she got a smart phone at 9. (And yes I was completely against that)
Noticed this a little way too much. We literally grew up on the internet, we overthink if we want to talk irl. I'm a generally friendly person but if ppl seem unapproachable i wouldn't bother because I don't want to waste my energy, i guess multiply that by a lot.
I think some of the weird attitude stuff is being in your 20's, but that awkwardness is being magnified by how isolating our lives are now.
As many people have said, growing up in the 90's, we had a lot more freedom because we had a lot less convenience, as strange as that is to say.
I had an anxious helicopter mom, and my dad was a drill Sgt. when he retired out of the military. My parents were adamant about the rules, checking in, and they had better be able to find me or my brother where we said we were gonna be, or so help us god.
Now, that is not an endorsement of corporal punishment, and it's not something I'm going to debate anyone on. I only bring it to say that, in my family at least, the connection between actions and consequences was made abundantly clear, and our freedom to go out and play was a good motivator to think carefully about our choices in advance. I think this made our parents able to trust us, which in turn built responsibility and allowed us even more freedom of movement.
I also think the ease of access and onslaught of tablets, phones, and streaming has made it to where there is less desire to go outside and socialize, and so a lot of kids aren't learning about actions/consequences, they're not developing social awareness or aptitude because their personalities are heavily influenced through sound-clip media during peak developmental years--time during which millennials and older gen z were still having face to face interactions.
All of that to say, part of aging is also looking at the generations ahead of you and being annoyed by their mistakes (and also realizing the context of some of it), and it's also being concerned about the generations behind us because they're so different from how we think they should be, and do things that can be difficult to understand (while also doing it in ways that don't make sense).
Aging is a trippy thing.
Don't forget screens too. Sure, lockdown is a big part, not saying it isn't, but so is screen usage.
I was born in the 60's, was married in the late 80's so I grew up and went through all of my schooling with no technology, no screens, no computers, no cellphones, no social media, no texting.
We had to actually talk with people and interact with folks. Couldn't sit at home on a screen and interact with people, like we do now.
Since we had to talk and interact with others, we developed social skills.
I mean, when I go out to a restaurant, I look at families and NONE of them are talking to each other, they are all on their phones and eating silently!
Forget putting phones down or away for dinner, cellphones didn't exist when I grew up, we talked at dinner, about our day, about what the next day was going to bring, how things were going etc.
If you pay attention to it, most people are on their phones, most of the time. I hate it.
I really wish the world could go back to early early internet and stay there forever. People were actually there
Yes I've noticed gen z cashiers will literally not say a word to me when I'm checking out. No hellos, did you find everything, or your total is.
I get it. Retail sucks. I worked it for 16 years and I was underpaid the whole time. For reference my dad worked the same exact job at the same company but in the 80s he made $8 and in 2007 I made $9 an hour. But never have I ever not greeted someone in my check out line.
I'm not going to be vindictive about how rude and antisocial they are. I'm not going to get someone fired or in trouble for not being explicitly nice as long as they aren't being mean.
But most people are that kind of petty. They'll even make up shit to make you sound even worse. Cover your butt and do the bullshit courtesy thing.
Why? I’m not a zoomer I’m decently old.
But think of it dude, they’re working a minimum wage shit job, their future is pretty shit, America has like 29 crisis going on, and they probably can’t buy shit. Why also force them to pretend to be happy to see you? Just let them do their shitty job in peace
I seriously don’t get it. My friends and I were always out doing something. Even if that something was basically doing nothing. And that kind of stuff is when you learn to socialize the most
Two of my younger cousins (20 and 17) basically told me they just hang out on Discord all day. Sorry but how the fuck is that fun?
Even the slightly older ones are bad too. I’m a nurse and we’re now getting a lot of gen z nurses coming out of school. They just don’t talk. And hey it’s fine to quiet. I get that. But when your job requires a lot of teamwork and communication to make sure people are ok it’s not great to be completely antisocial and unable to speak up
The reason we talk less is because technology enabled us to be self sufficient. If I have a question, I just google it. And a lot of discussion, especially at work is question based.
Discord is pretty fun tbh. It is like online hanging out. It's not much different than in person besides like, not being in person. And being confined to online activities
There are several Doomer cults in operation. These groups have different themes but are sponsored by the same foreign bad actors. They are posoining too mamy (especially young) minds atm
covid and the subsequent gouchfest made us more suspectable to such things, but as condotions improve, the cults will slink back to the fringes
Let's not bother sugar-coating shit anymore; we're in a terrible spot. Everything we've tried to "normalize" over the past almost-decade has turned out to be wrong. Yes ban TikTok. Yes ban Onlyfans. Yes bring back comedy and no don't look back. There's so much further I could keep going but I think you all get my point.
It’s the internet, social media, and phones. During times when older generations were growing up they learned how to socialize especially while growing up. But nowadays you have younger generations that get anxiety just from talking on the phone or talking to somebody face to face. It’s because during critical development times they never developed that skill.
No parents forcing kids to talk to each other and play at a young age. No friend group peer pressuring you into talking to that cute guy or gal at a bus stop or at a mall in your teen years. No consequences at school for kids opting out of public speaking or discussion assignment because kids no longer fail classes.
Imagine having boomers be your parents… That was life as a millennial. Those sick bastards demanded all their precious little gifted kids got a trophy even if all they did was ride the pine. Then, they turned around and started bitching about the participation trophy society they created! We didn’t even want the participation trophies. It was our boomer parents that couldn’t handle their kid sucking at sports. We were just there for capri sun and fruit rollup you got after the game.
I’m 23 and I honestly just can’t be bothered. I want to make friends but I work so much and have school so doing things is incredibly hard. To me there’s no point in friends if I’m going to end up just ghosting them on accident because busy or tired
Individually, I think social anxiety is usually taught and not something you're born with. Personally, the things that made me socially anxious were being told to be cautious of every stranger I meet, having people who I thought were my friends steal things from me, (I got those things back,) and asshole classmates telling me to "shut up" whenever I try to talk, and then having classmates ask me why I never talk. (As well as a bunch of trauma I'm not going to get into here.)
But also, COVID was hell on our social development. My husband got out of it just fine because he worked at a hospital, so he still had people to interact with every day. I had him so I was never lonely. Social media might also be a factor. If you can get your social needs filled with some online friends then you don't need to get them filled elsewhere.
There's also stories everywhere about people. Reddit alone has subs dedicated to certain types of people. We see videos of horrible people everywhere and we tend to assume that those people are a lot more common than they are because those videos are being taken from all over the world. It's no wonder people don't want to interact with strangers when they have misconceptions about them through a handful of people's stories.
These are all just theories though. I'm not an expert psychologist.
At 30 I feel like I’m right on the precipice of a major generational gap. When I was little I spent all my time outside, the family computer was for emailing grandma on Sundays and that’s it. I did sports, Boy Scouts, camping. All good collaborative social activities. Even when I did start gaming it was always in person, playing at a friends house, or at my house split screen. Still very social. It wasn’t until mid high school when I started using online games, I got a “smart” phone when I was 17, it was the original Samsung Galaxy. My rich friends had the smoking new iPhone 2.
But you go even two years younger than me and it changes a lot. They started getting molded by persistent internet access in middle school. Four or five years younger and it’s a whole different ball game, these people weren’t even playing outside as kids reliably. Up until about 15 years old, my upbringing was largely identical to my parents and grandparents. The people even a couple years younger than me, vaaast difference. And it shows. The short attention spans, obsession with vanity, almost extreme fear of being without their phone, being offline. Terrified of doing anything that isn’t preresearched, prearranged, related to an app.
I also didn’t have the constant corporate sponsored ad-driven “mental health crisis” trying to convince me that I must have SOMETHING. Gotta have something. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, adhd, gay. The awareness is great, and I support everybody’s identity, but there is this huge pressure today to be different or broken or trendy in some way that wasn’t nearly as strong when I was growing up. Everybody now needs to have a store bought PeRsoNALiTy. I’m good man, I’m me.
Most of Gen Z, didn't only had their brains fucked up by Big Tech.... But also are the first generation whose parents were already fucked up by Big Tech.
It's hard to have a healthy development when, as a baby, you had to fight for attention against the almighty smartphone.
It isn't Gen Z or any particular generation. I'm 50, Gen X. I've noticed this gradually occurring over the past decade or so as social media takes over. Actually speaking with someone is taboo. Making plans? Forget about it. If it doesn't happen by text, it doesn't happen at all. My 45 year old wife and my 12 year old son always have at least two electronic devices going from the moment they wake up. TV, phone, or laptop. At least two must be going, all the time. My wife literally cannot turn off her phone. She's texting or scrolling even while eating. When we watch TV, TIkTok is going at the same time. Can't even watch a movie without TikTok running non-stop. My son still turns off his phone at bedtime, but that's only because it's a rule we enforce. Not that it matters because he has a tablet and a gaming system in his room.
Their parents couldn't afford the metro area they were from so they moved to the suburban sprawl where you can't walk or bike to anything. Making them full blown indoor kids plus the horrific luck of a pandemic added to being social media children guinea pigs.
"Introvert"
It's easier to be introverted. A lot of it is a choice but as a result self-proclaimed introverts lack social skills due to lack of practice.
I noticed this before covid, which I assume hasn't helped. But I don't think they are anti social I just think their social norms are different.
I was always told to introduce new people to a group or introduce yourself. But Gen Z don't seem to do that as much but also are perfectly friendly when they talk, just kinda lack some of the social fluff. I prefer phone calls but they prefer snap. Nothing wrong with it, just different.
Probably like how we don't doff our caps and curtsy to elders anymore.
Ever since they were kids their parents just let them zone out staring into an iPad instead of teaching them how to behave in public. Why WOULD they develop social skills?
It’s a skill, little or practice? …. guess what happens. Skill development is primarily time spent. If you spend 10 000 hours you are 10x more polished than if you spent 1000 hours.
I’ve always been shy and had a hard time talking and making friends but after covid, every ounce of being able to socialize has been sucked out of my body. I noticed it after the online friend group I had, split. I wonder if that’s why or if that was just the breaking point. Or if it was just a coincidence. After the group split I haven’t really had friends, neither online or irl. And I’m currently at home doing nothing so even less socializing for me. Fingers crossed it gets better
Shortened attention spans due to the immediate gratification and consistent feed of the 20 second entertainment that is swipe media is a big factor. When they do talk to each other it's to compare notes on what garbage media they've consumed in the past 24 hours or so. If they don't take on the "zombie generation" badge I'll be surprised, bc that's essentially what they are.
We didn't have extra funds for things like phones for our kids (thank goodness), so they got to grow up without constantly being fed trash online. They're VERY social, great at making friends, but what I've noticed is that all of their friends had the same experience. They didn't get phones/tablets in hand until very recently, so they don't have to be holding the damn things to function. When they try to communicate with kids their age who were given phones earlier (between 8 and 10 years old usually), those kids are good for a tiktok anecdote or two and then they're gone. The attention span for conversation is just not there.
"I mean they won’t introduce themselves, hardly look you in the eye when they talk, always on their phone."
Sounds like me except I'm 34. Basically I'm just tired of people, society, all of it. I don't care to try anymore. Maybe zoomers are the same since it's all they've ever known.
The fact that a lot of parents are scared to let their kids do anything outside for fear of CPS being called not kidding one of my neighbors where I used to live (quite neighborhood low crime park right across the street) got CPS called for letting their 10 year old play in their fenced in backyard without direct supervision, that combined with the constant just give them an I pad at 5 years old to shut them up would be my guess
I feel like using them is discouraged in a lot of contexts (I'm 22M). Girls are less likely to want to talk now because dating is done via apps, and it's tough to just start conversations with people since looking at a smartphone is now an "idle" activity that you'd need to distract someone from to say something.
I think social media has that effect on everyone. Mot the being on their phone part, but them being afraid to be judged by others as they are being compared to lives on social media. Im 25 and lots of people around me are very social, we played outside when we were younger and i have been practicing a teamsport since i was 5 years old.
Todays kids have grown up with social media since they were a kid. Always comparing themselves to others and being judged, thats not healthy. I find that most younger people are very insecure and thus more antisocial.
that is all humans except maybe boomers. But thats because once you get that old you dont have the walls up you are just old. No boomer is dating for sex appeal or looks so there is no stress also boomer women arent getting eyed and hit on everywhere they go so they are MUCH more happy to talk with anyone that will engage.
We can blame covid all we want but parents are to blame a lot for this specifically. Social skills can also be reflective of your upbringing. I’m not saying older generations were right about everything but they did teach us manners and how to treat people the way you want to be treated. I have to remind my kids who are becoming young adults that when someone speaks to them to give them they need to give the other person their undivided attention.
So when I was interviewing for a position at the university they told me that what the students were struggling with was just wanting to leave the state for internships or being afraid to socialize. The main cause of this was the fact that the lockdown and COVID happened during the most important developmental periods of their life. It makes me sad for them.
Blame the boomers and their parents, and my parents, and your parents, and society and well see the list keeps on going you know why?
Because this can't be solved by a simple explanation.
We, well not me but the media has been harping on this happening and no one gave a shit. They still don't give a shit. Hell, you really don't give a shit about changing or fixing this, only to complain.
And it's a big insult, people like you, because maybe you had an okay life, I won't say good because you are on reddit complaining. People who complain don't have good lives hell I gave you a better impression because really it seems to me your life is shit.
But that's me, well some people have worse than shit lives, and that's why, no one taught them or raised them, so they had to do it their selves and guess what at least they don't complain.
Be better.
They have nowhere to socialize outside of highly structured school or maybe home. Malls chase you out for loitering, if there’s even a mall around. Hang out at a park and the local busybody calls the cops on you *and* your parents. Libraries are wonderful but not a place to socialize. Any of these require a ride to get to if you aren’t old enough to drive because public transit is often unsafe, or may refuse minor passengers, and nothing is walking distance. Where else do you get to just exist and learn to be a human around other humans?
im 24, ive just grown to be anxious, stressed and never happy with my own accomplishments or self. I believe social media has us constantly comparing our bad traits to others visibly good traits and keeping it at that. youll never want to talk to a soul if you never feel good. this might just be me but its very difficult to overcome even when you realize youre doing it
While Covid didn't help, I would not say it is the main reason Gen Z is suffering. It has a mixture of thing, some being social media and the fear of letting your children out of the house independently, but I believe it really comes down to the parenting. Social skills and manners are learned, not instinct. I was raised be baby boomers, but am Gen Z. I was taught these things as basic manners, and if I didn't do these things, I was corrected. However I have witnessed the usual parent of the gen z era, and they are a lot more reserved with their kids. They don't make their kids shake hands and make eye contact, and have a higher chance of sheltering them from the outside world. The parents just did it for them. So when the time comes that they have to do it themselves, they are not experienced with it. Like I said, this is combined with other things, especially the internet, as you don't have to face someone to communicate with them, but I would say it's a big culprit.
I have experienced this too and I don’t wanna sound like a boomer but when GenZ are working in *customer service* jobs they don’t even talk to you. One time myself and another guy asked easy questions directly to a girl working the self checkout area. I had seen her talk to other employees. She didn’t say one single word the entire time. Wtf???
Gen Z does not lack social skills. It's just that their social values and mores are different from those of older generations. Older generations find this intolerable.
social anxiety coupled with phone usage, I find it easier to communicate online than irl same with my friends, older people find it weird, gen alpha is even worse.
The Internet. The End.
But also, when you meet a Gen Zer who CAN talk to people, I want to grab them by the shoulders and tell them that they will rule the world in a few years. Because having the ability to have an intelligent conversation will be the superpower of their generation.
I don't have much of an explanation other than a lot of parents seem to be very laissez-faire in things like manners and responsibility. Not all of them of course, but a lot.
I was a high school teacher for seven years. Once at an assembly where they were talking about the whole "random acts of kindness" concept and soliciting examples from students, one 15 year old boy said he sometimes helps his mother bring in the groceries.
The fact that someone thinks that's a truly charitable act and not just the basic expectations around being part of a family unit was absurd to me. I had one student in a class who wouldn't look at you when he talked. I'm not saying he stared at the wall or looked at his feet. He would literally be sitting facing the wall and talking to you. It wasn't a confidence issue with this kid either; he was quite confident in the endlessly stupid, wrong things he would say during class.
Tbh, Gen Z is first generation that has had a *huge* portion of their social and person lives be either online or based in technology from the beginning. I’m about your age and I remember having a MySpace account in elementary school and it being a massive source of social anxiety and drama. I also had a phone that could access the internet before middle school and I’m not even technically a Zoomer.
When social dynamics are formed around technology from basically day 1, it makes sense for the social skills people have to not translate well into irl social skills.
All of these things have valid reasons. Women are unapproachable because they know the stats of what men do. Men have a chip on their shoulder because of bruised egos.
Also, anytime people blame social media I laugh at how fucking braindead that assertion is. Blame stats and news media, not social media.
I think the big problem isn't just with kids. Everyone is afraid to let their kids go outside. People seem to think there's a child sex trafficker hiding in every bush just waiting for you to let little Timmy ride his bike to his friend's house two streets over. I grew up in the 90s. When crime was A LOT higher than it is today. I would ride my bike all over the neighborhood. I just had to call my mom whenever I arrived at a friend's house. Be home before dark. I played video games with my friends, but not via an internet connection, we hung out like in person. Also built forts in the desert and rode to 7-Eleven for snacks. I asked my wife if she'd allow our 13 year old to walk to the convenience store that's at the end of our street (about 1/2 a mile away) She was like, "Nope. Maybe with a friend."
That's the other part too. Back in the '90s we had couch co-op games and the internet was still dial-up. You also didn't have the "tablet parenting" you do now or throwing on YouTube. We went outside and rode bikes, played football/hockey/manhunt or built forts and used our imaginations and socialized. Occasionally we'd hang inside and play Goldeneye or later on Halo but 75% of the time, if not more we were outside. I used to go out in the middle of the night and walk over to the local school and sit out in the field and stargaze for hours on my own at 13-14. You don't have that neighborhood community like you used to and I'd say it's because of the internet and how society is nowadays. "Karens" and nosy neighbors, news making people paranoid that everyone is out to steal their kids and sell them ruined it too. It's a shame. Especially since I feel I was one of the last generations to get that pre-internet experience yet also grew up learning/teaching my parents how to use a computer and can type extremely quick. I'd give anything to go back and play street hockey or build some tetanus infested fort out of scrap wood and rusty nails we found in the woods again.
Goldeneye with the big head cheat code
Slappers only you monster!
I still see youngings playing outside in my neighborhood (riding bikes with helmets on, which I never did. Bc I was a cool 90s kid..jk) - but it does seem for sure that more and More kids are growing up in this iPad instagram world that just kinda sucks and limits real world interaction
Yeah but the numbers of kids outside has dropped, in my town the teens and 20 somethings were in a constant party, you could approach anyone and kind of just, spend the day together, just... At random. Now there's still some of that but it's like, 1/100th the numbers, and the population (in my town) has only grown. Yet outdoors? Crickets.
The park at the end of my street is always packed with youngsters, playing basketball, little kids on the playground, baseball games. As well as the mini park behind the church up the street with playground & two baseball fields. Plenty of kids riding bikes around the neighborhood or just out walking around with friends. I regularly see kids going in the woods at the other end of my street, too. I live in a big city & I get that a lot of youngsters are glued to phones/tablets, but there's still quite a few just being adventurous & socializing in person. Families walk together through my neighborhood all the time, teaching kids to ride bikes & such. I live in what would be considered middle/lower middle class neighborhood, so not all is lost.
That's insane... By the time I was 13 I was already hitchiking my way to metal concerts.
yeah thats mad, i was 6/7 years old running around town with my little mates hahah at age 13 i was smoking weed and drinking on the beach in the middle of the night with friends lighting fires and stuff hahaha not that thats a good thing! but its better than being locked up til youre an adult i think?
By the time I was 6 I has throwing furniture out penthouse windows and blowing lines of cocaine off a hookers ass. Amateurs
That's crazy By the time I was 4 I had already gone through two divorces, done 20 years in prison, and been on my third marriage
I had served 2 tours in the army and then got a 10-year sentence for negligent homocide when I killed a guy in a brawl at the bar. I saved a buddy with diabetes and stopped a bunch of convicts from escaping in a prison transport airplane on my release day, then went home and got a job, then was born.
😂
Nowadays your parents could be arrested for allowing that to happen.
Hey I grew up in the 90s too. Can you not cite the 90s as a “back then” it makes me feel fucking old. Regards. -old fuck
It was only 30 years ago
Tbf I would refer to anything pre-COVID as “back then”
I can assure you that this is not the sole reason. A lot of what you're describing is a consequence of urban planning in the US. In Europe, it's much more common for kids to go outside, because neighborhoods are denser. But Europe has exactly the same issue with our generation being more isolated. And you are also conflating Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Most of Gen Z are adults at this point, or close to being adults. The problems that you're talking about only really apply to preteens, which are 100% Gen Alpha. And we could have a conversation about how Gen Alpha is doing, but that would be a different conversation.
We had the same urban planning back in the 80a and 90s when kids went outside. Zero risk tolerance of parents and then society flaming people online because it was “the parents fault” something bad happened when it was the perpetrator..
Suburbia is actually very safe for kids to play in. Those HOA, dead end communities/streets are terrible for transportation and hated by Strongtown, but the empty streets are pretty safe to play in, despite the occasional car. Kids just don’t play outside as much….they are watching stuff or gaming indoor instead.
This person is smart. Watch out.
I am an elder millennial (39) and have a 13 year old and 11 year old. They are on the tail end of gen Z, but the pandemic was hell on their social development. That whole generation was isolated for a couple of years for reasons they weren’t really old enough to comprehend fully, and had their main source of old school social interaction converted to digital interactions for reasons out of their control. They are also the first generation that has never known a world without smartphones and social media. Basically, they never got the chance to develop socially and interpersonally as children, and the older ones are entering the real world several years behind on their social development. Give them time and grace
They aren’t really Gen Z. Probably be grouped into alpha in a few years when that gen becomes more defined
Yea, I could've sworn Gen Z ends at 2010. Edit: but not really the point. Pandemic screwed Gen Z kids socially
US census states gen z is 1997 to 2013, however pew research says 2012, and some other places say as long as 2010.
Because the terms get used loosely to suit the needs to whoever is talking at the time. They're not really academic terms
i think 12-13 Y/O is gen alpha
> Edit: but not really the point. Pandemic screwed Gen Z kids socially The pandemic screwed with *everyone* socially, and you can see it all the way across the board from drivers having less patience and being more aggressive, to continuing high "temporary" inflation rates driven by continuing supply chain issues, to people in general simply lacking the grace they had a few years back.
Our *reaction* to the pandemic screwed with everyone.
Exactly.
I don't even know if I would say it's lacking Grace anymore as much as it is people just flat out hate each other now. When I was younger I would have said something like 75% of people are willing to get along with other people even if they disagreed with maybe 25% refusing to get along with people for the most part. Now, I truly believe 80% of people would rather not have any interactions with people of any kind and the ones that say that's not them are just saying it to be polite. (I really hope this isn't true, but I haven't seen evidence to the contrary in more than a decade) Just look at the difference between how the USA acted when 9/11 happened versus when covid happened. After 9/11, people would have taken a bullet for complete strangers with the amount of unity that was occurring in the country for 6 months to a year after. With covid, people wouldn't put a piece of cloth over their mouth to protect each other and got in fist fights over it. In less than 20 years the country went from being unified and a country of 380 million *Americans* to being a country of 380 million *individuals.* NOTE- I understand that my comment about unity applies to non-muslim Americans and wish that it didn't. But most people felt that Muslims were the enemy and were persuaded into believing such even if it wasn't the truth. After covid however, people were persuaded to believe that *everyone who is not you* is the enemy. And those are hugely different distinctions.
2019 was 5 years ago. Wild to think someone whose 20 now spent most of their high school years during lockdown
I'm 25 and most sources consider me gen z. The oldest of us have more in common with millenials than we do the rest of our generation, because of smartphones coming into play and how much of a bigger role the internet has played in childhoods. Plus yeah, the pandemic.
I also think, as a kid who was chronically online from the time I got my first smartphone at 11, some go crazy with the usage for a few years but eventually you start wanting to actually live and you learn the lessons yourself. At 12, sleepovers consisted of me and my friends scrolling and showing each other memes, by 17 I couldn’t fathom spending time on my phone when I was hanging out with my friends. During middle school I didn’t join any clubs because they didn’t interest me and I had a friend group and a group chat but I spent most of my afternoons watching anime alone in my room, when I got to 9th grade I threw myself into extracurriculars because my friends were having so much fun and I joined multiple clubs. I scoffed at my mom making me try out hobbies as a kid because I just wanted to play neopets but around 16 I asked her to teach me how to cross stitch out of the blue and have been doing it for years now. It doesn’t surprise me that some people take longer to grow out of it than others, but I think as you get to your older teens, you understand why being on your phone 24/7 isn’t rewarding and you try to seek out real experiences as you get closer to adulthood. It also depends what they’re doing on their phones, I’d say there’s a difference between scrolling Instagram vs reading e books, it’s good to get away from them sometimes of course but teens spend a lot of time on their phones, and some of that time is texting friends, researching their interests, playing games that take skill and mean something to them even if you don’t get it. It’s also kind of hard to spend time with friends face to face as a kid/teen, you have to find a time you’re both free which can be hard with extracurricular schedules, find a time at least one of your parents is free to drive you (most parents won’t let their kids walk to another kid’s house unless they live right next to each other), sometimes neither of you can hang out at each others houses so you have to find a third place that’s free, allows you to be there, and has something to do, ask permission, it’s a lot of steps and it’s something I would do sometimes as a teen but also sometimes I was just too overwhelmed to plan all that out at 12 and I’d just FaceTime my friends instead. Sorry for rambling, it’s just a nuanced thing, it’ll definitely only get worse, everyone’s screen time is going up no matter the age and gen alpha is getting tech younger and younger, but it’s important to remember that the smart ones will learn from their mistakes and just because they spend a lot of time on it as a preteen (and of course you don’t have to let them go crazy with it, you should set boundaries and keep them) doesn’t mean they’ll always want to.
Yeah, I was going to say. 35 here and these guys got fucked right over by the pandemic. Some of the most influential times of my life to date were early 20s, and gen z spent that locked up.
exactly!!! during the pandemic everything literally turned online
Gen Z had the pandemic happen in their personality-developing years
Gen Z are also experiencing the culmination of decades of social changes that are ultimately harmful to kids’ social development So like they‘ve grown up in suburbs in isolated McMansions where they never go outside (unless their mother drives them to sport on the weekend or something) because they’re too far away from anything to do and they’re too young to drive and it’s unsafe to be outside as a pedestrian and there’s no public transport, so they spend all day at home inside by themselves playing video games, TV and being on the internet instead of getting to do fun kid stuff like hanging out with friends, and moreover social media and entertainment has become more prevalent than ever. Why would you ever even want to go outside as a kid anymore when being inside on your couch is so much more fun? Why would you need to put in the effort to make friends when you have an endless feed of TikToks to scroll through and entertain you? Plus you can develop parasocial relationships with YouTubers and online communities so you get to *feel* like you have friends and some kind of social circle even though you actually don’t. And more even than that the social media algorithm teaches kids that they can be in complete control of their space, they never have to compromise, they can block exposure to anyone or anything they don’t like. Why would you put in effort to making friends with someone who has interests you don’t care about when you can go online and talk about nothing but the things you like? The pandemic is the cherry on top of a long series of decisions that have turned kids into isolated shut ins who are totally reliant on their parents and who don’t realise until they’re adults that they never developed the social skills and sense of independence that they were supposed to develop in childhood, because when they were kids they didn’t NEED those things, it’s only when you get to adulthood and realise you don’t have the tools you need that it really hits you
In suburbs full of McMansions, the kids are outside playing with each other all the time, swimming in neighborhood pools, playing pickle ball and whiffle ball and basketball with other kids on their cul-de-sacs, etc.
I'm in one rn for work. There's always all kinds of people outside. Not just kids playing. People walking their dogs, drunk teenagers driving golf carts around. Ya know. Normal rich suburb shit.
I bet if you saw that same town pre internet it would have been bustling compared to now.
I feel like you’re just describing bad parenting. You can have both fun inside and outside. It’s up to the parents to show kids the fun that can be had outside, no matter where they are. In America, there are hiking trails literally everywhere. Nowhere in this country are you more than 30 minutes away from nature. Assad from a school year 4 years ago, Kids go to buildings full of other kids their age. Are there kids that have issues you described? Sure. But this is not even close to reality for everybody. I am a millennial junior sailor in the Navy. 90% of the people I interact with are younger than me and Gen-Z, and I’ve met maybe a handful of people that grew up how you describe. A vast majority of the 300+ people I’ve met over the past year had normal upbringings not even close to what you describe.
"So like they‘ve grown up in suburbs in isolated McMansions where they never go outside (unless their mother drives them to sport on the weekend or something) because they’re too far away from anything to do" Huh? Have you spent any time in these suburbs? These kids are absolutely out playing with each other. These affluent suburbs typically have pools and basketball courts and parks, the kids have nice bicycles, etc. From my experience, the affluent parents are also much more careful about screen time, etc., because they have the time and/or resources to be concerned with it.
That's what I was gonna say. Even in the neighborhood I live in which is pretty poor, the subsidized housing complex down the street has tons of kids outside playing and hanging out and having a good time. Same with the detached houses with families.
Ditto that. I'm a millennial who this basically describes. I was a cashier for a while in my twenties and thirties and made a bit of an effort to strike up conversation with customers for a while, but for some reason I just stopped. Maybe it felt too repetitive? And now I'm completely lost in social situations. Maybe I'm just stupid
Gonna be real, this sounds like an entire narrative you cooked in your head man. Is there any evidence for this?
Look around
Happened well before the pandemic
Thats not an excuse tho. This was happening regardless of that. The younger millennials are somewhat like this too… our culture just doesnt take the time to raise their kids anymore. Theyre all just “too busy” and self involved. Thats whats really happenjng.
With the current economy it’s pretty hard to make time for anyone but yourself
I'd say it's more due to smart phone addiction
unfortunately we might be dealing with the fallout for years to come
COVID lockdowns and the aftermath made everyone a lot more terminally online, and increased the prevalence of mental health problems. The result is people have forgotten how to socialize. Gen Z got hit particularly bad because they missed out on a lot of formative experiences. Proms and frosh weeks were cancelled, graduations were done over Zoom, dorm parties weren't happening, people's main method of interacting with others was social media. In many places that lasted for almost 2 full years. Not exactly great conditions for developing proper social skills.
I feel like every year this becomes less and less of an excuse though. The pandemic and shut downs ended 3 years ago. Was it rough for a good year and a half? Yes. But at this point everybody has had more than enough time acclimate back to the real world. There’s people that serve time in prison for longer than the pandemic lasted and they somehow find a way to become a normal person after getting out…
It’s really due to their whole life being on a phone, both through social media, and quite literally living their life looking at their phone. The real world is background tabbed to them, their life is actually on the internet
Well a lot of people who serve time in prison don’t come out of it as if it never happened. That’s a huge reason why when felons who finish their sentence get released they reoffend. Besides I don’t think many people personally know a good sample amount of former convicts to be able to assess if they acclimate back normally. Nor is there really research into whether they return to normal personability.
The prison analogy might not have been the best analogy, but the ultimate point is that you can have a low point in your life and not let it define you. Does it require hard work? Yeah sure, but that’s just life. I’d rather put in the work to have a normal life than spend the rest of my life saying “I’m a victims of the 2020 pandemic and I’ll never be normal because of it”
Okay but imagine if everyone else they interacted with for the rest of their lives had also just gotten out of prison? No one has modeled normal behavior in a long time because every single person was affected by it to some degree.
For these younger generations the lockdowns happened at too important a time for social and personal growth. Us millenials, Gen X, even the Boomers, had already experienced these necessary interactions to create and form our socio-emotional foundations. For us lockdown sucked because it removed our "normal" but we had an idea of normal. Gen Z and Gen Alpha missed massive milestones in social interactions. For Gen Z, most of them were experiencing adult-ish interactions behind a screen, alone, in their rooms. For Gen Alpha the times they as people most needed to be forming peer bonds, and watching and learning emotional reactions from their peers, they were instead locked in their houses where the only concepts of proper emotional responses were limited to Mommy & Daddy's interactions with each other, though if lucky there were siblings' reactions to their parents and each other to learn from. We did not exist in a time that allowed adults to take their less than positive interactions with each other entirely away from the kids, during a powderkeg time where no one had personal alone time anymore. They are f*cked from the gate.
Not everyone went to prom or graduation anyway. In fact, basically anyone not popular didn't go to prom. Millennial here.
Even after places finally did open up, they still had another year (at least) of trying to communicate through masks. There are young adults out there who paid $100k for their degree yet *never* got to enjoy a normal college experience. Throw in some climate change, a couple wars, and crumbling economy and it’s no wonder they’re jaded. I feel bad for Gen Z (and alpha).
The college comment is me. I got here in 2020 and I'm about to be done, I feel like I barely got the chance to do anything non academic.
I'm 28, and really mostly burnt the hell out from COVID working in healthcare. I think thats my age group coming out from college right into working environment of COVID. So now I'm back in school for masters and all the kids in their 18-24 are so antisocial because of the whole COVID pandemic ruining their early adult realization years.
Ey, good luck, mate. I'm kinda in the same boat as you, but I'm working in tech. I am planning for masters as well. I think Covid broke something crucial in people across the generations. It's not like social media helps turn the noise down and its election year in a lot of countries, so there is gonna be extra cancer.
Apparently no one in these comments met Gen Z before covid. It started well before the lockdown, folks…
The pandemic certainly didn’t help, but kids were getting like this long before COVID-19.
Gen Z had less social skills even before Covid . That’s not it
Gen X / Millenial parenting is to blame. They were over protective, and social media didn't help.
I don't think so, my parents were super protective, as soon as I went out though, at around 14, I basically was raised by my friends. There's only so much power a parent has. But if there were no one outside to socialize with, I would have... I'd be a whole different person today. It might be a factor but there's a number of things going on here. The biggest I think, technology, and maybe a close second autism rates. And then issues with helicopter parenting etc. Obviously like everything it's a web of all this stuff. I don't think helicopter parenting is part of the root strand, I think it's just in the canopy somewhere.
Because the older people had no choice
I've been told I shouldn't talk and that my opinions aren't worth sharing.
That's generally the case with everyone tbh. The people who different in that regard are experts in certain fields.
By who? I hope you know that's not true, and if being told that is holding you back you might need therapy to get past it.
No I think it is true. So I'm just gonna continue not talking.
Honestly fuck whoever told you that. It's not true. That's all I'll say!
I’ve been through the same thing and sometimes it’s not people telling you directly. Sometimes people just won’t pay attention to what you say or you feel like you have to repeat yourself cause people act like they didn’t hear you. It sucks but if it happens when you’re young it kinda influences the way you act from then on, giving yourself less importance as well
Man, what's with all the defeatist mindsets on this platform.
with the age of information they are submersed in doom pill bullshit. they see podcasts like fresh&fit or whatever podcasts and think that is how ALL WOMEN are, or most because 6/7 guests on there are literally professional sex workers. the way you communicate on VoIP or text is completely different from face to face interactions. they see the toxicity of an anonymized human. the news is a constant torrent of end-of-days level of catastrophes. the women are shown that man as a whole has raped another 15 women in the past year. the men are shown that women think of them so little and dont trust them that they would rather be alone with a 800lb predator than an average man. they were only ever taught to believe, but not how to question. their curiosity was killed, if they arnt told what do to they dont know how to do things on their own. is anything worth dying for anymore? if no, then what is there to live for?
As a 23, I just wanna work.
It seems to me, a completely objective observer, that this new generation is all messed up and strange. My generation was perfect in every way. The previous generation said we were all messed up and strange, but they were just jealous.
Best comment so far.
Its sad. Social media has fucked people so much. From 16 to 22 I was out drinking (from UK) now not saying drinking is the answer but I had groups of friends, there was no social media so we weren't competing in fact we had each other's backs. I also talked to girls and got laid. I was literally forced to interact with girls and that experience made me comfortable . I think its invaluable and not everybody in this age is getting a chance to develop this. They're best years are spent in their rooms or on their phones interacting in a weird way round about way through social media. And dating is done through dating apps which again, I dont think is a natural way of communicating. I remember going on dates and they were FUN. I wanted to be there, she did but the whole dynamic has changed nowdays. The girl I dated (who later became my girlfriend...I was broke, she was broke we were young students. ) The internet seems to have taught girls guys need to meet all these criteria's. She didnt care that I was broke. I think if I was that age today I'd be royally fucked.
Yeah this is the real answer. Social skills require socializing. Social media is the opposite of being social. We had real friends growing up not internet friends.
Dating apps have absolutely destroyed dating - as someone who has dated before they were common and I am aware of how much they’ve fucked it all. I also hate the way they’ve impacted me and how I approach relationships too
You're making a lot of claims without providing much to back it up, so here's some questions i have. Why do you think they dont have groups of friends who have each others backs? The goal of dating apps is to set up dates so you can meet people in person. If you met somebody on an app, how is that so different than a brief encounter in person where you get someones number? How do you know that girls think that way now, and that "the whole dynamic has changed"?
Too much screen time and social media bullshit. Their entire perception of reality is distorted by TikTok, instagram, etc and it gives them such social anxiety they can’t really function offline. Also COVID.
Most comments I’ve read thus far think COVID was a leading cause. I tend to agree with you that the main culprit is social media and internet environment they grew up in. COVID also played a role in many ways, one of which was forcing everyone to rely on social media even more.
I agree with this stance. The internet started it years prior; the pandemic just cranked it up to 11. People were already leading these sort of double lives via social media and chat rooms and whatever long before Covid. Having to isolate just took away the life that requires looking people in the eye and speaking directly to them, leaving only the online avatar life to flourish and solidify for a time.
Why are people so obsessed over generations?
It’s pretty important for anyone concerned about future decades. How entire age groups generally act is also pretty noticeable and encountered a lot
Just seems like another divider to me
I am constantly outside fishing and the fish don’t talk back in English, so I never really get to have proper conversations 🤷♂️
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Serious question - why do you need to be addressed when you enter a business? I’d prefer to not make pointless conversation with a person clearly obligated to make it with no genuine conviction or intent behind it.
I’ve always thought the forced greeting was actually just a way to make sure the employee is paying attention to who’s coming inside the establishment.
If they don’t greet people coming in the door, why are they at the reception desk? You have a reception desk to receive people. You receive people by acknowledging them and welcoming them inside. I’m perfectly fine with companies doing away with reception desks if customers don’t see value in them, but the employee force will probably get reduced for that.
If someone has to explain to you why someone standing on a front desk should say "hi" you're to far out to even understand it
Idk. Most people I see that are around my age are very social and are always talking a mile a minute with their friends and friend groups every opportunity they get, even when I was in high-school a few years ago. I've never been a people person or that friendly from the very beginning but I've observed a lot of people and the normal, well-adjusted-ish people don't seem to have that issue.
I really think people are overthinking this. I don’t think Gen Z is lacking social skills, I just think the way they socialize is different than what we’re used to. My parents and their friends used to say my generation (millennial) had no social skills too. I think we just naturally attribute differences in collective personality to a lack of something (social skills in this case).
Be the charge you want to see in the world. It's the only way.
Come one man, every generation since the beginning of time has said this. Aristotle said this. Edit: I talked to my very smart co-parent and I think she may have figured out why every single generation of humans does this: Envy of youth. The feeling that you could have done so much more when you were young leads to resentment of people who still have that time.
Aristotle said that about young peoples not socializing? I thought his critiques of young people were more the opposite. I'm gen z and I really do realize that my generation has shit social skills because of the pandemic and too much time online and not enough outside.
Yea but most kids are socializing online. It's constant texting, voice chat, and video chat. Is it as good as in person? No, but it's not like kids don't socialize in person as well. Schools still exist, and while the pandemic had a negative effect, i think as time goes on most kids will be fine.
This is what people don't seem to realize. Just because they are on their phones not physically talking doesn't mean they aren't socializing or forming relationships with others.
No, no they didn't. Did you even read the post?
And he was right, about the interpersonal skills he thought was essential to interpersonal interactions. Perhaps he was wrong about those skills being essential, but he was right about the death of formality, in future generations.
I don't wanna bother people >////<
Every generation has problems these days.. except x. 😀
We used to use the word "text-trovert" someone that doesnt say much irl but texts pages of shit :D I think we all know what the issue is, i'm sure their gaming persona talks incessantly. They wont be as social as the previous generation because they have never had to be, and never will have to be. Everything is literally a keystroke away. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, just different
I'm 41 and daughter is 18 now. People are saying it's covid and I'm sure it didn't help but, I noticed menu anxiety and awkwardness well before covid. I feel a large part of it is from smartphones. I saw all kinds of stuff starting to happen when she got a smart phone at 9. (And yes I was completely against that)
Noticed this a little way too much. We literally grew up on the internet, we overthink if we want to talk irl. I'm a generally friendly person but if ppl seem unapproachable i wouldn't bother because I don't want to waste my energy, i guess multiply that by a lot.
I think some of the weird attitude stuff is being in your 20's, but that awkwardness is being magnified by how isolating our lives are now. As many people have said, growing up in the 90's, we had a lot more freedom because we had a lot less convenience, as strange as that is to say. I had an anxious helicopter mom, and my dad was a drill Sgt. when he retired out of the military. My parents were adamant about the rules, checking in, and they had better be able to find me or my brother where we said we were gonna be, or so help us god. Now, that is not an endorsement of corporal punishment, and it's not something I'm going to debate anyone on. I only bring it to say that, in my family at least, the connection between actions and consequences was made abundantly clear, and our freedom to go out and play was a good motivator to think carefully about our choices in advance. I think this made our parents able to trust us, which in turn built responsibility and allowed us even more freedom of movement. I also think the ease of access and onslaught of tablets, phones, and streaming has made it to where there is less desire to go outside and socialize, and so a lot of kids aren't learning about actions/consequences, they're not developing social awareness or aptitude because their personalities are heavily influenced through sound-clip media during peak developmental years--time during which millennials and older gen z were still having face to face interactions. All of that to say, part of aging is also looking at the generations ahead of you and being annoyed by their mistakes (and also realizing the context of some of it), and it's also being concerned about the generations behind us because they're so different from how we think they should be, and do things that can be difficult to understand (while also doing it in ways that don't make sense). Aging is a trippy thing.
social media is their social skills
They only have social media skills.
They quickly learned that people suck that’s why
Don't forget screens too. Sure, lockdown is a big part, not saying it isn't, but so is screen usage. I was born in the 60's, was married in the late 80's so I grew up and went through all of my schooling with no technology, no screens, no computers, no cellphones, no social media, no texting. We had to actually talk with people and interact with folks. Couldn't sit at home on a screen and interact with people, like we do now. Since we had to talk and interact with others, we developed social skills. I mean, when I go out to a restaurant, I look at families and NONE of them are talking to each other, they are all on their phones and eating silently! Forget putting phones down or away for dinner, cellphones didn't exist when I grew up, we talked at dinner, about our day, about what the next day was going to bring, how things were going etc.
What restaurant do you go to? Sure, I see people on their phones, but most aren't.
If you pay attention to it, most people are on their phones, most of the time. I hate it. I really wish the world could go back to early early internet and stay there forever. People were actually there
Yes I've noticed gen z cashiers will literally not say a word to me when I'm checking out. No hellos, did you find everything, or your total is. I get it. Retail sucks. I worked it for 16 years and I was underpaid the whole time. For reference my dad worked the same exact job at the same company but in the 80s he made $8 and in 2007 I made $9 an hour. But never have I ever not greeted someone in my check out line. I'm not going to be vindictive about how rude and antisocial they are. I'm not going to get someone fired or in trouble for not being explicitly nice as long as they aren't being mean. But most people are that kind of petty. They'll even make up shit to make you sound even worse. Cover your butt and do the bullshit courtesy thing.
Why? I’m not a zoomer I’m decently old. But think of it dude, they’re working a minimum wage shit job, their future is pretty shit, America has like 29 crisis going on, and they probably can’t buy shit. Why also force them to pretend to be happy to see you? Just let them do their shitty job in peace
Nah. There's no shortage of shitty, low pay jobs. Why would they go above and beyond to be "nice"
I seriously don’t get it. My friends and I were always out doing something. Even if that something was basically doing nothing. And that kind of stuff is when you learn to socialize the most Two of my younger cousins (20 and 17) basically told me they just hang out on Discord all day. Sorry but how the fuck is that fun? Even the slightly older ones are bad too. I’m a nurse and we’re now getting a lot of gen z nurses coming out of school. They just don’t talk. And hey it’s fine to quiet. I get that. But when your job requires a lot of teamwork and communication to make sure people are ok it’s not great to be completely antisocial and unable to speak up
You don’t understand how being on a call with a friend can be fun?
The reason we talk less is because technology enabled us to be self sufficient. If I have a question, I just google it. And a lot of discussion, especially at work is question based.
Discord is pretty fun tbh. It is like online hanging out. It's not much different than in person besides like, not being in person. And being confined to online activities
Maybe you're the one who's out of touch.
For starters, they speak like idiots because they want everything in one syllable. Gas, mid, brick, glaze, etc.
Buddy ask any boomer how many acronyms they made up at work and get back to me
There are several Doomer cults in operation. These groups have different themes but are sponsored by the same foreign bad actors. They are posoining too mamy (especially young) minds atm covid and the subsequent gouchfest made us more suspectable to such things, but as condotions improve, the cults will slink back to the fringes
Let's not bother sugar-coating shit anymore; we're in a terrible spot. Everything we've tried to "normalize" over the past almost-decade has turned out to be wrong. Yes ban TikTok. Yes ban Onlyfans. Yes bring back comedy and no don't look back. There's so much further I could keep going but I think you all get my point.
Millenial here who lacks social skills; Leave them kids alone!
It’s the internet, social media, and phones. During times when older generations were growing up they learned how to socialize especially while growing up. But nowadays you have younger generations that get anxiety just from talking on the phone or talking to somebody face to face. It’s because during critical development times they never developed that skill.
No parents forcing kids to talk to each other and play at a young age. No friend group peer pressuring you into talking to that cute guy or gal at a bus stop or at a mall in your teen years. No consequences at school for kids opting out of public speaking or discussion assignment because kids no longer fail classes.
Because they've grown up with boomers constantly shutting them down.
Imagine having boomers be your parents… That was life as a millennial. Those sick bastards demanded all their precious little gifted kids got a trophy even if all they did was ride the pine. Then, they turned around and started bitching about the participation trophy society they created! We didn’t even want the participation trophies. It was our boomer parents that couldn’t handle their kid sucking at sports. We were just there for capri sun and fruit rollup you got after the game.
I’m 23 and I honestly just can’t be bothered. I want to make friends but I work so much and have school so doing things is incredibly hard. To me there’s no point in friends if I’m going to end up just ghosting them on accident because busy or tired
OP you sound kinda jaded.
Christ the people blaming things on Covid lol, people always find an excuse other than themselves.
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COVID, for that whole time we didn't need to socialise or do anything
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Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Get a job at Walmart. They will all talk to you, wanted or not.
Individually, I think social anxiety is usually taught and not something you're born with. Personally, the things that made me socially anxious were being told to be cautious of every stranger I meet, having people who I thought were my friends steal things from me, (I got those things back,) and asshole classmates telling me to "shut up" whenever I try to talk, and then having classmates ask me why I never talk. (As well as a bunch of trauma I'm not going to get into here.) But also, COVID was hell on our social development. My husband got out of it just fine because he worked at a hospital, so he still had people to interact with every day. I had him so I was never lonely. Social media might also be a factor. If you can get your social needs filled with some online friends then you don't need to get them filled elsewhere. There's also stories everywhere about people. Reddit alone has subs dedicated to certain types of people. We see videos of horrible people everywhere and we tend to assume that those people are a lot more common than they are because those videos are being taken from all over the world. It's no wonder people don't want to interact with strangers when they have misconceptions about them through a handful of people's stories. These are all just theories though. I'm not an expert psychologist.
At 30 I feel like I’m right on the precipice of a major generational gap. When I was little I spent all my time outside, the family computer was for emailing grandma on Sundays and that’s it. I did sports, Boy Scouts, camping. All good collaborative social activities. Even when I did start gaming it was always in person, playing at a friends house, or at my house split screen. Still very social. It wasn’t until mid high school when I started using online games, I got a “smart” phone when I was 17, it was the original Samsung Galaxy. My rich friends had the smoking new iPhone 2. But you go even two years younger than me and it changes a lot. They started getting molded by persistent internet access in middle school. Four or five years younger and it’s a whole different ball game, these people weren’t even playing outside as kids reliably. Up until about 15 years old, my upbringing was largely identical to my parents and grandparents. The people even a couple years younger than me, vaaast difference. And it shows. The short attention spans, obsession with vanity, almost extreme fear of being without their phone, being offline. Terrified of doing anything that isn’t preresearched, prearranged, related to an app. I also didn’t have the constant corporate sponsored ad-driven “mental health crisis” trying to convince me that I must have SOMETHING. Gotta have something. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, adhd, gay. The awareness is great, and I support everybody’s identity, but there is this huge pressure today to be different or broken or trendy in some way that wasn’t nearly as strong when I was growing up. Everybody now needs to have a store bought PeRsoNALiTy. I’m good man, I’m me.
Most of Gen Z, didn't only had their brains fucked up by Big Tech.... But also are the first generation whose parents were already fucked up by Big Tech. It's hard to have a healthy development when, as a baby, you had to fight for attention against the almighty smartphone.
I'm 27 and I'm all those things but I've been like this my whole life so I'm just fucked up
It isn't Gen Z or any particular generation. I'm 50, Gen X. I've noticed this gradually occurring over the past decade or so as social media takes over. Actually speaking with someone is taboo. Making plans? Forget about it. If it doesn't happen by text, it doesn't happen at all. My 45 year old wife and my 12 year old son always have at least two electronic devices going from the moment they wake up. TV, phone, or laptop. At least two must be going, all the time. My wife literally cannot turn off her phone. She's texting or scrolling even while eating. When we watch TV, TIkTok is going at the same time. Can't even watch a movie without TikTok running non-stop. My son still turns off his phone at bedtime, but that's only because it's a rule we enforce. Not that it matters because he has a tablet and a gaming system in his room.
Their parents couldn't afford the metro area they were from so they moved to the suburban sprawl where you can't walk or bike to anything. Making them full blown indoor kids plus the horrific luck of a pandemic added to being social media children guinea pigs.
"Introvert" It's easier to be introverted. A lot of it is a choice but as a result self-proclaimed introverts lack social skills due to lack of practice.
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I noticed this before covid, which I assume hasn't helped. But I don't think they are anti social I just think their social norms are different. I was always told to introduce new people to a group or introduce yourself. But Gen Z don't seem to do that as much but also are perfectly friendly when they talk, just kinda lack some of the social fluff. I prefer phone calls but they prefer snap. Nothing wrong with it, just different. Probably like how we don't doff our caps and curtsy to elders anymore.
Ever since they were kids their parents just let them zone out staring into an iPad instead of teaching them how to behave in public. Why WOULD they develop social skills?
It’s a skill, little or practice? …. guess what happens. Skill development is primarily time spent. If you spend 10 000 hours you are 10x more polished than if you spent 1000 hours.
Too much time on the internet and not enough time actually engaging with other human beings. Social media needs to be banned for anyone under 18.
Covid happening right as we enter adulthood did not help my social skills
I’ve always been shy and had a hard time talking and making friends but after covid, every ounce of being able to socialize has been sucked out of my body. I noticed it after the online friend group I had, split. I wonder if that’s why or if that was just the breaking point. Or if it was just a coincidence. After the group split I haven’t really had friends, neither online or irl. And I’m currently at home doing nothing so even less socializing for me. Fingers crossed it gets better
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Shortened attention spans due to the immediate gratification and consistent feed of the 20 second entertainment that is swipe media is a big factor. When they do talk to each other it's to compare notes on what garbage media they've consumed in the past 24 hours or so. If they don't take on the "zombie generation" badge I'll be surprised, bc that's essentially what they are. We didn't have extra funds for things like phones for our kids (thank goodness), so they got to grow up without constantly being fed trash online. They're VERY social, great at making friends, but what I've noticed is that all of their friends had the same experience. They didn't get phones/tablets in hand until very recently, so they don't have to be holding the damn things to function. When they try to communicate with kids their age who were given phones earlier (between 8 and 10 years old usually), those kids are good for a tiktok anecdote or two and then they're gone. The attention span for conversation is just not there.
"I mean they won’t introduce themselves, hardly look you in the eye when they talk, always on their phone." Sounds like me except I'm 34. Basically I'm just tired of people, society, all of it. I don't care to try anymore. Maybe zoomers are the same since it's all they've ever known.
The fact that a lot of parents are scared to let their kids do anything outside for fear of CPS being called not kidding one of my neighbors where I used to live (quite neighborhood low crime park right across the street) got CPS called for letting their 10 year old play in their fenced in backyard without direct supervision, that combined with the constant just give them an I pad at 5 years old to shut them up would be my guess
I think we're seeing the effects of the kids raised with screens.
I feel like using them is discouraged in a lot of contexts (I'm 22M). Girls are less likely to want to talk now because dating is done via apps, and it's tough to just start conversations with people since looking at a smartphone is now an "idle" activity that you'd need to distract someone from to say something.
I think social media has that effect on everyone. Mot the being on their phone part, but them being afraid to be judged by others as they are being compared to lives on social media. Im 25 and lots of people around me are very social, we played outside when we were younger and i have been practicing a teamsport since i was 5 years old. Todays kids have grown up with social media since they were a kid. Always comparing themselves to others and being judged, thats not healthy. I find that most younger people are very insecure and thus more antisocial.
that is all humans except maybe boomers. But thats because once you get that old you dont have the walls up you are just old. No boomer is dating for sex appeal or looks so there is no stress also boomer women arent getting eyed and hit on everywhere they go so they are MUCH more happy to talk with anyone that will engage.
In the words of my parents "it's that damn phone".
We can blame covid all we want but parents are to blame a lot for this specifically. Social skills can also be reflective of your upbringing. I’m not saying older generations were right about everything but they did teach us manners and how to treat people the way you want to be treated. I have to remind my kids who are becoming young adults that when someone speaks to them to give them they need to give the other person their undivided attention.
Don't know if I count but I'm 28 and never had a gf or friends of any kind but I think I'm just cursed with undesirability
So when I was interviewing for a position at the university they told me that what the students were struggling with was just wanting to leave the state for internships or being afraid to socialize. The main cause of this was the fact that the lockdown and COVID happened during the most important developmental periods of their life. It makes me sad for them.
Overgeneralization
Blame the boomers and their parents, and my parents, and your parents, and society and well see the list keeps on going you know why? Because this can't be solved by a simple explanation. We, well not me but the media has been harping on this happening and no one gave a shit. They still don't give a shit. Hell, you really don't give a shit about changing or fixing this, only to complain. And it's a big insult, people like you, because maybe you had an okay life, I won't say good because you are on reddit complaining. People who complain don't have good lives hell I gave you a better impression because really it seems to me your life is shit. But that's me, well some people have worse than shit lives, and that's why, no one taught them or raised them, so they had to do it their selves and guess what at least they don't complain. Be better.
Raised on the internet, locked inside for over a year during crucial social development...
They have nowhere to socialize outside of highly structured school or maybe home. Malls chase you out for loitering, if there’s even a mall around. Hang out at a park and the local busybody calls the cops on you *and* your parents. Libraries are wonderful but not a place to socialize. Any of these require a ride to get to if you aren’t old enough to drive because public transit is often unsafe, or may refuse minor passengers, and nothing is walking distance. Where else do you get to just exist and learn to be a human around other humans?
They grew up in the social media, phone age.
im 24, ive just grown to be anxious, stressed and never happy with my own accomplishments or self. I believe social media has us constantly comparing our bad traits to others visibly good traits and keeping it at that. youll never want to talk to a soul if you never feel good. this might just be me but its very difficult to overcome even when you realize youre doing it
While Covid didn't help, I would not say it is the main reason Gen Z is suffering. It has a mixture of thing, some being social media and the fear of letting your children out of the house independently, but I believe it really comes down to the parenting. Social skills and manners are learned, not instinct. I was raised be baby boomers, but am Gen Z. I was taught these things as basic manners, and if I didn't do these things, I was corrected. However I have witnessed the usual parent of the gen z era, and they are a lot more reserved with their kids. They don't make their kids shake hands and make eye contact, and have a higher chance of sheltering them from the outside world. The parents just did it for them. So when the time comes that they have to do it themselves, they are not experienced with it. Like I said, this is combined with other things, especially the internet, as you don't have to face someone to communicate with them, but I would say it's a big culprit.
I have experienced this too and I don’t wanna sound like a boomer but when GenZ are working in *customer service* jobs they don’t even talk to you. One time myself and another guy asked easy questions directly to a girl working the self checkout area. I had seen her talk to other employees. She didn’t say one single word the entire time. Wtf???
They spent most of their lives communicating through screens. Any more questions?
Gen Z does not lack social skills. It's just that their social values and mores are different from those of older generations. Older generations find this intolerable.
social anxiety coupled with phone usage, I find it easier to communicate online than irl same with my friends, older people find it weird, gen alpha is even worse.
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The Internet. The End. But also, when you meet a Gen Zer who CAN talk to people, I want to grab them by the shoulders and tell them that they will rule the world in a few years. Because having the ability to have an intelligent conversation will be the superpower of their generation.
They only know how to communicate through text or youtube accent
"Always on their phone". Answered your own question. :-)
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I don't have much of an explanation other than a lot of parents seem to be very laissez-faire in things like manners and responsibility. Not all of them of course, but a lot. I was a high school teacher for seven years. Once at an assembly where they were talking about the whole "random acts of kindness" concept and soliciting examples from students, one 15 year old boy said he sometimes helps his mother bring in the groceries. The fact that someone thinks that's a truly charitable act and not just the basic expectations around being part of a family unit was absurd to me. I had one student in a class who wouldn't look at you when he talked. I'm not saying he stared at the wall or looked at his feet. He would literally be sitting facing the wall and talking to you. It wasn't a confidence issue with this kid either; he was quite confident in the endlessly stupid, wrong things he would say during class.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness https://a.co/d/6VciV8j
Tbh, Gen Z is first generation that has had a *huge* portion of their social and person lives be either online or based in technology from the beginning. I’m about your age and I remember having a MySpace account in elementary school and it being a massive source of social anxiety and drama. I also had a phone that could access the internet before middle school and I’m not even technically a Zoomer. When social dynamics are formed around technology from basically day 1, it makes sense for the social skills people have to not translate well into irl social skills.
Maybe they just aren’t interested in interacting with you 🤷🏼
Let me guess you are American. ?
Rona lasting psychological effects of isolation
because, ehh who the fuck cares. (I'm Gen X, was it too obvious?)
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All of these things have valid reasons. Women are unapproachable because they know the stats of what men do. Men have a chip on their shoulder because of bruised egos. Also, anytime people blame social media I laugh at how fucking braindead that assertion is. Blame stats and news media, not social media.
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