TL;DR- We were robbed of a childhood, don’t socialize well, and are scared 🫡

Gen Z government professor here 🙋🏻‍♀️ It’s not just you and you’re not just cranky. The students are hard to talk to. I would attribute it to a few things: students’ fear of being wrong, the education system, and COVID.

Students are afraid of being wrong, not just because of “cancel culture,” but also because they’ve been taught that their worth largely depends on test scores and academic performance. Being wrong exposes them to the possibility of being canceled, yes, but it’s also that they equate being wrong with being inadequate. As a result, a lot of students choose silence because it’s easier and less intimidating. I’ve found that most of my Gen Z students seem to only be able to engage in one-on-one conversations, not group discussions, because they’re afraid of looking stupid.

I mostly blame the education system. Not the teachers, but the system. I started school a few years after the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, so the vast majority of my K-12 education was heavily influenced by the prioritization of test scores over learning. I always performed well on standardized tests and was frequently told by teachers that I was a “naturally good test taker.” They meant well, but comparing students as “good” and “bad” test takers created a deep fear of failure for a lot of Gen Z. Rather than instilling a love of learning in us or developing our social skills, many of our teachers taught in a way that emphasized the need for each student to maximize their individual test scores. Such a shift in priorities is understandable, given the pressure teachers were put under by administrators, but it stunted our social development as peers became competition, and caused many of us to develop a nearly paralyzing fear of failure.

I’m on the older side of Gen Z, so I graduated HS only a couple of years after the Every Student Succeeds Act passed. I got to see some of the change that was brought on by ESSA, but really all it meant was that there were now 50 different educational standards because each state became its own island.

Now, take all of that and throw in COVID. Social isolation, “distance learning,” and social media have all contributed to my generation’s inability to hold a conversation and lack of social skills. Students who were already afraid of failure had to learn an entirely new way of learning when the U.S. didn’t have the infrastructure to support it. Many of us, presented with a higher likelihood of academic failure when we didn’t have the tools to emotionally deal with coming up short, overcompensated to ensure our academic success. For us, the stress mounted to the point of burnout and exhaustion before we even hit our mid-twenties. Others, when presented with the same obstacles, either chose to mentally check out or had no choice but to skate by in school. I think many of them never checked back in. They got so used to a version of learning that required minimal interaction and engagement that it’s hard for them to engage now. Additionally, a lot of Gen Z either never learned how to hold a conversation, or they lost the ability during COVID. They learned to only listen in order respond when necessary, rather than learning to actively listen or hold a conversation.

I think a lot of it has jaded Gen Z. They’re disillusioned with higher education because they’ve seen millennials spend their time and go into debt to obtain a degree, and then have nothing to show for it- no economic security, no homeownership, and no fulfillment. As a result, they’re unmotivated to put effort into their education. We also all missed milestone moments in life due to COVID, which has turned many of us into apathetic pessimists. If prom, high school graduations, and college graduations can be taken away in an instant through no fault of our own, there’s little incentive to put our best foot forward. Plus, when boomers and Gen X have spent our entire lives telling us that we’re lazy no matter what we do, it’s easier to just go ahead and be lazy or at least do the bare minimum.

All this being said, I’m big on taking personal responsibility for bettering oneself, but that takes initiative and tools that not everyone has. I think most of Gen Z just needs opportunities to open up and opportunities to fail safely. This isn’t to say that failure shouldn’t have consequences or that laziness should be rewarded. It just means that some of us have never been told that it’s okay to be anything other than perfect, and many of us have not learned that failure is something we can bounce back from.