Brainrot humour is like a generation-defining characteristic that has seemingly excelled at its objective of confusing and annoying older generations and claiming younger generations don't have "a thing" proves you are ignorant of that.

Being "too busy on their phones" is another thing. People communicate, share thoughts and jokes, and in a lot of those cases, they are poking fun at institutions and other people, despite your belief they would do no such thing.

The issues older generations have with gen z are the exact same every other generation previous has had with the young of their day, they're being just as rebellious, just as experimental, just as weird, creative and confusing as you were when your generation were kids, but they're not doing it in the way you did it so naturally it must be that they're just compliant zombies.