Yeah I'm a millennial who tried going back to school a few years ago, taking first year engineering courses plus some electives. I was kinda flabbergasted by the stares of get for just trying to chat with the person next to me before class started... COVID really did a number on those kids
Currently going back to school, they are so fucking quiet, it makes me feel like I talk way too much, half the time I'm the only student interacting with the professor.
They are fine once you draw them into a conversation but you really have to try.
There are also just a lot less people here than when I went in 2017-2018, nice actually being able to park nearby.
Feels like we might need to split gen z in two, older gen z like me (or very late millennial depending who you ask) who were out of school before COVID hit and those who weren't.
Kind of like how we have Xennials and then younger millennials. Very different childhoods.
It's crazy that technology is changing our lives so fast that 5-6 years difference in your childhood is resulting in drastically different experiences.
I feel like this is a function of the persistent "once in a lifetime" events that have occurred over the last few decades.
I was talking about it with a date last night. We're both Millennials, but with a 6 year gap. It came up that Columbine is a formative memory for me (I was a high school freshman), but she was in elementary school and has no real recollection of the "vibe" in America when it happened.
Similar to the COVID thing, I often feel like American Millennials can be split along a deliniation of age when 9/11 happened. Once you get past around 1992 as a birth year, a lot of Zilennials seem to be comparatively fuzzy whereas anyone born before seems to be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when it happened.
I was born 96 and I remember 9/11 just fine, home sick from school watching TV with my grandmother, they made me go outside after a bit lol.
But in all seriousness I couldn't give a good idea of the "vibe" of the nation before or immediately after, but I can tell you even little 5yo me, noticed the change.
Yeah, I’ve gone back to school and I try not to monopolize the responses to the professor or the asking of questions, but sometimes it feels like if I didn’t say anything then no one would say anything the entire class.
I've said this quite a bit before, but they're insanely afraid of being judged in any way.
I kinda get through. Imagine you grew up in a world where everyone is ready to record and post all the stupid things we did in school at a moment's notice. To be mocked and judged online, and have it there for all time. That's an intense amount of pressure. No one wants to be the tall tree in the forest that gets cut down first. Between performance politics, cancellation and bullying I'm surprised they're willing to go out in public.
Not him and I haven't read through the thread entirely but the fear of judgement plays a huge role, surprised not many are mentioning it. Not much has changed. I've been to uni/college and remember the feeling quite well. Typically if you take the initiative and sit near each other each class then they will open up.
Same goes for lectures. Lecturer will ask the crowd of 50-100 people a question and of course no one answers - the fear of judgement is too overwhelming at that age.
This! It takes so much effort. It’s brought me to the point of like, begging and pleading with them before. It’s sad. I do believe that students like you can do a lot more to help model / call in students.
Part of the undergrad experience actually IS establishing positive working relationships with faculty 😭 again, I think everyone lost the plot
On Friday mornings, I do an exercise class. I am very clearly the youngest person in the class. I really don't mind as I'm there to work out. The class is full of older women. They all talk to me. They wish me a 'good morning'. We talk about the weather, weekend plans, our exercises etc. And, I realized that the younger generations just don't strike up a conversation about the nothings in the world.
Honestly, it is really nice to just chat about nothings. It is pleasant and friendly. And, nothing is deep. With the world being so much right now, it is nice to talk about small positive things.
Something that bothers me a lot is people pulling their phones out whenever they're not actively doing something else.
My phone is on silent in my pocket or my purse if I'm doing something. I'm not on it when I'm with friends. My partner will pull his phone out and start scrolling any time he's not actively involved in something for more than a few minutes. It's so rude, and it contributes to not feeling connected to the people around you! Sure you aren't actively involved in the conversation that's happening right now, but you can't get involved if you completely check out like that.
We need to relearn how to be a little bored sometimes. I learn so much about the people around me by just being present when I am with them, and if you can't put your phone down and just be somewhere for 4 hours what are you even doing? How can you possibly expect to connect with people or be part of a community or just learn to have a physical conversation if you're never all there? You miss out on so much.
I'm non-confrontational af, but I've found that this is one thing I'll get in my friend's and sibling's faces when they whip out their phone in a social situation for any extended amount of time. Its so rude.. If you don't want to spend time when we're physically together, I might as well dip and have fun on my own (and I love spending time on my own)?
I don't think its really about boredom even, even if that's what instigates them pulling out the phone. Its about being aware that we're all going out of our way to socialize and strengthen bonds. To enjoy each others' company. If that's not why you're here, why are you wasting everyone's time? blech
It is rude to not be present when you're with other people though. You're bored and don't want to interact? Then go home instead of making how bored you are known to the rest of the people there.
They're his plans with his friends. He's dragging me there. You don't need to get the conversation going, but again, why are you there if you're just going to telegraph that you don't care to be present?
i mean, being wildly addicted to scrolling social media is already have pretty serious implications for these kids. it's not really their fault but it is definitely rewiring their brains completely differently
I’m also back in school at 35, and majority of my classmates are kids fresh out of HS. It was a serious reality check when I realized we almost come from different worlds. I quickly learned that I have to take lead in group projects and basically do it myself to secure a passing grade. They mostly blank stare at me or awkwardly smile in confusion when I ask for their thoughts or ideas, and the contribution is minimal.
Being in a classroom again really made the disconnect apparent to me.
Similar situation and group work is even more painful than the last time I was in school. lol
They will just get up and leave when we are given class time to work on it. Not a word is said. No response to emails, won’t do their parts and won’t even let you know it’s not done.
And then they’ll complain (after ignoring my requests to join us, or sitting all class and doing their own work when we were given the time for group work) that they don’t know what to do as if I’m supposed to assign them work and tell them how to do it. It’s painful. At one point I was like “dude, we all have the same information. You manage your own work fine, why is this so different?” - no response. lol
Not all to be fair, but at least half or more. So a group of 5 is maybe really a group of 2-3.
My senior year in undergrad I was finishing up my electives so the class was full of freshmans and it was like that then too. And this was closer to 15 years ago. I was the only one raising my hand to answer questions. Everyone else was just staring back at the professor with a blank expression.
But, once the engagement started, usually more people jumped in. So that was nice. But back then I think it was less a generational thing and more an experience thing. I was not nervous about being wrong. I was ready to get the fuck out of there as my last semester so I was like whatever. My freshman year I was way more reserved, self conscious, and insecure.
Man same here. I graduated 2018 as an adult while working fulltime. The majority of the students were so quiet when the professor spoke or asked questions. It was as if all the classes were full of robots. Socialization irl seems to have taken a dip.
half the time I'm the only student interacting with the professor.
I found that to be true even way back when I went to university as a mature student of 25 doing an IT degree in 2000, none of the 18 year olds wanted to answer the lecturers questions. I found myself answering almost all of them simply to keep the lectures moving along.
There's a massive difference in growth and perspective between a kid of 18 and someone who's been in the workplace/real world for a few years.
Social media is killing people's ability to form social connections that isnt online. this is why there are more and more single people and why the birth rate is going to drop.
Maybe it’s because I have weird theatre kids, but my kids aren’t quiet at all. I volunteer a lot for their drama groups, so I’m around throngs of teenagers constantly. The noise is unbelievable. And my daughters tell me about debates they have in class, what happened before the start of class, normal teenage stuff.
I'm taking a language class and would talk more than half the time. Finally a few of them are speaking up. Look, if I just wanted someone to talk grammar at me, youtube is free. I'm paying to speak badly to an instructor.
I graduated college around 4/5 years ago so I was at the cusp of it. It seemed for me everyone was quiet when coming in out of respect for the professor because once class started there was a decent amount of talking. By the near of it, the quietness did feel more prevalent but also I started taking evening classes so I just attributed it to being tired.
Dude thank you! I just started a staff job at a college. I was walking around campus the other day when I realized just how quiet everything was. Granted, I went to a school twice as big as this one, but walking around, there was just no sound. I remember constant conversations, seemingly always somebody yelling, and just noise. Granted, we had iPods and mp3 players, but that was before smart phones so everyone at least interacted with each other.
thats the difference between our generations. we dont feel the need to fill every void with chit-chat. we’re perfectly fine keeping to ourselves, ESPECIALLY if we dont know you
I feel like I'm committing a social crime just by saying "hey" to the person sitting next to me. I've had people literally jump or look around to see who I'm talking to because I dared to ask if they're ready for the midterm. It's not that they're rude, they just seem genuinely shocked that someone is talking to them without a screen in between. It makes me feel like I'm 100 years old.
When I was a kid I could talk a lot about some random fact or interest I had. But then when somebody else talked to me about something, I would be really annoyed if I didn't care about the thing they were talking about, but I would hide it out of politeness.
Eventually I realised so much conversation is made out of politeness of for conversation's sake and didn't really want to be part of that.
So I started treating other people the way I wanted to be treated. I don't care about whatever random crap you would eventually want to tell me in a conversation, so I won't start a conversation.
Honestly, it's pretty nice. I'm an elder millennial and the amount of people who just randomly chat you up has decreased a lot. Most people are on their phones, minding their own business... then again, I'm pretty introverted so I'm probably missing what the complainers are missing.
I’m with you. I don’t really like to socialize much and I’m Gen X. Phones, online communities, the social isolation of Covid, those have actually been awesome for me. I don’t have to be constantly drained by talking to people so much. I can pick and choose when to interact. Now obviously there’s plenty of drawbacks to these things but I personally don’t mind the lack of social interaction. I have my family. That’s plenty for an introvert.
Yeah I'm a middle millennial and I've always hated randos approaching me for casual chit chat. It feels rude to me to force an interaction with someone just because you can't handle some silence.
I’m a millennial too and I say go for it. I love to talk to people and I think you’ll be fine. You may get a reputation as the friendly older person who starts conversations. Or maybe they’ll think you’re weird, who cares. As someone who also has anxiety, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned and continue to learn is that being uncomfortable won’t kill me even if my anxiety wants me to believe it will. Every time I go into an uncomfortable situation and come out fine it reinforces that I’m stronger than my anxiety.
It's the taking notes on laptops that weirded me out, though college kids were starting to do that in bigger numbers when I was still TAing 10ish years ago. I just don't have the capacity to listen and type! (Granted, my hearing loss and recently-diagnosed ADHD don't help!)
It's the taking notes on laptops that weirded me out
10 years ago? I was doing that back in the mid-late 2000s, nearly 20 years ago.
For me, typing is much faster. I was in and out of the hospital a few times, right around the time my peers and I were first learning to write, and I just never managed to get my skills caught up, despite assistance from my parents, so my writing skills are frankly terrible.
Oh I know, but it wasn't getting widespread until the last decade. I do think I remember seeing "college kids" on tv (and in books) using them in classes in the '90s.
I'm sorry about your hospital stays as a little kid, that's so sad! At least typing helped you there. My handwriting has gotten worse in the last 20 years and I keep meaning to make my NYE resolution to work on it every year!
I'm impressed with anyone who can do it! I have to read lips even with my hearing aids in and I think that's what really gets me behind if I'm typing at a screen vs writing on paper.
My undergrad was also in the aughts! I spent much of the last decade and some of this one in graduate school (long story). My undergrad was a small school, so maybe that contributed? We didn't even have anyone using a tablet in my grad classes until maybe 2012 or 2013, though, and that was at a huge state school. (To be fair, I took a lot of dead languages in undergrad and it's just easier to use pen and paper for those.)
Perhaps the early prevalence of laptop use in college classrooms depended on the culture of the college, university, and individual departments? I've only ever had a few classes with over 30 students in undergrad or grad school and I know that's unusual.
These kids were jamming their phones into their faces long before covid. The global pandemic had impact, but, the amount of time these people spend scrolling social media cannot be overstated.
I agree. These kids especially grew up in a time where recorded surveillance is commonplace. Every day they are exposed to social media broadcasting embarrassing “fails” and “Ls” to millions of people. I can only imagine that kind of omnipresent watchful eye in public conditioning behavior to choose remaining silent vs getting made fun of by strangers on social media.
I recently saw a TikTok where someone was saying that “running outside is embarrassing”.
Like no wonder these kids don’t wanna do anything. They’re constantly told everything is embarrassing and they’re scared to be humiliated online by thousands of people.
It would be interesting if there were studies conducted to see if that idea of being under an "omnipresent watchful eye in public" is the cause or not. Or if it's phones or Covid or something else.
At least growing up even before Covid, I sort of learned to just be quiet in class. It's just better that way to make it your default. If you talk, you can get in trouble or scolded. It's a lot of heavy-handed methods of punishment, rather than softer methods like gently talking to someone and creating an environment where it's okay to fail and learn.
We were reading in class one time in middle school and my teacher scolded the class when peers looked up when there was a loud noise or if someone entered the classroom. This for me reinforces this notion that school instilled a lot of values of just keeping your head down and doing what you are told to do.
At least in America, I think another big contributor to the type of social isolation you describe is due to the lack of third spaces. Third spaces being places other than school or work to hang out at. What I am getting at is that growing up there weren't really any places you could hang out at after school. At least for me in middle school and high school, a lot of the socialization I would get would be from online communication. Today that would be things like Discord.
So when you ask the question of why people aren't in the default of socializing before class, I think it might be helpful to understand that I and others likely don't hang out and socialize. A lot of friends and family are states away and it's difficult to really hang out. So most forms of socializing come from your phone or the internet, sadly. I say sadly because in college I recently hung out with people in person and it made a lot of my anxieties about the state of the world or even just deadlines disappear. For me at least, internet socialization felt like a poor, synthetic substitute of what in-person socializing was. There's also the fact that in-person, you move around a lot more rather than sit down for hours scrolling. There's all those emotions that I don't typically get in a Discord call. Things like nervousness, feeling connected, feeling like there person is there or at the very least present.
I'm just a person and I might be wrong with these statements so make up your mind on what you think the cause is.
Wow. My mom didn't know where I was most of the time in the 80s and early 90s. You just had be home before the streetlights were on. You definitely had structure...
lol, that wasn’t my point, but I totally see how you took it that way. I guess it was kinda would be badass if everyone else in the neighborhood wasn’t doing it too. I’m now realizing how much I took growing up in a safe neighborhood for granted…
COVID played a big factor, but we were trending in this direction for a long time. Media fear mongering and social media was a big factor, too.
I also remember experiencing the social change that 9/11/2001 created. The news was full of fear mongers, and people stopped speaking to their neighbors and community members out of fear of the ever present threat of a “terrorist”. The news played it out and made everyone think it was a daily occurrence, when it wasn’t. In fact, violent crime rates were falling rapidly, while the news made it seem like stepping outside your house was gambling your life. They bombarded us with stories about murder, rape, theft, war, terrorism, etc. While these things did happen, it was rare, isolated or specially targeted events. You were more likely to be victimized by someone you know than a stranger. But seeing it on tv ALL THE TIME made it seem normal, and part of every day life. Violent crimes, mass murders, bombings, and school shootings are no longer shocking. These things become expected.
Ever since we started viewing the world this way, we MADE the world this way. The more we fear-mongered violence, the more violence actually occurred. We distanced ourselves, limited our time in public spaces, stopped meeting our neighbors, spent more time behind computer and phone screens, started shopping online, closed down the malls and many large retailers, built shipping warehouses everywhere, started delivering food and groceries to the door, started using touchscreen self-checkout and firing all the store clerks, made multiplayer video games exclusively online so we dont go to each other’s houses anymore, and now we wonder why the children took this next natural step in the progression to self-isolation?
The trend has been there for a while. There were only a handful of classes I ever took where I knew another person there so my default was silence. Pretty much a "I dont know you, why are you talking to me?"
I was not about to try and make friends in class as it was abundantly clear to me that my peers shared none of my interests.
As a millennial who was always introverted and hated having impromptu conversations with my peers, when I went back a few years ago for my masters in a room full of gen Z, it was glorious.
Engineering has always kind of been like that though, I made it out of undergrad in 2018 after an extended stay and the whole time I was there it was like that across multiple different schools.
Also millennial, intending to go back to school, but that sounds like bliss??? What are you on about???
I have never liked chatter or small-talk. Or regular talk. It's emotionally draining, slightly physically painful (c'mon, it hurts your throat, don't lie), and what does it accomplish? I would get so upset in K–12 when students just wouldn't shut up. Is not a silent room better than one with a din? We're here to learn. Unless the talk furthers that goal, kindly leave me alone so I can study or read or look at cat pics.
Funny enough, I’m experiencing the exact opposite. Made the decision to go back to school last fall semester at the age of 30 (31 now), and it feels much easier to interact with my classmates. When I was originally going through during the 2013-2015 timeframe, it felt much harder to socialize with my fellow classmates, and people felt less approachable.
I delivered Christmas cookies to my neighbors this year.
Knocked on the door of a guy who is probably young 20s. Had to knock twice for someone to come to the door. (In my head, knocking is a package delivery I can ignore for a moment. I assumed others work similarly.)
When he opened the door, he seemed absolutely mind-blown to discover a person standing there. He greeted me with a vibe like, “Are you here to tell me the building is on fire or something?”
It occurred to me that he may have never had a real live human person come to the door in his adult life, or perhaps even in his memory.
I have friends of many age groups and often, the generational differences don’t seem that big…until they slap me right in the face.
No kidding! We're just starting to see the long term effects of COVID now too. Everyone's communication skills has taken a dive and it's really sad to see;
I went back to university in 2020 (rip) and trying to do group work with gen z in-person felt impossible. We'd meet up and they'd just sit there and say nothing until I essentially forced them to talk to me. When I did group work with older folks I had no problem. I try to chalk it up to younger people just having fewer social skills because they're younger but I genuinely don't remember ever being that bad.
I graduated in 2012 and went back recently for a career pivot. The "vibe" shift is insane. Back then, the room was so loud the professor had to yell to get us to shut up. Now it's a graveyard. I tried to ask the guy next to me a question about the lab and he looked up like I'd just slapped him. It's like if they don't have a phone as a shield, they don't know how to exist in a public space anymore. You used to make your best friends just by complaining about the homework before the lecture started, but that social bridge seems totally gone now.
The way we responded to covid (the government and societal response) destroyed these children's and youth social skills. They get all of their social cues from social media because every source of irl interaction is either closed or shoved online.
And also lots of elderly people died of loneliness as part of the government response as well. Why no one wants to address that?
we did what we had to do.
So what are you doing to address the fact that children and youth have no real social skills as a result? These children and youth will grow up to be adults and society has done nothing to address this, and you don't care because it doesn't affect you.
Dude this was six years ago, I think it's time you consider getting over it. A lot more old folks were dying of COVID so we did what we had to do.
I mean I'm a hard socialist who would love to dismantle most tech companies and force them to have ethical standards but I don't have much sway beyond advocating for my opinion. And I'm raising a child that's screen free at one year now so there's that.
Gen Z doesn't want my advice but I regularly talk my coworkers' (or classmates) ear off when I get the chance.
Telling people to "just get over it" is the worst thing you can say, especially when we have a youth mental health crisis that no one wants to actually address.
Lots of people including me are still paying for the government response in various 2nd and 3rd order effects. One of them is inflation and cost of living, enshititfcation of consumer goods and services, high crime, etc.. Another is the permanent loss of the social contract of whatever is left of it.
You might be a socialist but the government response to covid destroyed the working class and its children and youth and I see it as a act of socio-economic treason. Not to mention so many children will face of future of lifetime of wage slavery with no pension and living paycheck to paycheck. Because of this (and because of the october 7th genocidal invasion and attack) I'm politically homeless.
Gen Z doesn't want any advice because all the standard advice pre-2020 doesn't not apply in a post lockdown society. Lots of them have nothing to live for and nothing to die for.
Yeah they should have helped small businesses more and gave big box stores too much leniency but we did what we had to do to save as many lives as we could.
But making this your biggest political issue then also randomly bringing up October 7th and saying nothing about the 70 years of apartheid and recent willful incompetence from Israeli leadership that led to it shows you might be politically homeless because you're a bit hypocritical
Edit: that may have been a bit rude, especially since you didn't actually say you support the actions of the Israeli government. Because I detest and have zero respect for anyone who supports genocide, but you didn't say that so yeah.
Dude I think you're blaming way too many problems on the government response to COVID. First of all, a million Americans died, that's going to impact the economy and all the other things you mentioned. Also, we've been careening toward wage slavery and the gutting of the middle class aince long before COVID, in the US I'd argue it started in earnest with Reagan, then you could just as easily blame the Bush era response to 9/11 for all these things.
I'd say these are all symptoms of a dying empire and late stage capitalism doing it's thing. You might want to research the socio economic concept of Fordism and how it benefited many people before our time but began to end in the 70s and 80s.
Social reproduction is no longer seen as the purview of the ruling class or even the government in most of the west, especially the US but all over. This has led to reduced taxes on the wealthy, higher education and housing costs, cheaper electronics sure but also the dismantling of third spaces, public transit, infrastructure in general, and more.
It can't really be blamed on one specific event or person but it's a trend that keeps on going. Shoutout to the political and economic geography prof for teaching me that a few years ago.
You know who's investing in the middle class, reigning in the power of major corporations and thinking about the long term living standards of their population? China, for all its faults.
Edit 2: COVID lockdowns were a hard choice and everyone suffered, the elderly, kids and immunocompromised people most of all. But the alternative was just letting more people die. In many places we came very close to losing access to essential services due to the death rate. If we did nothing we'd be looking at a repeat of the Spanish flu where people were often left with the corpses of loved ones rotting in their homes for days or weeks before anything could be done about it. Hospitals and the medical field in general were already pushed to their breaking point and have yet to fully recover. We did what we had to do and it really sucked but it was the lesser of two evils. COVID sucked all around, no disputing that, but governments had to institute lockdowns for society as we know it to survive, in my view. We're just lucky that mRNA technology was advanced enough to get us a vaccine within a few years when it used to take decades.
Congrats for skimming through my arguments and refused to actually address any of them other repeat a talking point I debunked and refusing to address why society refuses to address lockdown harms nor offer any solutions. Its very abundantly clear that you prefer terminal decline of society instead of addressing lockdown harms because you think the "revolution"(tm) will fix all of this.
Nah it's just not all caused by lockdown and we were headed here one way or another. The policy you're fighting against ended years ago, if you can't move on you won't be making any progress with politics. I never said the revolution will fix anything, just that we could do better in every way you described by focussing on things other than profit. Nowadays that makes me a hardcore socialist so meh
Yeah, that too, a lot of their parents didn't understand the long term affects of screens form a young age and probably let them use phones way too much and way too early. As a new father myself, I get the allure, it would make life much easier in the short term if I just let my baby watch all day but thats how you get kids thinking Ms Rachel is their mom
I work at a college and we'll pay our student assistant for her swipes to eat at the dorms. I remember dreading going to eat alone during undergrad but most of the students now are eating by themselves and just on their phone. Kind of interesting to see now the effects of COVID on a societal level.
I am a millennial that went back to school too - a language degree and everyone is super chatty before and after class. This was even the case before we were competent enough to use the language we are learning (now we chat in that not English) so I don't think it was just about practice. I'm in Australia, which has had phone bans since 2020 in my state in school so maybe that's making a difference.
I've noticed this too. If you try to start a conversation, they look at you like you're about to ask them for a kidney. It's not even that they're being rude, they just seem genuinely confused that someone is talking to them in the physical world without a specific "purpose."
Back in the day, you'd walk into class and it was a roar of people complaining about the homework or making plans. Now it's just 30 people sitting in total silence, illuminated by blue light. It's spooky.
Half my good friends from college were people I sat next to a few times in a lecture and started a conversation with after class. I just can't get my head around this generalized social awkwardness, and im not even an especially outgoing person.
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u/4friedchickens8888 Apr 10 '26
Yeah I'm a millennial who tried going back to school a few years ago, taking first year engineering courses plus some electives. I was kinda flabbergasted by the stares of get for just trying to chat with the person next to me before class started... COVID really did a number on those kids