Why Can't Gen Z Communicate Like the Rest of Us?

It's baffling to me that Gen Z has so much trouble with simple communication. I suppose that with your head buried in a smartphone all day and night, the idea of one-on-one communication such as making small talk is not a skill that you learn.

That's why colleges are now offering a course on how to make small talk and network with other humans.

Yes, you should be fearful for the future of civilization.

The kind of ordinary communication skills that most of us who are a little older take for granted is a mountain to climb for these kids.

One lecturer at Caltech was astonished to learn that 20% of her students had spent up to five months looking for a job without so much as a nibble. “Hey wazzup y’all," one cover letter opened with. The teacher said that someone told him a cover letter should be "friendly."

Sheesh.

Wall Street Journal:

She talked about students’ communication shortcomings with colleagues. Everyone came to the same conclusion: “It was a hole people knew existed,” she said, but “didn’t know how to plug.”
Employers see it, even if students don’t. When college seniors were asked to rate their communication, nearly 80% responded “very/extremely proficient.” Only 54% of employers agreed, according to 2022 surveys by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Jana Mathews, a professor of Medieval literature at Rollins College, offers a Job Market Boot Camp for students who are so communication-challenged, they vomit before meeting people. “Tell me about yourself” triggers "temporary amnesia" according to the Journal article.

This seems like a lot more than ordinary nervousness before a big interview. It fits with the idea that these kids are at a loss without some kind of written plan.

Mathews said she understood why many of her students weren’t getting hired for jobs, saying they offered “no evidence that they had the interpersonal or communication skills to succeed at them.” That prompted her to initiate the Job Market Boot Camp and similar exercises to help students unmute.
When teaching “The Canterbury Tales,” Mathews holds a mixer where students pose as characters from the book while delivering an elevator pitch. Students learn the book, she said, and ease into networking “in a way that’s not so personalized, so they don’t feel like they’re on display.”

There are other theories for why Gen Z are such poor communicators. Certainly, smartphone addiction is at the top of the list, but there's also COVID cocooning and helicopter parenting that may be responsible as well.

I keep harking back to the film "Idiocracy." Are kids really getting dumber, or am I just getting smarter?

Don't answer that.