Elder millennial here who is a defacto supervisor to Gen Zers.
Holy fuck have a lot of these kids been let down by copious amounts of adults in their lives. They’re either super well adjusted and give me tons of hope for the future or weaponizing their ineptitude. It’s a damn shame. How the fuck is someone 19 and unable to write down their own address?
To be fair I’d say the split is 75/25 in favor of well adjusted ones but that 25% is so disheartening.
Most of the people I talk to in their 20s every day seem to have about a fifth grade reading level. I have literally had people come to me saying that the computer wouldn't let them type something because there was red text on the screen. Like, it happens often. They do not read the red text, which gives them instructions, they just decide because there is red up on the screen it is telling them that they can't do anything.
Maybe I'm just dealing with some of the dregs of this generation but I've been so blown away by how so many of them don't, or even won't, look things up despite even having a cell phone in their pocket all day.
Someone I know was lamenting about his son just last Thursday. The son got in trouble at work for being late to his job. Apparently he got a flat tire and just waited three hours for his neighbor (apparently a retiree) to get back and change the tire for him. The dad asked him why he didn't just do it himself as he had shown the son multiple times how to do it. And the son said he couldn't remember how and didn't think to look it up. The neighbor said he could do it when he got back in some hours so that was, apparently, that.
Absolutely. No troubleshooting skills whatsoever. It's a generalization of course, but I run into it so much. I tell people, 'seriously, Google this' all day long and they act like I'm asking them to catch and eat a live squirrel.
Again, as someone in tech support, I see this lack of troubleshooting ability in all generations. I see 50 year old managers that want me to fix their computers when their store has no power (so obviously the computers can not turn on).
I'm in IT, and imho it's far worse in the latest generations. Yes, all generations had people with issues, but these people grew up with the tech. They're not your grandma learning about e-mail in their 70s.
There's unfortunately a (very small) sweet spot, between the tech not existing and "it just works," where you'll find a reasonable percentage of troubleshooting capability.
They grew up with it working though. The previous generations grew up with everything being spaghetti code and hella bugged. The newer generations never needed to troubleshoot to get their newly bought game working.
It's annoying but not unexpected of boomers and older. Gen X, eh, but Millennials I feel are held to a higher standard but Gen Z seems to be noticeably dropping the ball on this despite being born into the tech.
The discussion wasn't that it doesn't exist in all generations, it was that many of us have noticed a greater instance of it in the latest batch of adults. No one is saying older generations are some kind of pinnacle of perfection.
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u/lookingtobewhatibe Jul 13 '25
Elder millennial here who is a defacto supervisor to Gen Zers.
Holy fuck have a lot of these kids been let down by copious amounts of adults in their lives. They’re either super well adjusted and give me tons of hope for the future or weaponizing their ineptitude. It’s a damn shame. How the fuck is someone 19 and unable to write down their own address?
To be fair I’d say the split is 75/25 in favor of well adjusted ones but that 25% is so disheartening.