Millennials Can't Communicate With Gen Z (oh the irony!): A Commentary

 

  

I ran across an article that had me chuckling about Millennials and their frustration with Gen Z.  Millennials, the generation who grew up with social media and turned self-promotion into a cottage industry. Their admiration and idolization of social media influencers made it acceptable for self-absorbed behavior to be the norm.  In an ironic twist, Millennials are now becoming frustrated in their inability to relate to Gen Z – a generation heavily influenced by Millennials’ behavior.

Millenials are turning to Tik Tok to air their grievances and to seek help in figuring out how to understand and communicate with Gen Z – especially their slang. They feel disconnected from Gen Z who, in my opinion, took their cues from Millennials to further establish the trend of using pompous language to describe everyday things. Why do they do this? To give things a fashionable spin to make it IG or Pintrest worthy. For example:

Gen Z	Millennial	Definition
Short King	Fun Size	A short man
Fam	Squad	Friends

 

Hey, I get it. Every generation has their own slang and colloquialism. But Gen Z & Millennials took it to an entire new level of elitism.

Recently, a Tik-Toker named @ann_natalee (a Millenial) asked her audience if they felt out of touch with today’s kids. Her sisters are Gen Z and she complained about not being able to “communicate with them”. I watched the video, and my guess is @ann is 28-32 yrs old. Her description of her frustrations had me rolling my eyes because she herself came across using pretentious wording to describe the very thing that she finds frustrating about Gen Z.  For example, instead of asking Gen Zers not to say, “do it for the plot” (and instead say, “find out what’s going on”), she goes on tangent to make herself sound either smarter or more interesting to describe the very thing she’s complaining about. 

All of this leads to an interesting observation I have made: Both generations have shown their misguided belief that using inflated language in their communication translates to intelligence.  It doesn’t.  And BTW: “Dopamine vibing” is a stupid way of saying “feeling good”.   *unwraps Werthers*

 

 

Source: Parade; New Zealand Herald; Business Insider; Fast Company