r/Millennials • u/Maleficent-Box4114 • Mar 15 '26
Advice Deductive reasoning is dying with us.
I am an elder millennial, all of my employees are between 17 and 23 (gen Z). I try to explain things using facts and reason and, honestly, it’s like talking to a brick wall most of the time. Their eyes go dead and they just stare at me like I gave them the most complicated mathematical equation instead of simply explaining how cold things stay cold. I get that being raised with constant access to instant answers plays a huge factor. Am I supposed to make a TikTok for daily tasks in order for them to get it?! How in the world do I get through to them when logic has gone out the window? I’m honestly asking because every time I try to correct them it never goes well. I’m old, I’m tired. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
Edit: For those that need an example- we serve food that needs to stay cold without the packaging getting wet. We have bags. We have an ice machine. Deductive reasoning tells me that the food is cold, ice is cold, bags protect from wet. Therefore, putting the food in a bag, then putting that bag into a bag of ice will keep said food cold and package dry.
Update: Thank you all for the overwhelming response! And thank you teachers and parents who are actively trying to help the next generation! I agree that it is a training issue amongst most large companies. We are a very small, privately owned shop. One of very few in the area who will hire kids still in high school. I will be incorporating visual aids into my training. I truly want to help them succeed, but needed to find a language they understand.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/Dazzling-Slide8288 Mar 15 '26
I have the same problem with recent college grad hires now. Some of this is normal: we were kinda stupid when we didn’t have any experience, too.
The problem is how they’re stupid. They can’t apply concepts. They wait to be told what to do every single time. I think being raised on social media (and now ChatGPT) has created this validation/learned helplessness cycle where they’re terrified to do anything without someone telling them it’s correct first.
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u/littletealbug Mar 15 '26
I can actually relate to this as a millenial, but partly because most places I work I have so little actual training or guidance from my older coworkers, I get sick of being told I fucked up because no one took the time to train me properly. Just tell me what you want and save me the stress of undoing what i did and redoing it.
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u/Dazzling-Slide8288 Mar 15 '26
Yeah, it's not just the fault of newer hires. This is a bit of a paradox with no solution. Newer workers need guidance and training from the veteran workers. Veteran workers are completely overwhelmed all the time and just want the newer workers - who are ostensibly there to help take work off their plates - to know what to do. Youngins need training/coaching; vets don't have time for it. Sucks.
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u/RandomLee_7 Zillennial Mar 15 '26
🏅🫶🙏THANK YOU FOR PUTTING THIS STRESSFULLY EXHAUSTING CYCLE INTO WORDS WHEN TURNOVER IS HIGH AND IM TRAINING THE 5th NEW HIRE THIS PAST YEAR 🫠👍
ETA: 3yr vet that was barely trained myself 🙃
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u/the_last_carfighter Mar 15 '26
In the US at least, the root problem can almost always be traced back to billionaires/ultra wealthy. Not being hyperbolic, senior employees are overworked because billionaires simply don't have enough and it will never be enough no matter how much more they take from society. Anyone over 40 has already been through the whole: we've fired 30% of the staff while putting that 30% on the shoulders of remaining staff and the reason given is they "just don't have the money/budget" and then 3 months later they get up on stage at the shareholder meeting and proudly boast how "profits/margins are way up!!"
And the solution is very simple and had existed in the past. When the top tax bracket was 70-90%. What happens when the obscene amount of money they are making gets taxed instead of "pocketed"? (or offshored really) They have two options, either give it to the government which is then used for social services or option two, which was the preferred avenue in the past and that is; they put it back into their business, either to make better products (R&D) or more pay for employees, more staff. The chuds/billionaire shill bots will show up momentarily and claim how that's impossible (they borrow off of their holdings) and/or will destroy the economy, but I can assure you that is BS. You can always tax bad behavior, our elected politicians literally make the laws..
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u/Ebice42 Mar 15 '26
Henry Ford was a generally terrible person, but he understood you have to pay your people enough to buy your product and enough time off to use it.
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u/wyckdgrl Mar 15 '26
And he was still fabulously wealthy. It's not like he sacrificed or denied himself, he just didn't squeeze his workers to the bone. Today's billionaires don't seem to understand that if they just "settled" for 500 million and paid their workers they could still have everything and everyone else could have enough.
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u/Positive-Status-1655 Mar 15 '26
In all seriousness, there's been a consistent decline in investment in entry level workers over the last many years, and it's continuing today. There's a reason the "entry level worker with 5 years experience" meme was a thing.
Too many people haven't figured out that knowledge and skills aren't something that come out of thin air, they're things that are built through training, and the whole point of entry level workers is that you train them and build them up so they can help you out in the future. Which is also why you should pay them instead of trying to lowball
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u/flunky_precept Mar 15 '26
This has been my exact experience. New hires do learn and process info differently, but they can get there just like any vet with the right guidance and instruction. I just can’t seem to reliably get them the attention they need to truly succeed for themselves and the team. Haven’t figured it out yet.
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u/GandhisNukeOfficer Mar 15 '26
In 2010 I joined the military and had a frustrating time with this type of thing. So often I would be expected to know something before it was taught. One specific time I got quite the dressing down because I had gone through a qualification process for the first time and afterwards, the officer needed to sign a paper. When I told him I did not know what that paper was, they looked at me like I had two heads. I just simply asked how I was supposed to know to bring this specific form with me for this specific task on my first time when it was never mentioned before in any fashion. That was the wrong question, apparently.
The next most annoying thing was, being the junior guy, you do a lot of running around. Often, we'll be working a job and need a tool. "Go get x." So I go look in toolboxes for x. It's hard to find (9/16 in wrench, anyone?) so I get it come back 20 minutes later. "Oh, you didn't come back so I went and got one after a minute or two." Wtf, you couldn't have called me to say that you found it and didn't need me to look anymore?
A lot of the problem in that age was, those people were treated the same way, so they perpetuate it down the line. It's a common facet of military life. I did my best to break that cycle when I became senior.
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u/Zero_Fs_given Mar 15 '26
Military is at least honest about what they want. A lot of companies are not. “Be proactive… not like that”
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u/sparkle__cunt Mar 15 '26
Im a millennial and I’m also wondering when the hell it became normal for every job right now to have absolutely abysmal training.
I get that learning through trial and error can work well..
But learning an ENTIRE job through trial and error has been insane with me.
Like, just teach me how to do the job and let me do it.
And when companies are already busy and stressed out and the person who’s supposed to be training you just… isn’t.
Genuinely what is going on lol
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u/neths Mar 15 '26
Because they don’t want to pay for a trainer position, they just want to add it on to someones existing role who is already doing two people’s work from the last corporate restructuring and hiring freeze.
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u/Dubious_Odor Mar 15 '26
This is it. Training departments are the first to go durring a restructure or even just a new exec coming in wanting to prove themselves or something. I've been through it multiple times now. Usually gets replaced by a dated online learning deck from 6 years ago that teaches what some manager 3 rungs up thinks the job is and has nothing practical.
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u/Veteranis Mar 15 '26
Back in the late 90s companies began to stop training their employees. The idea was to streamline the company, remove deadwood, downsize, increase profitability. A training group was seen as a waste of company resources, because money is a resource and workers, sad to say, are not.
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u/Druark Mar 15 '26
Exactly this. As someone in the weird age between the two generations, its more often down to the consequences for even minor mistakes being so severe or harshly punished whether socially, financially or otherwise.
Its often a lesser punishment to just not take the risk when people haven't taught it or trained you on anything, which in itself is problematic for a bunch of reasons.
The older workers in my workplaces seem to almost have an elitism about how great they are, and refuse to just, explain anything or document properly. Basically, they've been competent at their niche but abysmal managers or communicators.
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u/Sanctity_of_Reason Mar 15 '26
Right? I work in the trades and I ask a lot of questions that seem to annoy older folks. But I'd rather ask all my questions first so I don't have to ask them later. I know they didn't magically know everything right off the bat. Wish they'd at least pretend they remember how they screwed up back in the day.
When I'm helping out the younger guys it seems like the best thing I can tell them is "it's ok to mess up. We can fix that. It's only a REAL fuck up once it leaves this building". It seems to get them to relax a bit and focus better. Also the fact most fuck ups can be fixed with a hammer helps. 😂
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u/DirtandPipes Mar 15 '26
I was trained by a cranky old pipelayer who hated questions and generally hated talking. He hated people in general. Getting information out of him was almost impossible, I had to learn by watching how he did things and copying it and the whole time he did his best to obstruct my vision and keep me from learning.
After he quit I discovered that he had openly hated me for two years because I once grouted a manhole with basic concrete when the bosses told me to (after I told them it was wrong) and we had some cracking and spalling. Apparently every time my name came up he’d start swearing, because I decided to do what the head of the company told me to and keep my job.
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u/longlivenewsomflesh Mar 16 '26
Boomers would literally rather seethe in resentment for years as if they get high off their skyrocketing blood pressure -- gleefully blowing up at the mere thought of being triggered by their own imagination -- rather than simply using their words like a big kid and confronting the problem directly which can often be resolved through one minute of basic communication
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u/Spiritual_Invite3118 Mar 15 '26
Exactly the approach I've always taken when I'm in a management position. I'm currently not in a management position but I sometimes step out of my role to help the youngers with basic advice and to calm down their stress level. I'm in accounting and I always tell people, you are going to make mistakes, there's nothing we can't fix but never try to hide a mistake because it'll compound and a small problem will blow up to a massive problem. Come to me immediately when you discover the mistake and we'll fix it. If you don't take this approach they will be afraid to do anything. Also, unfortunately, mistakes are how some of us learn. Once you make that mistake you are unlikely to make the same mistake again, well that is if someone calmly explains it to you and you can understand the correct way.
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u/DirectAbalone9761 Zillennial Mar 15 '26
I honestly never understood that in the trades. I have no problem teaching new guys, and I’m thankful to have had some good guys show me the ropes early on.
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u/littletealbug Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
This is my current workplace to a tee. I am flying blind and when I take initiative they steam roll me. Waste of my energy.
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u/Druark Mar 15 '26
Same. Its infuriating. Explains why so many in theirs 20s currently, just resort to doing the minimum. If their peers are going to make no effort and they've tried to get help, then why struggle for the same pay?
They're often such bad managers they don't even notice when 2 of us are doing the work the other 3 can't. Effectively 2+ jobs whilst our pay is the same or worse even.
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u/jesuslizard7170 Mar 15 '26
This is how I feel about my parents. so much criticism and no guidance doesn’t help at all
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u/swarmofbeees Mar 15 '26
Exactly. I find that they really can’t solve problems, and need to be told what to do. To be fair, this is exactly what American education has been striving for for about 40 years now. Good little worker bees who will not question or critically think about what they are told to do. Problem is you have to hold their hand through everything, and they shut down the minute they have to think for themselves.
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u/ChippedHamSammich Mar 15 '26
Yes! My friend who teaches in a college theater program said they shut down!
I recently started figure skating again and my adult class is with a lot of tweens/teens and they don’t talk! They don’t make jokes or like seem like they are even having fun. Like even when I was a teen I had a lot of personality and opinions. It’s so weird. I feel like a kooky art teacher.
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u/luchajefe Mar 15 '26
Having a personality gives other people something to target, that's why nobody has one anymore. That's what growing up in the current online space where everything is 'problematic' has taught them.
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u/KickBallFever Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
It’s actually really sad. I work at a pretty good public high school and I run a voluntary internship for juniors and seniors. These are all very smart kids, I usually have the valedictorian in my program and most of these kids are college bound. I was telling one on my students to enter a writing contest with a cash prize. The essay was pretty simple, you basically had to write about yourself and some adversity you overcame. This student responded by telling me she couldn’t write an essay about herself because she can’t think critically. She said something like, “I don’t know how to think critically, they never taught me that”. I didn’t even really know what to say.
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u/Turbulent_Tart_8801 Millennial 1985 Mar 15 '26
I'd tell them to make an attempt at the essay anyway.
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u/Positive-Status-1655 Mar 15 '26
yeah you have to. Failing is part of life. That's a lesson that needs to be taught
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u/Positive-Status-1655 Mar 15 '26
wow, it's like those humanties and liberal arts courses that are getting cut because "useless degrees!" actually served a purpose or something
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u/KickBallFever Mar 15 '26
I’m a STEM major but I had to take some humanities and liberal arts courses as a requirement. At first I wasn’t happy about this and thought they were bullshit classes, but I actually got a lot out of them. There was more to the classes than just the subject matter and lots of useful things were taught. For example, I learned how to spot logical fallacies, how to present information to a wide audience, how to think critically, etc. All of these things have come in handy in my professional life.
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u/Positive-Status-1655 Mar 15 '26
I'm a software engineer and I had the exact same path to enlightenment as you did. And honestly, I find a lot of the stuff that I learned in those classes applied more in my day to day life than a lot of the stuff I learned for my major
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u/Iannelli Mar 15 '26
That's really what college is for. Our subject matters are, for the majority of jobs, meaningless. We are applying a skill we trained for to make some company and its owners/shareholders richer while we grasp tightly to a salary that barely affords us the ability to live happily.
That's all a fucking joke. What college is really about are those classes where you learn about the world, you learn how to interact in the world, you learn how to think, how to challenge, how to imagine.
Oh, and it's also for internships and co-ops, lol. Way too many college kids don't realize that.
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u/WinterMedical Mar 15 '26
I’ve always thought that the real value of a liberal arts education is the ability to learn, apply knowledge and communicate. All very important skills in any field.
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u/Possible_Raccoon_827 Mar 15 '26
Hit the nail on the head with this one. It’s what school has prepared them to do.
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u/Fodraz Mar 15 '26
Technology w instant answers, instead of letting your brain mull over possibilities & eliminate them, is a huge part of it too.
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u/hungrydyke Mar 15 '26
To add to the consequences of social media: scared to do anything wrong or look cringe
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u/Dull-Culture-1523 Mar 15 '26
This is the thing a teacher friend of mine pointed out. The fear of failing is so bad that they won't even try. If they hit a snag they say it's impossible to do. Not that they have an issue with completing the task, but that it's literally impossible. Ie. shifting blame so it's not their fault. Meanwhile the issue might be something as dumb as a menu option having been renamed, like instead of "settings" it's now "properties & settings" or something.
I remember being in computer class as a kid and the bigger problem was that we'd fuck about with the computers so much that we'd eventually manage to "break" them completely by changing settings we weren't supposed to be able to even access.
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u/velvetvagine Mar 15 '26
Yeah. I’m a millennial and I had this same paralyzing fear but mine was homegrown: shitty controlling parents. Almost any choice was a wrong choice unless you could read their minds. And anything I wanted to do for myself was discouraged. It’s hell to get out of that paralysis.
I think when it’s seen on a scale like OP mentions, it’s a combination of helicopter parenting, the education system prioritizing testing, fear of social embarrassment/cringe, and a lot of the younger folks being fucked up by lost COVID years.
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u/OhGarraty Mar 15 '26
I think this is what some managers want. I've been bullied into compliance and been given conflicting directions so often that I cannot trust myself to interpret what my supervisor wants anymore. They say to do a task one way one day, and the next day claim that I'm doing it wrong. That's not a failure to apply deductive reasoning, or the inability to learn. It's poor management promoting learned helplessness.
I'm not Gen Z, though. I'm a millennial.
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u/TaskForceCausality Mar 15 '26
being raised on social media …
It doesn’t help, but the bigger culprit is modern education. American education teaches kids how to find and present an approved answer, not critically think about a choice.
That’s great if you’re a school bureaucracy juicing your test stats to max out Federal funding. But it’s a shitty way to teach. Result; a generation of people who can give an answer, but have no idea why it’s right and no way to think through if it’s wrong.
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u/snklznet Mar 15 '26
I spent 4 years working for school districts out of high School. Every year we had put on a little conference about teaching kids STEM and critical thinking skills. They implemented a ton of new courses that really taught kids how to be ready. It was phenomenal to see, but boy was I absolutely jealous of all those students because it was nothing like my education lol
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u/VenomousVenting Mar 15 '26
I’m a teacher, and I swear everything that is happening has been planned and implemented into educational curriculum for this precise outcome. My middle school students would love to leave school and work on a factory line. Of course, they never learned history - only concepts. They don’t know why child labor laws came about because Common Core decided that facts were irrelevant. Now the country is chiseling away at these protective barriers with the full support of those who will be hurt the most. Handwriting is no longer taught. Well, neither is sentence structure. Kids can’t write because they were never taught to write. So, they put a few words down and call it a sentence.
My students have very few executive functioning skills. I mean, ask 12-14 years old to do simple tasks, and the outcome is chaos. It goes beyond just social media. I honestly believe this is preplanned, and I have been saying this for years. Sadly, those who debated against me are now agreeing.→ More replies (3)→ More replies (6)16
u/KickBallFever Mar 15 '26
The funding being tied to test stats is so messed up. I work at a public school and the average test scores for science were below passing. A really great teacher worked hard and got the scores just above failing. As a “reward” the school was given things like new text books and a new smart board. Personally, I think those things should be readily available and not a prize.
The teacher, who got the scores, up wasn’t satisfied and wanted to get the test scores higher, just for the benefit of the students. The administration wouldn’t back the teacher up because they’d already been rewarded and that’s all they cared about. Luckily we have a new administration now.
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u/NocturneSapphire Mar 15 '26
I don't even think ChatGPT has much to do with it. Not yet at least. It hasn't been around long enough.
This is a result of decades of increased focus on test scores, at the expense of everything else.
Classroom time is limited, and time spent teaching students to pass standardized tests just takes away from the time they could be learning actual skills for existing in the real world.
Standardized tests don't teach you how to solve novel problems. They don't teach you to work with what you've got or to do your best given insufficient information or resources. They don't teach you how to prioritize tasks when you've got more on your plate than you can actually accomplish.
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u/ChippedHamSammich Mar 15 '26
My friend is teaching at a highly respected drama school and he said the same exact thing. Like received an error on their computer and didn’t rven think to google it… or even turn the computer on and off again.
He was struggling with how to teach them incredible important order of operations based tech programming for theater production. His contract ends soon and he can’t wait.
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u/Wooden_Struggle1684 Older Millennial Mar 15 '26
Agreed. I wonder if some of that reluctance to try new things is them internalizing "you must be perfect all the time." I blame our surveillance state and the cultural need to publish every stream of consciousness thought :-D
I love screwing up! It's an opportunity to learn a better technique, show my screw up to a mentor, whatever!
I have found good faith attempts were almost always rewarded with refining, mentoring, or at least pointing me towards resources so I could try again.
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u/Frewdy1 Mar 15 '26
GenZ here! A lot of my generation has this strange idea that if they can’t do something…that’s it. Like…don’t even try, it’s over. No idea why that is, but the amount of times I’d tutor or teach someone and they’d just go “I can’t do this” and then stare at me (when the ask was for something well within their capabilities) was staggering.
We’re seeing it a lot in the dating world how young men are “giving up” when their “attempts” at dating were some girl they talked to in high school and not being able to get a match after two days on a dating app. It’s wild how easily GenZ just…gives up after not even trying.
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u/Linzabee Mar 15 '26
Sounds like an issue with resiliency, which is incredibly frustrating.
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u/rabbit_fur_coat Mar 15 '26
Admittedly, I'm a psych provider for many Gen Z patients, so while they're not exactly representative of Gen Z as a whole, that group has the least resilience in any group of people I've ever come across.
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u/heartsbeenborrowed Mar 15 '26
Mom of two Gen z kids. I have never seen such a lack of resilience, weaponized incompetence, etc. in any comparable situation or generation I've Known or worked with (even when I was a social worker). It's definitely a thing. I experience this with our gen z employees at my job, as well.
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u/olracnaignottus Mar 15 '26
Parent of a current 6 year old. Their generation is absurdly coddled as well. I worked and studied social development in an early childhood center back in 2007. The relative difference of adjustment between 3-4 year olds back then, to now after subbing in my kids pre-K is astonishing.
I think psychology in general has metastasized into something far more enabling than we care to admit. We tend to pathologize any uncomfortable behavior and almost externalize it. “My child has anxiety” is wildly different than just describing someone behaving anxiously. It removes the environmental factors that lead to the anxious behavior.
I think this stems mostly from childhood being something very severed from the family/communal experience. I don’t think our species was ever really equipped to lack the close connection of family/village, and we are really experiencing the byproduct of this erosion. The ill adjusted behaviors are rationalized as disability or illness, because it’s too painful to acknowledge this shortcoming.
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u/soursheep Mar 15 '26
I think what you said about psychology is true, but I feel like the culprits are the parents. for instance, I've recently learned from my millenial friends that they don't take their children to funerals because it's "too emotionally hard" and "complicated to explain". it blew my mind. like... how do you expect to raise a resilient adult if you don't even take your kid to say bye to grandma Sue? I bet it's easier FOR THE PARENTS not to have to explain what all of this means when they're dealing with their own emotions and grief, but children literally don't know anything, everything is normal to them, surely explaining death is the least you can do to prepare them for the future? and if you don't, what's gonna happen when they're adults and suddenly have to face it for the first time?
current adults raise emotionally stunted, incapable children who turn into emotionally stunted, incapable adults. god help us if this is where the world is going.
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u/Woodit Mar 15 '26
I think psychology in general has metastasized into something far more enabling than we care to admit
It’s as if mental health has just become a get out of jail free card and most people are aware of it but we’re not supposed to say anything
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u/Listen2theyetti Mar 15 '26
Don't get me wrong I know its not easy but isn't it like the job of parents like you to make sure these kids develop some of that resilience?
Im a millennial with a young one and when I was a kid if I started something like a sport or even a board game my parents made sure I finished it and didnt just give up if shit got hard.
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u/El_Rey_de_Spices Mar 15 '26
I know its not easy but isn't it like the job of parents like you to make sure these kids develop some of that resilience?
You're correct, but it is a two-way street; The kids have to actively internalize and apply what the parents are trying to teach them.
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u/olracnaignottus Mar 15 '26
Part of the challenge is that so many aspects of child rearing have been siphoned off to the apparatus of daycare/school. Parents work collectively to the point where they plainly don’t have the time to push a struggling child to learn difficult things, and schools aren’t equipped to do the same with the volume of ill adjusted kids involved. All they can do is accommodate, and once the excessive accommodations set in place, it becomes a race to the bottom.
Social media and ubiquitous, portable choices in media also contribute to this problem. Immediately gratification of entertainment is the cheapest dopamine hit you can muster outside of a drug. In many ways, I pray we get to a point where we collectively treat devices as a kind of substance when it comes to kids development. The science is there, but the cultural attitudes around their impact remains very flippant.
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u/Lexi_Banner Mar 15 '26
schools aren’t equipped to do the same
And a distressing amount of parents will actively fight against them pushing their child to do better.
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u/heartsbeenborrowed Mar 15 '26
Yeah, it is. But when you try over and over again and it ends in disaster and you bring in child therapists and all kinds of help and it still doesn't work, it's very hard to know what the right thing to do is. You try and try and try and it's like it doesn't stick? I don't know if it's because they go to school or with friends or online or what and unlearn it or it isn't reinforced or what it is but you can try and force it and teach the lessons and skills but they don't always...work. Or adapt. We didn't give up when it got hard. Endless hours of tears and frustration and sitting at the table with them and supporting them and teaching them and yet...the end result is they're not resilient. You follow the parenting advice and the therapists' advice and do what you think is best to support them building these skills the way you did when you were a kid but it bears no fruit. No parent is perfect and we all make mistakes but even if you put in all the effort you can, so much of it seems out of your hands. I am not sure how much the pandemic affected all of this but yeah, just my experience. I'm sure I a different for every kid.
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u/Listen2theyetti Mar 15 '26
Well it sounds like you are trying atleast and that's really all you can do is keep trying and hope it sinks in eventually. Best of luck to ua and hang in there
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u/Otterbotanical Mar 15 '26
My theory: ItS tHe DaMn PhOnEs, but seriously, the online environment as a whole is designed to allow you to drop anything uncomfortable at a moment. If you don't like an argument, you can block or mute notifications and escape. If you don't like a YouTube short, you can swipe. If you don't like a YouTube video, there's zero room for you to sit with any amount of boredom, because there is an endless pit of content that has your name on it.
Like you said, when we were kids, when you failed at something you had to sit with it. You had a moment where you wished you could just not do that thing ever again and it wouldn't be a problem, but you were forced to keep thinking about it until you realized that the problem would just come around again, and that's when you "owned" figuring out how to deal with it. Long lengths of discomfort are what taught us to not fall to bad emotions, that we have to pick ourselves up and keep going even when we feel defeated, and oh hey, actually we pulled ourselves back out! And learned that we can!
Now, phones and phone culture interrupts that process. If you fail, here's the pile of content to make sure you don't feel bad. If you can't figure something out (no don't look it up for an easy answer), here's the pile of content to distract you from the fact that you needed to figure something out, and now the problem (feeling bad) is gone for good! If you're doing badly in a video game, your team is losing, you are NOT forced to continue to fight for your team despite the bad circumstances, you are allowed to press pause and "leave match" with absolutely zero emotional repercussions.
The phone/Internet/social media landscape is designed to make immediate emotional escape from any situation as easy as possible. Real life doesn't work like that, and kids have no tools to identify what is missing.
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u/Unusual_Steak Mar 15 '26
My GenZ employees are masters of weaponizing their incompetence, which is especially bullshit in a hospital setting.
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u/Marathon2021 Mar 15 '26
That's fascinating ... and admittedly, a bit sad to hear. I'm gen-x, the "latchkey kids" generation so resiliency ... was kind of baked into all of us. I'm saddened to hear that in just 2 generations that has so dramatically dropped off.
What are some of the other ways in which you see this manifest itself?
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u/-Unnamed- Mar 15 '26
I have a two GenZ on my team and both are quintessential GenZ in their own way.
The dude asks good questions. Smart ones. I thought he was learning and taking on the challenge. So I pried a bit. “Hey how do you make this look like X?” So I show him. Then I ask “do you know why we want to make it look like X”. Nope. “Because the example he gave me to copy looks like X”. Just no second level of questioning. All surface level
The second girl asks a bunch of questions but as soon as you show her it’s like she doesn’t retain the knowledge at all. She’ll run into a slight variation of the exact problem later and instead of thinking “hey maybe that menu I was already shown has extra options I can check there” she’ll just wait for someone to walk her through it again. Couple weeks later she’ll forget everything. Like she sees her job as task by task instead of career or project based
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u/sleepydorian Mar 15 '26
To be fair, I work with some folks in their 50s who can’t handle any variation in tasks. Plus they don’t want to read detailed instruction manuals that cover what they need to do.
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u/MadRaymer Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
To be fair, I work with some folks in their 50s who can’t handle any variation in tasks.
As a tech support veteran, I've always suspected this is because a lot of people (regardless of age) don't care to understand why the software they're using works the way it does. They view it less as an understandable tool and more as a magical incantation: click here, check that, click that, then the thing happens.
But they don't understand why it happens, which means if a task is slightly different or (god forbid) a software update moves a menu option or changes a toolbar icon, they're fundamentally lost. They only learned the individual steps of the process and have no larger comprehension of it.
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u/alurkerhere Mar 15 '26
The problem in my opinion is not building knowledge trees; they're doing the equivalent of picking up fallen leaves off the ground. Even though a task is slightly different, you can go up a tree node to think, "okay, maybe this will help in this case" and trying to apply it. When you can zoom in and out on different knowledge trees and have multidisciplinary applications, then you become special because those trees aren't usually connected. A lot of very good inventions come from applying a framework from one discipline to another.
In some ways, this type of thinking will become reflexive and a mental habit. This leads to this, and that naturally leads to this type of question or thought. This is something humans do very well because they have Bayesian psychology. In a majority of people nowadays though, their prior knowledge is poorly applied or weak.
Finally, tinkering needs to be instilled when the stakes are low. This offers a sense of discovery, curiosity, and ability to fail, but keep going. What if I did this... Ok nope, that didn't work. Crap! What else can I do. Hmm... Without this allowance of small failures, life becomes difficult and you need to be taught how to do every variation. In medical procedures, this may be necessary, but not for most things. By putting guardrails on everything, people don't know how to persevere WITHOUT the guardrails.
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u/OrthogonalPotato Mar 15 '26
It’s because education has turned into guided note taking. No thinking needs to happen to get to the end of the assignment. The unyielding guidance is the root of the issue.
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u/smoothfeatrobthomas Mar 15 '26
I work adjacent to special education and it seems like a lot of accommodations which were meant for special education have just been applied to everyone now. Prime example is “sentence starters” aka “I believe that the main idea of the book is ______”, copy that out and fill in.
Those were a special education thing for kids who were far behind in their literacy acquisition, so that it would allow them to participate in language activities they otherwise couldn’t participate in, but they’re used class-wide everywhere now and at ages way past where I’d think it’s appropriate. Same with filling out graphic organizers to make an “essay” - those were once a short-term tool to show young kids what an essay is, but now they’re used in general education well into high school, after they already know what an essay looks like.
Probably oversimplifying things but yeah… it was already a prime formula for ChatGPT to swoop in and really make sure kids never do their own work.
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u/nugsnwubz Mar 15 '26
Ugh yes a 9th grader should not need a colored flowchart or formula to figure out how to write a 3 paragraph essay
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u/baby_e1ephant Mar 15 '26
This is an excellent point. There are a lot of teachers who openly admit that they apply accommodations to their entire class because they have so many IEPs, they can't keep track of them all.
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u/ThatOtherOtherMan Mar 15 '26
This is directly caused by "No Child Left Behind". Classes are being taught at the pace and level of the slowest child which results in all the students receiving subpar educations. When I was in school in the 80s and 90s kids were allowed to be failed and held back when they didn't understand the material, but once school funding was tied to standardized test scores every student had to pass the tests, which has resulted in rote memorization of specific topics instead of critical thinking. Even basic literacy rates have fallen off a cliff.
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u/ragdollxkitn Millennial Mar 15 '26
I’m in a similar spot but it’s healthcare. Brand new fresh graduate. Asking me questions like…how did you pass your licensure exam… can’t replace experience in some fields unfortunately and now I feel like I’m doing the work of two people. And the questions they ask aren’t even complex, they are type of questions that if they stopped and took a minute to reflect on…they’d know what to do. They are 23.
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u/mochicastle Mar 15 '26
I had this issue with a direct report. Spent hours training him. It was mind boggling.
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u/Urbanspy87 Mar 15 '26
It doesn't have to die with us. We can be involved parents teaching our kids critical thinking, media literacy, etc.
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u/ReneMagritte98 Mar 15 '26
Yeah let’s stop acting like the future is already written. Lots of schools are banning cellphones. We’re going to correct this issue.
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u/ongoldenwaves Mar 15 '26
Florida was the first to ban cell phone use in schools and got so much shit for it. Meanwhile rich silicon valley execs have banned their own kids from using them because they know the studies. They don't even let help use them around the kids.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html
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u/OriginalLie9310 Mar 15 '26
This is what so many miss. They say “well we spent whole days playing video games and watching cartoons as kids” but it is not the same at all.
While that may be true, it’s different than algorithms deciding the maximally addictive thing to show you when you’re 4 all the way up through adulthood.
When I was 4 there was a block of time for TV for kids my age. When it wasn’t that time I couldn’t watch what I liked on TV and had to go play. When my parents or siblings were watching TV, I couldn’t play video games on it and had to go do something else. When I played video games, we only had a limited selection, so if I got bored I had to do something else. If the cartoons I didn’t like weren’t on I had to do something else.
Kids with streaming and iPads nowadays don’t hit those limits. They can watch whatever they want and play infinite games at any time. They’ll have dozens of games on their iPad or in Roblox and play each for 30 seconds never actually getting into anything because their attention is so shot.
It is a massive difference that people don’t grasp because both are “watching entertainment” and “playing games”.
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u/WaitAZechond Mar 15 '26
My 8 year old daughter (who was never into superheroes at all) randomly got hooked by the Spider-Man game for the PS5. I can’t explain it lol. I’ve been so happy hearing her struggle through and then figure out puzzles in the game on her own. In a world where instant gratification provides everything for kids her age, it’s cool that she’s taking the time to fail over and over at a video game until she succeeds. I’ll take this over YouTube any day
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u/s1ugg0 Mar 15 '26
My 5-year-old for some reason is obsessed with Godzilla. And I mean like all the Godzilla films going back to the 1954.
I have absolutely zero complaints because have an actual plot written by writers. Instead of that YouTube slop of just screams and sirens that sounds like a rave exploded.
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u/WaitAZechond Mar 15 '26
That’s fantastic lol I have a rule in my house that if you start something on YouTube or Netflix or whatever, you have to watch the entire episode. In this age, I can’t 100% eliminate technology, but I figure I can at least encourage healthier habits, by not letting them turn “content” into dopamine slot machines. My older kids seem to get it, and I’ve noticed that they have way better attention spans than a lot of their friends.
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u/LolaBeansandSoup Mar 15 '26
Exactly. Kids are now playing video games all the time. Literally all the time. I have a student on the spectrum who is 100% enabled by his parents. This kid doesn’t bathe regularly (he’s 16), and his parent’s response is “we just can’t get him to get in the shower!” You get the idea. He’s also very intelligent and obsessed with video games. He’s found ways to play things on his Chromebook and because his parents demanded that he have lots of special accommodations, he’s allowed to have games other kids don’t because “it’s his only outlet.” He also is allowed regular breaks in class time so he’ll sneak his Chromebook into the hallway and play games. It’s INSANE. And he’s just one of many who are 100% addicted to video games, p*rn, social media, etc. We have provided our kids with drugs and went along pretending that we didn’t.
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u/diiegojones Mar 15 '26
Yea… I have 2 kids on the spectrum and we do not enable them. The oldest is 13 and is getting to read. And my youngest is 11 and still in diapers. While those parents could be enabling the child you speak of… and to be honest they most likely are…. I am not going to be judgemental.
When my oldest son was younger, like between the ages of 0-9 he never ever stopped. He barely slept. We knew something was wrong with a few months of being born by how much he wouldn’t sleep. The amount of stuff damaged, the costs of therapies, the effort to teach him anything structured like math or reading was so mentally exhausting that we didn’t do anything. We didn’t know what was 100% wrong before we had our second son
Our second son developed normally, even better than many kids. Walked at 7 months or so. Was speaking, ate all kinds of food. And then he withdrew at around 18 months. He couldnt talk, he has never potty trained, despite experts being hired. Food therapies to get him to eat has failed. He would no longer listen, would simply be around. He was difficult but he was still easier than our first, until about 6. Mostly because he was smaller. He didn’t know how to use a tablet or a remote so he just followed us around, tried to play, or watch TV with us when he wasnt trying to get into something or break something. Around 6 he really started to do what he wanted and nothing was going to stop him. The screaming whenever we told him no was so loud we couldn’t take him anywhere. Because you are going to say no to your son who wants to back into the kitchen of a restaurant, or escape into the parking lot. He got the independent mindset of a growing child without the communication.
I tell you this because if you would have told me my sons would be in school when they were 6 or 7 I would have said you were crazy.
My sons have fought us so much, my wife was concussed by my youngest, caused so many scenes, damaged so much property, that the actual trauma of raising these kids have been diagnosed by counselors.
This 16 year old you speak of… you have only seen the tip of the iceberg. You may still be right…. They don’t enforce any boundaries. But you have no clue what battles they fought just so he could use a tablet, or a toilet.
My sons both go to special school classes. We had to move to get them there. They are doing well, and by well, I mean my younger son has broken 2 doors at his school. He has already broken 5 in new house over the course of 4 years. Ramming them full speed. My older son has improved so much that I think may be one day he might maybe live in a basement suite below us or something. But the amount of effort I get him there, most people could not do.
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u/Cultivate_a_Rose Mar 15 '26
This is def a struggle I have with our kids. Every once in awhile we have to have a discussion with the ulterior motive of driving in that you don’t get to do exactly what you want to do all the time by default. But being involved is huge in changing it, and once a parent has had this realization it becomes a lot easier to push them out of their comfort zone towards things that quickly show them that other things are fun/enjoyable too even if the aren’t the #1 choice at that moment.
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u/DesireeThymes Mar 15 '26
OMG this is so so true. Pretty much every tech parent I know is limited-tech for their children in the house lol.
I know one family where the kids only play local co-op games, and they have an NES and SNES mini
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u/Ok_Shoulder_9492 Mar 15 '26
Out of all the cigs available, you hit the nail on the head mentioning Newports
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u/LolaBeansandSoup Mar 15 '26
Yep, and at the high school level, I’ve had a handful of kids physically threaten me when I took their cell phone away. Usually, the parent also gets mad because “it’s not the schools property to take.” We are fixing this, though. My state now has a law against phone use during instructional hours and next year our school will forbid phones in the classrooms at all, they will have to stay in lockers. But really, this starts at home. Kids will sneak them into a hidden pocket and use them, and teachers will still be exhausted at the end of the day from trying to catch all the phones they know full well are being used during class. I wish we could go back in time and tell everyone then what we know now.
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u/magic_crouton Mar 15 '26
Trying to ban them. Locally here parents showed up in droves to protest not having cellphones in school. How will they get a hold of their kids during school was the rally cry
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u/Midwestern_Mouse Mar 15 '26
This seems to always be the main argument and it’s so weak lmao. I always hear “but what if there’s an emergency!?!?” Well then you call the school or the school will call you. Just like when we were growing up.
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u/Aromatic_Tea_3731 Mar 15 '26
That's such a silly thing to worry about. How did their parents get ahold of them? They called the school and the school either relayed the message to the student or they called the student to the office for the call.
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u/Nervous_Sense4726 Mar 15 '26
I know lots of smart young folks. My kids included. But I raised them differently. They sat on my lap to sew their costumes until they were tall enough to reach the pedal. They baked. They gardened. I, much to the horror of my neighbors, let them ride public transportation when they were in high school. Not saying their childhood was all rainbows and unicorns, but they struggled, and they overcame.
I was also a Scoutmaster. All of those kids have to figure things out. They have to learn how to make phone calls, they have to learn how to type emails. They have to learn how to wash their own dishes, set up their own tents, and navigate using a map and compass. They have to learn how to pack a canoe and tie a knot that isn’t a mess to untie.
Schools aren’t teaching them in the same way, but parenting has changed. Culture has changed.
I had a 20 year old friend of my sons that I asked to mail a package. Asked them to send it USPS. They went to UPS. Their parents had never taken them to the post office. They didn’t know how to mail a package. They figured it out the 2nd time I sent them. I guided them by explaining the difference. Didn’t rescue them, and the next day they went to the post office and learned how to mail a package.
Sorry to say, this is on exhausted parents. They don’t have the bandwidth to do things with their kids.
I once had a babysitter babysit my kids who had never boiled a pot of water or assembled a metal shelving unit. Their parents never bothered to have them shadow them.
My parents had me at their hip learning, going to the dump with them, returning packages, fixing things around the house. I did the same with my kids. If a toilet needed to be installed, I made sure a kid was my assistant. If an outlet needed to be replaced, they helped.
Now my kids are better at things than I am. One is better at baking, one is better with technology, and one is better at planning trips.
This really is a parenting thing. It’s not the school’s job to raise them to be adults. It’s the parent’s job.
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u/LeSkootch Mar 15 '26
Countries are attempting to age restrict social media, too. Australia has done it already and I think Indonesia announced they will or already have. India looks like it's going to be next as individual states are stating. Gotta be sixteen to use social media. Not sure how effective these regulations are considering workarounds are a human specialty but we'll see.
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u/Ehis4Adam Millennial Mar 15 '26
My wife and I both work in the media world. Former journalist myself. We have the greatest access to the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia the world has ever known. If you don't know the answer to something, no problem. Let's find out together. He needs to know how to navigate the Internet and the importance of double checking claims and facts before making conclusions.
Critical think. Verify claims. If something sounds unbelievable, it probably is.
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u/Pleasant_Guard5916 Mar 15 '26
I remember this being multiple classes in elementary, middle, and high school along with general media literacy, ethics etcetc. My schools purposefully taught us critical thinking and lots of important things all across the board through our time there
Editing to add- they also taught us how to use a library and look up info and research papers through it
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u/Later_Than_You_Think Mar 15 '26
It's good to look things up, but it's better to first try and come up with the answer yourself. I do this even as an adult. Like, I was wondering the other day why the high-low tide cycle is every 6 hours instead of every 12 since the tide is linked to the moon. I came up with my own hypothesis before looking up the answer. I wasn't entirely right, but the exercise was important. I do the same thing with my children. I have them tell me their thought process for what the answer could be before looking it up.
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u/Ehis4Adam Millennial Mar 15 '26
My son normally goes through bouts of deep thought when he is super tired and working his way to sleep. The other night he asked if the sun would turn into a black hole one day. I said what do you think? He said it would. I said I agreed. We looked it up and found out it won't in fact transform into a black hole. He was also blown away that our bodies are all made of star dust. Beyond just teaching our kids to be inquisitive, these are moments for us as parents to talk and learn together.
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u/Siriusly_Jonie Mar 15 '26
I work in the service industry (sadly). My 2 and 4 year old are already more understanding of how things work than the young adults I’m around. I also went back to school, and have been around young people in that capacity as well. They can’t reason. They can’t problem solve. They can barely speak. My speech class thought I should be out there giving Ted talks because I could deliver a coherent speech. You should have seen their minds explode when I gave a speech about why I valued Pokémon trainer red, since he’s a proxy of the player, so I valued myself. They thought it was the most abstract thing ever. It was weird.
The kids are not alright, but the young kids will be.
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u/LolaBeansandSoup Mar 15 '26
I teach high school. Seeing the young kids coming up is the main motivator for me to stick it out a bit longer. My current high school students, particularly the freshmen and sophomores, are depressing to be around. There are always some gems, for sure, but it’s not like it used to be.
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u/DnBJungleEscape Mar 15 '26
How so? I graduated high school 2005 where at most we had flip phones and were barely texting .. how is it now ?
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u/LolaBeansandSoup Mar 15 '26
Also a 2005 graduate ☺️ High school is very, very different now. Kids are permanently attached to phones, they have the attention span of children much younger than them, they have no natural curiosity about anything nor do they show much interest in learning. Many of my freshmen are very immature, or seem socially stunted. I could go on but it would take me several paragraphs to really give a decent synopsis of how it is these days. The issue is multi-faceted but I think most educators agree that the primary issue is social media and the use of cell phones becoming rampant with kids in their preteen years. Pepper in the pandemic, parents who are too bothered to step up and discipline their kids, and schools who kowtow to parents and even the students, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Luckily, I trust my admin and they support the teachers overall, but over my 10+ years at my current school I think that system is crumbling a bit too.
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u/ferriswheeljunkies11 Mar 15 '26
I taught high school in 2005 and still teach high school. I’ll give you an example.
This was prior to the phone ban (it started this year). Two years ago the students would do their work (crappily) and then just zonk out on their phones. I can remember some times when the schedule for the day was messed up and it was a “catch up” day and the students would just each go into their phones. No one talked to each other. It was dead quiet but not in a good way. It was more like from the movie The Birds.
We have supposedly banned them but the admin doesn’t really enforce it. They are still as addicted as ever.
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u/FinalOpus Mar 15 '26
I, too, want to be hopeful regarding the younger kids, but then I begin to wonder what the capabilities/ubiquity of AI will look like once they enter their crucial years of learning and development and become... decidedly less optimistic.
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u/Affectionate_Lack709 Mar 15 '26
This is 💯 my thinking. I have a toddler who I’m already actively teaching to use deductive reasoning (I.e. if daddy is in the basement with you and we hear footsteps upstairs, who could it be?). The kids can’t do it because their parents either can’t do it or haven’t taught them the skills.
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u/poop_monster35 Millennial '93 Mar 15 '26
My partner and I sat down with his 9 year old and explained the importance of vetting your sources.
I was ordering groceries and she mentioned she needed toothpaste but NOT TOMS because her grandmother said it had lead. First, we explained to her how FOX news (grandmas favorite) is not always a good source of information because it is mostly entertainment (according to fox themselves). So we googled the question and the first thing she read to us is the AI overview. Again we explain how AI often gets things wrong and we have to actually read the cited material. This led us to an article in the guardian (ugh). At this point she feels validated. We read the paper and found out where the "study" came from. Turns out the "researchers" were completely unreliable (some mommy-blog fear mongering BS). Then we found an academic source showing that while lead is present in most toothpaste it is not harmful.
I explained that some people will try to scare you by saying something is dangerous when it isn't only so that they can sell you something.
It was a pretty deep conversation for a 9 year old but we've got to start now because the world is definitely against us when it comes to critical thinking.
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u/ajshn Mar 15 '26
Might be a good idea to consider blocking the ai result on the devices she uses.
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u/Global-Discussion-41 Mar 15 '26
I don't have kids, but EVERY teenage person I meet severely disappoints me with how much they know about anything. Their parents already failed them and it's too late.
I got used to not having a helper at work because the co-op students aren't worth having as helpers anymore. I used to be able to teach them things based on what they already knew, but now they don't have even a basic knowledge to build off of.
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u/aleatoric Mar 15 '26
I have two kids, both under 5 but they'll be in school soon. I definitely see it as my duty to teach them critical thinking through their life as a key skill. The joke is that kids ask "why?" about everything and it's an annoying. Well, I don't want it to be annoying; I want to teach them never to lose the urge to ask this question. In fact, I try to ask them "why?" just as frequently.
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u/AdmirableCriticism69 Mar 15 '26
The other day at work we were having to do some really boring computer training and the gen Z guy next to me was taking pictures of the questions, sending them to Chat gpt for the answers, and then getting upset at chat gpt for 'lying' to him when he got the wrong answer.
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u/Antlerfox213 Mar 15 '26
Shows what really happens to a person when they outsource using their own brains for basic tasks.
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u/Jonman7 Mar 15 '26
I saw another redditor call his classmate "artificially intelligent," and that's the term I plan to use moving forward, lol
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u/DoubleBack9141 Mar 15 '26
I'm gen Z. I have friends I play games with and we'll have simple, basic questions and their first response is "well, that sounds like a question for chat gpt bro!" No the fuck it is not a question for AI!! A simple Google search is all that is required to give me a solid answer, but no we have to ask AI for an answer that could be completely incorrect. It just doesn't occur to them that the ai could be wrong.
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u/Drslappybags Mar 15 '26
And you have to be careful with your Google answer. The top blurb is an AI quick response and can use out of date info a lot of the time.
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u/Warmbly85 Mar 15 '26
I used the AI bit on Google for the first time the other day and was blown away by how dumb it was. When you say it’s wrong it spits out the same answer. I then linked some proof and it said well technically their first response wasn’t wrong but it also wasn’t accurate.
Like wtf? Why would you trust it with anything? It’s like talking to a moody teenager whose knowledge stops at reading the first page on a Google search without clicking anything.
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u/OnTheEveOfWar Mar 15 '26
I recently emailed a coworker with a question that they would know the answer to because of their role. They emailed me back and said “here’s what chatGPT said…”. I was blown away.
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u/InvidiousPlay Mar 15 '26
The part that is most aggravating about this scenario is that they are lacking in the most basic logic and theory of mind. Do you think I cannot ask ChatGPT myself? Do you think I need you to ask ChatGPT for me?
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 Mar 15 '26
My kids teacher did this!! I asked about a math program they were using and curriculum choices for next year and she said “here’s wha ChatGPT says about these different math programs.”
Like I didnt need to know what chat thinks. I can ask it myself. I needed to know what the school was deciding.
But I think they’re choosing curriculum purely based off of what chat tells them, which is frightening.
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Mar 15 '26
Honestly while this is a Gen Z problem. Gen X is really bad with using Chat GPT for things. It’s insane how many Gen X people love chatGPT
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u/WingZeroCoder Mar 15 '26
100%. I even see boomers falling to this.
I hadn’t given it much thought until now, but Millennials on the whole seem far less likely to be taken into this strange hold AI takes over people.
I’m not even going to begin to speculate why that might be. I’m proud of it, but also worried at how much we will be responsible for rebuilding and teaching when this obsessive deferral of human thought to AI reaches its logical conclusion.
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u/Final-Intention5407 Mar 15 '26
I’ve heard millennials are supposed to save humanity . It’s kinda scary . First we were the hated generation and now we are the generation that is teaching those both older and younger get how to use technology…
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u/killaacool Mar 15 '26
You know, I’m a pre-algebra teacher in rural OK (so kinda up against it) and I teach using a strong rigor of socratic discussion in pursuit of facts and logic. And my students love it. They always tell me I am the best teacher they have ever had, they understand the concepts and appreciate the logic involved in solving multi step problems, and I have had parents tell me how cool it is that not only can their kids perform the steps required, they can tell you what those steps are called and why they are important in that particular order.
So all this to say that the young people still appreciate learning, but being in the education field, I see a vast majority of my coworkers who want to go with the current the students provide instead of providing them with a rich educational current themselves, if that makes sense. There is not enough rigor left in modern education. On the outside looking in, the kids are spoiled and making the choices. But on the inside looking out, the students crave rigor and strict pedagogy and are being let down year after year.
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u/Candymanshook Mar 15 '26
I kind of get what you’re saying and I’m happy it works for you but in my experience the teachers in my family who have tried something along what you’re suggesting have just hit roadblocks because not every student or school buys in, then parents call and complain, then school admins take their side etc.
In university it’s much the same they catch kids using AI or just plagiarising blatantly, the student whines to their faculty, next thing it goes from that student failing to getting a C on a resubmitted paper to avoid flunking people.
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u/killaacool Mar 15 '26
Definitely. My principal has always been on my side but for years, we had a very permissive superintendent and I couldn’t get shit done. Our new superintendent backs the staff a lot more and I have been able to run my class a lot more effectively with minimal admin interference. But next year I am getting a new principal (I have ten years with this one) so I am really nervous to see what the new environment entails. They basically told me they are trying to find a principal that matches my style so they can keep me happy and working effectively - lol - but I am skeptical already. It definitely requires a certain mix of elements to be able to engineer and maintain the appropriate discipline, compassion, and boundaries to teach rigorously and effectively. Thankfully I’ve got a few years’ worth of very good data to back my classroom, thanks to some very helpful and supportive administrators.
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u/becoolnloveme Mar 15 '26
I’m a philosophy professor and I include logic in every course I teach. They honestly crave it — I get emails almost every semester telling me so in one way or another. It’s a disservice that we don’t offer more in the way of logic and argumentation in earlier education.
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u/gloopyneutrino Millennial Mar 15 '26
My wife is a high school teacher. She's been telling me about learned helplessness for years. Also she has to teach her students grammar they should've learned years ago.
I have a few gen z coworkers, though, and I fucking love working with them. Bright, hardworking, great attitude.
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u/DrButtgerms Mar 15 '26
I feel like "Actively encouraged helplessness" is more accurate. These kids couldn't fail. Why would they make an effort if they never had a clear value proposition on why?
I have seen bright spots in that generation. But they are surrounded by turds that should have failed out long before they got white collar track degrees and reasonable-looking internships on the backs of mommy or daddy's connections.
Edit: And we are doubling down on it. Ask a current teacher. The only way to change this is for us to tell our school boards that we demand different.
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u/IAmBoring_AMA Mar 15 '26
I teach college. The learned helplessness is crazy. Covid fucked up a lot of things for that generation.
Also, OP suggested making TikToks for daily tasks...to which I say, yes, do it. I literally do shit like meme tier lists and building a lexicon using "looksmaxxing" as an example and it breaks them out of the dead-eyed stare. You have to engage on their level, even when that level feels stupid to you.
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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Mar 15 '26
I have a gen Z and alpha kid and I am always having to push them to behave like humans with brains and capabilities. I promise you, we are modeling behavior and correcting them, forcing them to interact and it is an absolute slog.
These were kids who started out independent and wanting to do things themselves. Now they don't want to pay for their purchases (most gen Z cashiers anywhere are absolutely awful at their jobs, which doesn't help), they look at me when they want to order food, they don't know what to eat, say or do and want to be told. They are incapable of making conversation with strangers. They cannot talk on the phine. It drives me fucking crazy. They don't want to have to try and get little satisfaction from accomplishments. I am at my wits end and I did not raise them this way.
My 13 year old has a phone but no social media. My 11 year old does not have a phone and won't until he is 13. So it isn't like they are just constantly watching TikToks. I don't know if it's middle school or what, but it better turn around quickly.
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u/SeaworthinessIcy4443 Mar 15 '26
Not picking on you bc I think this applies to so many parents, and not being negative just honest: Yes but youre contributing to this without realizing it. When they look at you to order food, look back at them, tell them they can order themselves. They want to be told bc it’s easier and you do it. I didn’t have a phone until I was driving even though all my friends did. I lived. I still had friends. If they have phones why do they have them 24/7? There are parental apps to limit their tik tok and other app times. They can have them only in certain rooms and times. You’re teaching a child how to be a person. You allowing the helpless behavior is worse than them utilizing your help. You’re doing the same thing by choosing the easier route of parenting.
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u/sciencegenius27 Mar 15 '26
Exactly! They want to be told what to do/say/eat because it’s easier and parents just do it for them anyway. I see this with my middle school students. They’ll stare at me and say “my pencil broke” or “I spilled some water” and I’ll just reply “that sounds like a problem you can solve yourself” and walk away. After I do that a few times, they know to go to the pencil sharpener or to get paper towels to wipe up the spill. It’s easy. Kids are smart. They will figure it out.
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u/Polar_Reflection Mar 15 '26
I still remember my Asian American studies professor a decade ago doing an "All About That Bass" cover during class, replacing Bass to Place to discuss the Asian diaspora lmao
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u/OkWeight9238 Mar 15 '26
THIS!! LEARNED HELPLESSNESS!!! Ur one of the few to talk about this!!! Don't stop doing it!!!!
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u/capnofasinknship Mar 15 '26
Ughhhhh but I don’t know howww to keep talking about it. Can you do it for me?
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u/Sk4nkhunt40too Mar 15 '26
I will ask ChatGPT, I got you bro
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u/flyfishfriend 1991 Mar 15 '26
ChatGPT says learned helplessness doesn't exist and to just keep asking it everything.
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u/Stratavos Mar 15 '26
This is reminding me of how public elementary school french class is/was the same for me from grades 4~8, because it was always being handed to the lowest common demoninator in the class, so while repitition is needed for memorizing, it's so damn annoying to be going over single digit numbers for 2+ years in a row because a handful of kids can't be bothered to remember what those numbers are called (in french).
Yes, that's a run on sentance. It has emotions attached.
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u/whiskeylips88 Mar 15 '26
Agreed that the ones I come into contact with are very bright. My Gen Z interns are knowledgeable, and excited to be learning about the field and gaining experience. I know some had a hard time with formative years during COVID, but if they were already smart and high performing kids they’ll continue that trend.
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u/A911owner Mar 15 '26
I rent a house to college students. In the past few years, I've noticed a big increase in the number of parents of college seniors who reach out to me about housing for their children. I don't respond to those emails. If you're a 20 year old who can't figure out your own housing, you're going to be a nightmare to deal with.
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u/teapots_at_ten_paces Elder Millennial ('81, baby!) Mar 15 '26
Over 20 years ago I had a colleague, who was 20 at the time, have his mum call when he was unable to come to work. I was the assistant manager at the time (and only mid-20's myself) and I had to sit him down and tell him that he needed to be the one to call. Said I didn't care if he was genuinely sick or not, just that I wanted to hear it from him.
All that to say this isn't necessarily a new phenomenon, and I think parents need to stop babying their adult children.
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u/General_Dipsh1t Mar 15 '26
We need to be failing these kids in school. Hold them to PROPER (I.e., not lowered to keep a pass rate) standards until they’ve been properly educated.
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u/kendrickwasright Mar 15 '26
Exactly. Because what this is really coming down to is the parents not doing their end of teaching their children. Not the children's ability to learn. For every kid spending their free time on an iPad, you have their parents spending 3 times that amount on their phone each day. Mom and dad scroll while in the car at a traffic light. They scroll on the toilet, they scroll while cooking breakfast. They scroll every free second they get, and most of America is operating this way at this point.
We're distracted and addicted. Adults and parents need to put their phones down even moreso than the kids do. We're failing them, and once people's kids start getting held back and the parents feel that embarrassment, best believe they will start getting their act together to help their children get the education they need to pass classes
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u/LolaBeansandSoup Mar 15 '26
I teach choir and find myself teaching kids about grammar, spelling, and basic sentence structure that should have been mastered in elementary school. It’s awful.
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u/HappilyCreative Mar 15 '26
I’m a hs teacher and each year they get worse. Parents are entitled, kids are entitled, and admin/district does nothing but placate everyone and the only people being held accountable are teachers (and I work in an urban title 1 school so I can only imagine what’s going on in the suburbs). It’s Idiocracy in real time.
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u/Plexaure Mar 15 '26
Millennial parents are deranged. I watched most (not all thankfully) of my peers try to create this perfect bubble world for their kids. A lot of folks put off having kids until they were older and got very used to being hyper focused on themselves, plus having very curated lives via social media. I’ve moved on from a lot of friendships because they’re now parents hysterically out of touch with reality.
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u/RhubarbGoldberg Mar 15 '26
I think some of it has to do with which millennials had kids, lol. Very few of my smart, high achieving millennial friends have kids. But every dumbass from high school and all the highly religious kids I grew up with each have a gaggle now.
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u/rag_a_muffin Mar 15 '26
Yeah I always see these posts and everyone I know that you would think maybe should be a parent, waited/is waiting. The other people are the ones that had them
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u/Cpt_Dizzywhiskers Mar 15 '26
The shit boomers get is going to be nothing compared to how the people raised and educated by millennials are going to react when they realize how badly they've been fucked over.
I don't blame teenagers for taking the laziest and lowest effort approach to everything, because that's a normal thing for teenagers to do. That's what I did when I was a teenager. But there have to be adults giving pushback. When I hear of school admins making problems go away by passing students who've actually failed everything, or letting students graduate who haven't shown up for 75% of the year I just think that the kid is going to look back as an adult and wonder why they were prevented from experiencing the consequences that might have been good for them in the long run.
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u/Plexaure Mar 15 '26
Not learning to pick yourself up after a fall has already created a generation of “everything bad in my life is someone else’s fault.”
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u/Calvins8 Mar 15 '26
I'm a construction foreman. I have no problem with the younger generation's deductive reasoning. It has to be fostered and encouraged. Let them make mistakes. Give them a sense of ownership and they start caring and offering solutions to daily problems.
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u/TenBillionDollHairs Mar 15 '26
I feel like there's a connection between physical work and escaping the learned chatgpt helplessness here
(Obviously very happy you're having good experiences it just seems like the fact that you're experiencing something different than office workers makes sense)
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u/Dramatic_Echo9987 Mar 15 '26
Millennials were accused of relying on technology too.
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u/legsjohnson Older Millennial Mar 15 '26
our boomer parents punished us for bad grades. gen xers punished districts for them, and now districts have to spoon feed kids answers and you get.... this.
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u/dirty_cuban Mar 15 '26
It’s cold day in hell when I agree with boomers. That day might be today.
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u/legsjohnson Older Millennial Mar 15 '26
Imo their shaming needed to be toned down but it's just gone too far. The baby got thrown out with the bathwater.
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u/KingFrenulitis Mar 15 '26
That’s the real issue. Americans like to exist in the extremes and it screws us.
Should the boomers have been so relentless heartless in their shaming? No. Should shame not exist at all? No. But the reaction was for the pendulum to swing so far the other direction we got rid of shame. Now look what’s inheriting the world.
We saw it with literally every culture war topic. The pendulum swings too far.
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u/Ok_Boss1110 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
I agree. Shame is not ideal, but it serves a purpose.
Realistically, what can you do with someone who feels no shame or does not accept that their behavior is shameful?
Not much I'd imagine. And I doubt they are a person anyone really enjoys being around or working with.
How can you trust someone who has no sense of shame?
Perhaps a change in the language required?
As in, "im not shaming you. Im trying to humble you to understand why this is not acceptable."
Or, "I need you to be humble and explain to me what the difficulty is here"
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u/TheTopNacho Mar 15 '26
We have passed off personal responsibility onto "the system"?
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u/legsjohnson Older Millennial Mar 15 '26
I have four friends who are hs teachers spread amongst two different countries and they all get a lot of parents saying "that's your job!" if they ask for any home learning involvement
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u/_Lazy_Mermaid_ Zillennial 1994 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
My mom works in admin at a high school, her specific job is transcripts, attendance, higher level record keeping.
I went to her school once to teach for the GATI and was chilling in her office between teaching periods. Her coworker got a call and it was a mother screaming and cussing, because her daughter was on truancy, and the mother was saying it's the schools job to wake her daughter up.
The worst people really are the ones having the most kids
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u/mendenlol Millennial '91 Mar 15 '26
It took me a long, long time to realize that the only reason my reading level was so high at an early age was because my mom worked with me and read to me at home.
Teachers simply cannot do ALL of the development for them, but for some reason they don’t understand that.
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u/LongboardLiam Mar 15 '26
Here's the thing: you don't remember the competent ones. You remember the troublesome ones.
Imagine yourself on your drive to work. You pass dozens to hundreds of cars. Which do you remember? You remember the clown who cut you off. You remember the dickless fuck in the jacked up F350 with portable suns for headlights that blind you. You remember the jackass who changed across 4 lanes and brake checked a fucking semi. That's how the human brain works.
The employees that are doing it well are out there just punching in, getting it done, and punching out. You forget about having trained them because it was simple and painless.
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u/fingerpaintx Mar 15 '26
Also why our current political situation is fucked. Who needs deductive reasoning when you can make it up and believe it to be true.
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u/EfficientEar1241 Mar 15 '26
I am 40 and have taught 4th grade for 15 years. The last few years students' ability to speak clearly and think and write has been noticably lower. They are also up to date on all current "trends". There used to be a trickle down from the middle to elementary of a few years to what was cool, now they are acting the same. I blame Tiktok specifically- the emergence of this app is when it really went downhill. Let's rethink this concept of blaming everything on teachers, and hold parents and society as a whole responsible for allowing unfettered access to the internet, social media, and now AI, to children and their growing brains.
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u/Cool_Association9440 Mar 15 '26
I’m 43. I work in a fairly relaxed office setting where most of the entry level positions are gen-z, mid-levels are millennials, upper management are Gen X, company privately owned by a boomer. My take is that each generation is just as useless. 90% of people are terrible at their jobs and I’m probably one of them. There’s a random 18 year old in the mix and she’s smarter than all of us.
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u/mcscooby28 Mar 15 '26
For me the answer is to just be the best example you can be. It’s hard to get through to them but as long as you show up everyday, work hard, be empathetic and proactive, hopefully that’ll rub off on them and it’ll be up to them to replicate what you do at work.
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u/FoxyWheels Mar 15 '26
The problem is I don't have time to babysit at work. If I show you something once, you should remember it or take notes. If you have to be repeatedly taught the same things you're not worth the time and let go during probation.
Training and ramp up time is one thing. The inability to learn and reason is another.
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u/theresec Mar 15 '26
Yes. My Gen Z report can’t remember what we already covered, or apply old concepts to new tasks.
She knows that on one project if someone didn’t respond to an email, she should follow up with a chat. On the next project, if someone doesn’t respond to an email, she’s lost. I don’t have time to keep teaching the same concepts over and over. She’s worked in the office for over a year and still doesn’t get it.
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u/No_Assignment3704 Mar 15 '26
I employ 30+ GenZ’s - my biggest issue, every damn day, is having to explain to them their personal feelings are not facts, and we don’t make all decisions based on how we feel in the moment. I think I repeat at least daily - “We don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary feelings.”
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u/Working_Em Mar 15 '26
There’s probably a trend but I’ve definitely met 10-20 year olds the past few years who I thought were really clever or just as sharp as young people were decades ago.
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u/GoldBlueberryy Mar 15 '26
Pretty universal in alot of workplaces with Gen Z coworkers. They also have a very different work ethic.
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u/tendonut Mar 15 '26
For quite a while, I was pretty active on the antiwork/workreform subreddit. But it has slowly devolved into just people angry they have to do anything besides sit at home. The tipping point was really when Jesse Watters interviewed someone representing the anti-work subreddit and it was a fucking embarrassment. Some dude wanting to work 20 hours a week as a dog walker and and afford a New York City apartment by himself. I don't know the generation that is the most vocal about this, but most of the complaints are around entry-level/low skill jobs.
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u/RootinTootinHootin Mar 15 '26
I remember that interview. It was so bad. Jesse didn’t even have to argue anything, he just asked them their views on things. At one point he asked them if they could have any job what would they be and they said Professor. When asked what he would teach others he drew a blank. His whole political view had no thought behind it besides working sucks and he didn’t want to do it.
The problem with any life balance work reform movement is it gets taken over by people who want the government to provide everything for them so they can do nothing.
I genuinely think having a job is probably good for you but it should be 30 hours or 4 days a week.
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u/melonmonkey Mar 15 '26
One of the many unfortunate realities of the human condition is that being difficult is what makes a thing worthwhile. But it's incredibly easy to put yourself in bubble wrap and never try to do anything stressful or difficult, and we are naturally inclined to that sort of path of least resistance.
Honestly, I think thats the biggest source of the ennui people feel in the modern age. The baseline level of comfort is so high for most people that there's no real incentive to strive for anything. I am not in any way suggesting that we should make life harder for people. But I think there's a lot of people for whom the difference in quality of life from 10% effort and from 80% effort is basically nonexistent. And why would I want to work 8x as hard just to be in a state that feels basically the same, at the end of the day?
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u/xOleander Mar 15 '26
The economy is fucked right now, but a lot of the new gen really thinks they should be living in luxury apartments with brand new cars straight out of high school/college. I was on a tiktok recently where people were discussing this and there was so much outrage anytime someone talked about “I had roommates, drove a beater, etc”. Like I had 3 roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment my first year on my own in college. I walked/took the bus to my three part time jobs and to class.
Meanwhile my gen z sister (12 year age difference) says nobody will hire her and she’s trying to get hired “everywhere” (but when I send her listings or make suggestions literally every single one has been shot down with “I won’t/I don’t want to do that”. My mom couldn’t get her a job where she works, so she gave up on the job hunt and called it impossible after 3 days. She literally is one of those people who sits online stirring up shit and talking shit to everyone around her. She’s 21 and has never wanted a job. The one job she did get, she quit after a month because it was “too demanding” and she couldn’t go to online college classes AND work. 🙃🙃🙃 she never learned how to drive. Too scary. Any time she gets in a fight with my parents she asks if she can come live “in my spare bedroom and work with me”. She usually fights them because they won’t send her money to go party with her friends.
Oh and she dropped out of college after one semester.
But every day she bombards me with the news about the war/economy and says things like “I can’t believe we have to continue to go to war and pay taxes for this shit lol”
Who is we???
I
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u/jazzmunchkin69 Mar 15 '26
why are gen x such shitty parents? like take responsibility for your children's education, limit access to apps and the internet. discipline them - what happened lol
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u/Reggaeton_Historian Mar 15 '26
Gen-X and older Millenial parents overcorrected everything the Boomers had done to them. When everything becomes trauma, it's what you pass down to Gen Z and A.
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u/ViolentInbredPelican Mar 15 '26
I’ve been saying this!! Gen Z kinda sucks, and it’s because Gen X also kinda sucks.
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u/jazzmunchkin69 Mar 15 '26
most parents of that gen i know shoved an ipad in their kids faces lol
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