Talking

This whole post is recycled from an assignment I had at my vocational evaluation, where I was to find an opinion piece and respond to it.

THE ARTICLE

I agree with a good bit of this article. As a member of Gen Z in my late 20s, I often go entire days without speaking to anyone except my parents, whom I live with. Some of this is explained by aspects of my unique situation. My chronic pain makes it difficult to get out and spend time in public. I am also autistic, so what many deem to be “normal conversation” could feel very alien to me. Even so, I can be nervous to speak to people when comfortably at home.

There are a few things this article fails to consider. One is that society itself has started to actively discourage conversation. On the phone, it is often difficult to get through automated systems and AI voice agents to find a real human being to speak to. There have been many occasions where I desperately want to talk to a real person to solve a problem but find I have not been given that option. This makes me think it’s all generations, not just Gen Z, that are trying to find ways to avoid conversation for the sake of “efficiency.” 

The article states, “Young adults who have given up their smartphones or set them aside for many hours report more sleep, better friendships and more face-to-face talking,” but I know that, at least for myself, this would not be the case. Perhaps I would get more sleep, but my amount of conversation would decrease even further. I think the article is discounting how many young adults don’t have friends who live near them. 99% of my friend group is made up of people I met online, and who live in different cities, states, and even countries. If I gave up my smartphone, the only people I would be talking to are my parents. Group calls on programs like Discord are quite common among Gen Z. Some of my best evenings recently have been spent watching pro wrestling or bad movies with my online friends through screen sharing. It would be nice to have more friends I can see face-to-face regularly, but that’s simply not possible for me right now.

In general, I think Gen Z can feel that when they do manage to speak up, their voices are easily discarded. The same thing happened to Millennials over a decade ago. Articles were written about how they cared about frivolous things and didn’t hold the same values as the generations prior, and now we are starting to get similar articles about Gen Z. I think this article is well-intentioned but comes from the perspective of someone who doesn’t quite understand the day-to-day realities of young adults these days.