Sarah Harte: The Gen Z stare is real, and we've all seen it 

The voices of adults don’t matter more than those of children, but Gen Z need guidance and boundaries that make them feel more secure and help them navigate life

The Gen Z death stare is familiar to many of us. File picture

To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a middle-aged person, being a morally righteous pain, must want to criticise younger generations.

It’s an age thing, a bit like slowing down on a walk to read planning permissions. Recently, however, I have found myself in several professional situations that have led me to question both the social skills and, crucially, the expectations of some younger employees.

At the weekend, I read an article in The New York Times about ‘the Gen Z stare’ with a sense of recognition. The Gen Z stare is when a Zoomer is asked a question in a public setting, and instead of answering verbally, they deliver a passive-aggressive stare. 

This phenomenon is currently sparking debate and garnering millions of views on TikTok.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this stare professionally, even in interviews, always with those under 30, because it's very age specific. In the middle of an interview, facing down a superior blank stare, you wonder if you have hit your head, or have they? Am I that boring (possible), or are the questions off (again, possible)?

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These interviewees shared another commonality. When you approach them before the interview to shake their hand and say you look forward to interviewing them (standard protocol before an interview), they regard you as if you were unhinged. You fleetingly wonder if you have food in your teeth. 

Afterwards, these interviewees do not thank you. They float off back to their lives as if you are roadkill. At this point, I move from being nonplussed to wanting to shake them so hard that their teeth rattle in their heads. No longer socially acceptable, I know, to voice these thoughts. 

Content creators and influencers are currently debating online what’s behind this dead stare. 

Various causes are being cited, including social anxiety, excessive use of technology leading to reduced face-to-face time and therefore impaired conversational skills, the impact of covid, a new type of stranger danger taken to its limits and normal adolescent and twenties bolshiness. 

All these reasons sound plausible. But what about a culture of entitlement? 

One Gen Z content creator explained that her peers dole out the stare instead of a verbal response because they feel they may not "owe" somebody a conversation. I find the use of the word "owe" telling. 

Some of the characters I've met over the last year came across as entitled bots who badly needed direction on the obligations of being a functioning young adult.

More generally, I have discussed new workplace behaviours with various friends who are employers or senior managers in different walks of life, ranging from blue-chip corporate echelons to small businesses. The broad consensus is that there is a lack of understanding of how to behave in a professional context, and a marked interest in what works best for Gen Z employees.

To take just one example, a refusal to take messages or calls outside of strictly defined working hours. So, if you forget to ask your junior employee a question before 6pm because your head is over a document, it will have to wait until the next day. Two minutes past six is too late, loser. 

You see the two ticks, and you know they’ve read the message, but tumbleweed. Any attempt to circumvent this watershed is viewed as a significant infringement of the employee’s rights and liberty to live their best life. And if you query it directly, you could end up in the hot seat for bullying, so you grit your ageing teeth.

There is no question that we can learn from Gen Z. Clear work-life boundaries are not a Gen X strength. Stick us down a coal mine and we will prostrate ourselves at your feet. 

Yet might the dead-eyed stare and the reluctance to take the call two minutes after 6pm tip over into the territory of viewing the world and your employer as there to serve you?

Let’s presume the experts are correct and social development has gone haywire due to what happened during the pandemic and young people being hypnotised by devices (devices we gave them) because much evidence supports this thesis. Is it not time for us to offer some guidance on expectations in the professional and social spheres to younger generations?

Parenting

Nobody is suggesting that a respectful working environment isn’t preferable, but there is a balance to be struck, and the pressing question for me is what produces this entitlement?

Could a parenting trend be in the dock for producing a certain type of employee? Gentle parenting centres, critics believe, around never saying no to your child because, as advocates would have it, ‘adultism’ is a structural discrimination that results in children being marginalised with their needs sidelined.

Of course, children’s rights are important. There is a growing, much-needed awareness in the legal sphere that children are separate entities with rights and voices. 

Yet, the idea that you should not say no to your child is bonkers. It will have consequences not only for the child and the adult they become, but also for society as a whole.

A London friend shared an amusing story with me about an intergenerational family lunch she attended. The five-year-old nephew bit his three-year-old first cousin. The grandfather of both children told the five-year-old in no uncertain terms that biting was bad and that he was a bold boy. 

The parents of the biter took this very badly. They didn’t commiserate with the victim; instead, they asked the biter how he felt and if he was okay. This was a laborious process. The parents of the biter ended up leaving in high dudgeon because nobody else agreed with them. 

Side note: Everyone was thrilled that they left and went on to have an enjoyable day.

I wonder what happens to the biter in the long run, and more importantly, what happens to us when he leaves his cosy burrow where he reigns as a Pasha. When he graduates from biting his younger relatives in years to come, will he be doling out the dead stare? 

Will he be refusing to answer a work query at two minutes past six because he is the most important person in the universe?

Team Human

The voices of adults don’t matter more than those of children, but young people need guidance and boundaries that make them feel more secure and help them navigate life. It’s also what the wider society and the economy need; human beings who grasp that they are slotting into a bigger picture, although hopefully not as mindlessly as we did.

Part of this is learning to understand that while at a given moment you may wish that your boss or the person you’re serving would fall off a cliff, you need to maintain a minimum level of social grace and self-regulate. This needs to be taught with respectful but plain speaking.

There's a quid pro quo for being paid. And there are hierarchies, explicit and implicit, at work. Best to figure this one out early.

We’re all part of Team Human. A valuable lesson in our increasingly individualised society is that collaboration and the collective good are worth something both inside and outside of work. A dead-eyed stare doesn’t cut it.

I’ve read other journalists suggesting that Gen Z don’t have specific characteristics, and suggesting so is lazy stereotyping. But this is clearly untrue if you’re an employer who is dealing with this behaviour on the frontline.

When the recession arrives, as it always does, lessons will be learned. Competition for jobs may end up resting on the social skills Gen Z has dispensed with. Best to get ahead of the pack now, and start learning how to make eye contact and small talk.