Gen-Z, Technology, and Adaptability
I was talking to a friend recently who started to explain to me how to make a formatting edit in Word. He caught himself mid-sentence and said, “You study Gen-Z … you know how to do this.” Then he paused and said, “You study Gen-Z … so maybe you don’t know how to do this?” He had a great point.
The term Digital Natives became en vogue nearly two decades ago. The idea behind it was that a generation of kids born into a tech-filled world would forever be tech savvy. Think about the ease with which you’ve maybe watched a two year old manipulate a smartphone vs. the frustration you remember when your parents tried to program the family VCR. My dad recently encountered a learning curve after buying a new TV and then marveled at family Christmas when my 12 year old cousin grabbed the remote, toggled between streaming platforms, and found the movie we were looking for. Digital Native is an easy term to grab when trying to explain how she knew how to use a TV that was new to her.
As a sociologist, I study Gen-Z and technology use. I spent two years following teenagers around a high school, staring into screens with them, and asking why they did the things they did. This was all in the hopes of answering one question — What does it look like when technology becomes part of the school day?”
What I found in my research, and what we’ve been coming to terms with in the past few years, is that so-called Digital Natives are very confident flying around a smartphone and navigating various tech interfaces. What often seems to be lacking, however, is a greater understanding of how the tech works and how to troubleshoot issues. Sure, they’ll find a solution, but it might be wrong or it might take ten more steps than necessary. A librarian at the high school where I did my fieldwork told me about students who didn’t understand how to use filters to narrow down search parameters. When students, for instance, were required to find an article on a specific topic published within a certain timeframe, they would run a search and scroll for pages until they found an article that matched all requirements. I watched students use the caps lock key to capitalize letters while writing essay exams or going back through and editing capital letters into their essays when they were finished. Why? Because schools thought that being born with access to a family computer (which, sidenote, is not guaranteed) and being able to quickly type text messages with their thumbs, meant teenagers also knew how to touch type (typing without looking at the keyboard). Many students I spoke with had never taken an introductory computer class, much less learned how to type. I should mention here that the teenagers I spent time with and got to know were students at a high-performing high school. Nearly 100% of graduating classes continued their education post-high school.
Along slightly similar lines, the teenagers I got to know also hated when technology changed on them. This could be an operating system redesign or the debut of a new, popular technology (which, for them, was often a new form of social media).
When I was in the field, iOS had an update that featured significant visual changes — emojis were bigger, icons weren’t in quite the same place you expected them to be.
The teenagers were angry. Like, really mad. They thought it was unfair, they wondered why Apple thought it was O.K. to do this to them, and they claimed they wouldn’t use the new features and hated the way they looked. Did they eventually adapt? Yes, of course. But they complained until they got used to it. Similarly, TikTok rolled out during my last semester at the high school. I often asked teens what social media they were using and as TikTok entered the cultural conversation, I made sure to ask if they were using the platform. “Ugh, no. I’ve got my Snapchat. I’ve got my Instagram. TikTok is for middle schoolers. I’m not adding something new to my plate.” Many were adamant they would never use it. Did they eventually end up converting to TikTok? Yes, of course. Teenagers’ relationships with social media, like everyone’s relationship with social media, fluctuates.
The takeaway here is that yes, young people will adapt. But assuming all young people are equally equipped with a base level of tech know-how is isolating at best. Academics challenged and largely discarded the usefulness of the term Digital Natives years ago — technology is so rarely more powerful than pervasive inequalities. Teenagers may not know or remember a world without instant communication, but their relationship with technology is still complicated. They still find change annoying, they also believe that the things they’ve become accustomed to are great, and the innovations that come after are for the generation behind them. As it turns out, every generation has their own way of saying, “They just don’t make [tech] like this anymore …”
