Sabrina Grimaldi remembers the exact moment a stranger’s bad behaviour pushed her to deploy the “Gen Z stare.” The 26-year-old was at a Phoenix grocery store, heavily pregnant, when an older woman in the checkout line remarked how “huge and fat” her feet were, telling her she was going to have a “fat baby.” “To say I was surprised would be an understatement,” Grimaldi said. Without uttering a word, she served the woman a blank look. “That’s the kind of comment that leaves you just staring at someone, trying to process why they thought that was an appropriate thing to say in the first place,” she said. She held the stare until the woman squirmed. With the shutdown complete, Grimaldi casually turned away. “That was that. I went on about my day,” she said. Much ado has been made online in places like Reddit and via social media hashtags about the viral phenomenon dubbed the “Gen Z stare.” If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one — or given the gaze, however intentionally or not — you might be aware that the look leaves much open to interpretation. Linked to people born between the late 1990s and early 2000s, the slang term was defined earlier this year on Merriam Webster’s website under the slang tab as “a vacant expression that members of Generation Z give in situations where a spoken response would be expected.” The definition went on to say that the look occurs in “classrooms, restaurants and other social settings, and often appears judgmental to those on the receiving end.” But what if that expressionless gaze is a silent boundary — and those of us on the receiving end of the stare are the judgmental ones? That tension may stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of intent, according to Grimaldi, creator and editor-in-chief of online lifestyle magazine The Zillennial Zine. The publication targets the micro-generation of individuals caught along the blurry edge between the Gen Z and millennial camps. “I think part of the disconnect between generations is that younger people are often expected to be polite, smile and keep the interaction pleasant, even when someone else has been unnecessarily rude,” she said. Gen Z doesn’t like ‘fake cheeriness’ While baby boomers and Gen X might have been taught to be overly friendly and polite in customer service settings, younger generations, including Gen Z, don’t find anything rude about being more straightforward in their interactions, Grimaldi said, calling the disconnect “a generational thing.” That’s because everything doesn’t have to be rainbows and butterflies for Gen Z. “I think we’re slowly drifting away from the overly cheery way of acting like every single customer or every single person you interact with in public is your best friend, or like you’ve known them for 10 years,” she said. It’s true that Gen Z abhors fake cheeriness, said Loren Margolis, co-author of “Executive Coaching: Perspectives and Practices Across the Field.” This generation sees many social interactions that older generations consider requisite for building a positive and polite work climate as fake, she said. “Gen Z employees come from a generation that is starkly genuine. To that end, they refuse to engage in small talk. They don’t like what they interpret as fake happiness,” Margolis said. The nonverbal facial expression can come across as rude or clueless to older generations that are accustomed to using surface queries — small talk and verbal pleasantries like “How’s your day?” for example — to prompt smiles during customer service interactions, she said. Raised with online school, adjusting to the real world Older generations tend to be judgy of the younger ones, said communication specialist Betsy Butterick, who is the author of “Kids These Days: Effective Strategies for Coaching Gen Z and Beyond.” She said she has experienced the Gen Z stare both “directly and observationally” hundreds of times. Butterick, who was born in 1983 and considers herself to be an elder millennial, said it’s important for older generations to remember how Gen Z was raised when on the receiving end of the stare. Younger generations have grown up with technology in a way that’s left them with fewer opportunities to practice face-to-face interactions. The Gen Z athletes she’s coached have told Butterick that the stare is not meant to be offensive or disrespectful. “For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the peer relationship is the highest-valued social currency,” Butterick said. “Anything that could potentially threaten that relationship is often met with silence, and a stare. Because neutral avoids negative when it comes to social consequences.” Licensed clinical psychologist Matthew Leahy, who works with adolescents, young adults and families in private practice in Texas, said he sees the Gen Z stare often. Leahy said it’s important not to turn a viral term into a personality trait for an entire generation. “It can reflect uncertainty, anxiety, processing, discomfort or simply a different idea of what an appropriate response looks like,” he said. The pandemic also deprived many kids of years of “ordinary face-to-face practice at a very important developmental stage,” Leahy said. And while that doesn’t mean Gen Z has forgotten how to communicate, he said it may mean that some people in that generation had fewer opportunities for spontaneous, in-person interactions or back-and-forth conversation. While older generations may interpret limited eye contact, a flat expression or a pause before responding as rude, lazy or unprofessional, that might not be a younger person’s intent at all, Leahy said. “In that sense, the ‘Gen Z stare’ may tell us as much about generational expectations as it does about Gen Z itself,” he said. When faced with the stare, check your expectations The Gen Z stare reflects a deeper struggle people from that generation face around human connection, said Kamran Eshtehardi, a clinical psychologist at Kamran Psychology in Pasadena, California, who specializes in working with teens and young adults. “So many gen-z people feel a disconnect from the norms and culture that millennials and older are accustomed to,” Eshtehardi said via email. “Furthermore, I believe there is a component of the gen-z stare that is protective for them. Many are withdrawn and feel forced to engage in a world that has let them down.” It’s important, for those on the receiving end of the Gen Z stare, to remember that the behavior itself doesn’t tell you why someone is doing it, said Laurel, Maryland-based organizational consultant Kristin Emerson in an email to CNN. Emerson helps teams and leaders improve communication, collaboration and workplace effectiveness. “That is where generational stereotypes can become misleading,” she said. “We are very quick to observe a behavior and assign a motive to it. A blank expression can be interpreted as rude, disengaged, judgmental, or simply inattentive.” For people who expect visible enthusiasm, quick verbal responses, eye contact or other signs of engagement, the absence of those cues might lead them to suspect something is wrong — but that’s not always the case. “The ‘Gen Z stare’ is exactly the kind of behavior that can invite people to overinterpret what they are seeing,” she said. Tactful responses to the ‘Gen Z stare’ If you find yourself on the receiving end of the Gen Z stare, consider taking the approach of “dialogue rather than diagnosis,” Emerson said. “Instead of assuming that someone, Gen Z or otherwise, is rude, disengaged, or unprofessional because they are not displaying the cues we expect, we can ask a clarifying question, adapt our communication, and give the other person space to respond differently,” she said. Butterick suggests taking a beat if you’re facing the Gen Z stare. “The advice I would have is to wait. When you find yourself uncomfortable, wait two, maybe three seconds longer,” she said. And if the person continues to stare, it’s fine to ask them what’s going on. “It’s OK to call it out because this generation also highly values transparency. So if they’ve got someone who’s calling something out without criticizing, blaming, shaming them, they’re more interested in having a conversation with that person,” she said. Who knows? Your conversation just might help bridge the generational gap.
