Who knew Generation Z’s downfall could be staring them right in the face?
Author Cal Newport, who is perhaps best known for advising students and graduates not to follow their passion, told CNBC that this generation of digital natives might find the most difficulty in social, face-to-face interactions as they enter the workforce.
According to one report, nearly half of Gen Z spends 10 hours each day on devices, and 98 percent of this demographic owns a smartphone. Moreover, about 4 out of 5 Gen Zers experience symptoms of emotional distress when deprived of their personal electronic devices.
“We’ve created a generation that spends more and more time interacting digitally in physical isolation,” Newport said. “They’ve largely transported their social existence from the real world into the digital.”
Newport argues that “human socializing is very, very hard” and “requires lots and lots of practice.” In researching for his new book, he found that increasing numbers of young people “are uncomfortable with human interaction because they haven’t practiced it.”
He believes this is likely the reason younger employees have opted to use email for most inter-office communication and have introduced apps like Slack into the workplace. This has ultimately metastasized into a bigger problem of workplaces using technology such as Slack bots to police inclusivity and employees complaining to management without actually engaging in face-to-face confrontation.
Yet the almost exclusive use of email and other apps to communicate can cause other problems. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations can occur frequently in the void of verbal communication, and the world of customer service would suffer tremendously without friendly, outgoing people defining the next generation of this industry.
Newport counsels young career-minded people to take a break from their phones, sit down with people, and talk to them, whether it’s their parents, neighbor, or someone else in the waiting room. Any amount of time socializing is more fruitful than additional screen time.
Instagram can wait.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is writer from California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
