The internet spent 2025 roasting young people for the "Gen Z stare" — that blank, dead-eyed look you get when you ask a 22-year-old to make small talk. Gen Z's response? A collective shrug.
According to a new CNBC/SurveyMonkey survey, Zoomers are *just as confident* in their social skills as everyone else: 47% say they're "very confident," edging out millennials at 44%. So mystery solved, right? Not quite.
Here's the awkward part: **Gen Z agrees with their critics.** Across all five generations, 62% say young people's biggest social deficit is active listening — and 59% of Gen Z cops to it. Even more damning: 54% of Zoomers admit their peers can't handle meeting new people, a worse self-own than any other generation gave them.
The disconnect, psychologists say, is that Gen Z has redefined "socializing" itself. Forget spontaneous hangouts — for Zoomers, a social life means carefully orchestrated dinners, trips, and photo ops for the feed. It's less *connection*, more *content*. And it's bankrupting them: nearly 60% of Gen Z and millennials say social spending has wrecked their finances.
Meanwhile, 91% of Gen Z literally wants colleges to teach them how to talk to people.
The kicker? AI is making it worse. Every generation agrees AI tools are eroding social fluency — and MIT research suggests chronic AI reliance may actively cause cognitive decline. As one psychologist put it: when an app can write your texts for you, you never build the muscles for real conversation.
**Gen Z isn't wrong that they feel confident. They're just confident about a social life that mostly exists online — and increasingly, they know it.**