Following Maryellen MacDonald’s Jan. 24 op-ed, “Gen Zers aren’t talking — and it could cost them,” Post Opinions asked readers, “Have you found strategies to get people, including you, off their phones and into conversations?” Here are some of the responses.
Addressing Gen Z’s anxiety about face-to-face conversations is a “desirable difficulty” because, as Maryellen MacDonald noted, “the cognitive benefits of talking exceed those of listening.” That may seem counterintuitive, given that we’ve all been taught from early on to listen first before speaking — good advice, to be sure. But for Gen Zers, the balance between reading/scrolling/listening and talking has shifted dangerously far.
I teach mostly seniors at Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business, where I frame my sales and marketing classes as a dress rehearsal for their first four months on the job, when they’ll meet dozens of colleagues, partners, customers and clients. On paper, my students produce impeccable reports and slide decks. But work doesn’t live on paper; it lives in moments of unscripted interaction.
So, what can we do to get them talking?
Two simple changes I’ve introduced in my classroom over the past few years have produced outsize results. First, students switch seats every class so they meet someone new. Second, phones are put away for the first five minutes while I set up; their only job is ungraded, unstructured conversation. The point is not eloquence; it’s staying in the conversation.
Within three weeks, the room feels less like rows and more like a network. Students discover who has interviews or job offers, and they start helping one another — making introductions, sharing intel, even holding mock interviews to firm up responses to potential questions.
Bottom line? If we want more talking, we should engineer it. A small nudge at the start of class turns silence into sustained practice, and sustained practice into the kind of human connection that will help students long after graduation.
Colin Gabler, Auburn, Alabama
My perspective as a psychoanalyst: It’s vital to understand that speech forms rather than expresses thought. Once this concept is grasped, the task of talking becomes freer.
Christopher Russell, New York
I have a few friends who would each spend our relatively rare times together (I travel for work) looking at her phone, whether it beeped or not. After observing this behavior for a while and deciding that the friendship was worth the risk, I finally said, “Do you think you can put away your phone for an hour or two when we get together? I’m assuming you don’t realize that your ‘phone focus’ signals to me that you really don’t care about anything I have to say. I hope your intention isn’t to end our friendship, but I need to know, because being ignored when we’re together is very unpleasant.”
In each case, the friend looked abashed and put away the phone. With one, I had to remind her two or three times, saying, “If you’re expecting an urgent call, I understand. But please put the phone out of sight while waiting.” Eventually, the problem went away.
Natalie Reid, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Extroverted boomers are the only ones left complaining about how young people are different and use the phone wrong. Stop whining.
Get this: I learned to text and write emails from my phone. Crazy, right? Talking over the phone is overrated, usually confusing and often rushed. If I don’t know your number, I’m never picking up, and if you don’t leave a voicemail, I’m never calling back. I have better things to do than fret about unknown people interrupting my life.
Coire Jones, Boston
One thing that was overlooked in Maryellen MacDonald’s op-ed is that people with speech issues, including those with autism, have a very hard time explaining something on the phone. Employees working at offices are not empathetic to callers. They rush people to complete sentences. Though I try to help my son be as independent as possible, make his own appointments and advocate for himself, he is up against a very impatient culture.
Alisa Rayel, Greenwood, Indiana
Big cities, airports and large chain stores have lots of people who do not look at me. I think it is because I am old (87) and they are turned off by that. Aging and the aged are to be avoided at all costs.
So it was a relief to find out that the problem with simply talking applies to other sexes and ages in our society. (By the way, I do not experience this in so-called Third World countries. People there are still used to talking and find it important.)
What to do? For those of us who are old, I recommend getting involved in groups that meet in person: book clubs, regular card games, exercise classes, etc. Don’t get suckered into a phone-based existence. When you go out to eat, do not bring your phone.
I am in an old folks’ home and I notice staffers who “get it.” They get to eye level when they talk to us. They listen. These skills can be taught — and everyone would benefit.
Catharine Stewart-Roache, Cottonwood, Arizona
The problem is that we are becoming addicted to voyeurism as opposed to social engagement.
Benjamin Teitelbaum, Victoria, British Columbia
At age 95, I find all but three peers have gone to cremo. Sadly, younger cohorts have no interest in cosmogony, psychodynamics or ancient history. Mors venit.
Don Bronkema, Washington
A national vaccine against AI
As someone who advises organizations on artificial intelligence adoption and teaches generative AI at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, I watch the displacement of human employees building from both directions. Self-driving technology threatens truck drivers. Diagnostic algorithms are encroaching on radiologists’ work. The least educated and the most credentialed are heading toward the same cliff. Not every employer can afford to retrain its workforce, and the technology evolves faster than any curriculum can follow. A call center worker in rural Ohio whose company eliminated her department in favor of voice AI has no employer left to invest in her future. The mismatch among skills, geography and opportunity is the same problem coal communities have faced for decades, and we still have not solved it.
What we can do is stop repeating the failure with the next generation. Mandatory national service for every 18-year-old, lasting one year, would give young Americans something our institutions do not: preparation for constant transition. Participants would choose a military track, learning a specialty in uniform, or a civilian track, earning certifications in shortage fields like infrastructure, emergency medicine and advanced manufacturing. Both tracks place the daughter of a truck driver alongside the son of a radiologist, building bonds across the silos of geography, income and algorithm that divide us.
Michael J. Goldrich, Scarsdale, New York
Theodore R. Johnson’s Jan. 29 op-ed, “A student asked how to improve government. My reply was disappointing.,” was inspired by an email from a high school student from Dallas. Post Opinions wants to know: What advice would you give young people about improving government? Share your response, and it might be published as a letter to the editor. wapo.st/nextgen_advice
The post Here’s how to help Gen Z conquer its fear of talking appeared first on Washington Post.
