No matter what generation you belong to, a parent will always be a parent, which means Gen Z parents are likely completely ignorant of current “norms.”
NBC
So we recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to share the common habits parents don’t understand. Here are some of the responses:
1. “Emoji use. We often hear that children don’t understand how to use popular emojis in unfamiliar situations, but there are also some very important emojis that children don’t even realize exist, such as 🙃, 🥺, 😶🌫️, 🫠, 😶, and 🫨.”
—sadie084
“My mom doesn’t understand the 💀 and 😭 emojis that you can use to tell people that something is funny. If I told a funny story and ended it with 😭😭😭, she was super confused.”
—Emostar31
A.B.C.
2. “Slang. My mom keeps saying ‘body count.’ She thinks it’s about the number of her friends and says ‘there are 19 dead bodies.’ I wonder who tells her that 💀”
—Gerta, 16
3. “How the job hunt works. There’s no grunt work – it’s all online, and usually with a cumbersome application system. Sometimes there’s no actual open position advertised. Also, you don’t just have one interview and get hired – you actually have multiple interviews and it can take up to two months from filling out your application to getting hired. Also, ghosting is common (recruiters don’t tell you “what went wrong”, they just say they hired another candidate). In short, the hiring process is a lot more complicated than parents think.”
—22, California
4. “My mom has a hard time understanding that being nice to servers at restaurants and stores would make her life so much easier. She tends to just ask for things or complain in a mean tone and expect her to get what she wants. She wonders why I have such a good time upgrading and getting things fixed faster, but it’s because I’m nice to servers, patient, and understand that things aren’t going to magically change.”
—Age 24, Virginia
5. “Privacy for grown children.”
—Sam, 27
6. “My parents aren’t that old, but they still don’t understand that I can’t keep my phone off all day. Sure, it’s nice to go for a walk away from my phone, but my iPhone is now a necessity in life. For example, I use it for work, my calendar, and my news and information. They also don’t understand that it’s rude to leave a call on read and not answer it all day.”
—Chloe, 21
7. Use pronouns other than “she/her” or “he/his.”
—Age 18, Ohio
8. “The very concept of modern fandom. They think that going to the movies, going home and rating it on IMDb is enough to get out of the experience. They can’t comprehend the idea that people can stay in one place for weeks, reflecting on, discussing and experiencing the same content from each other’s perspectives, and enjoying the various means (visual/auditory/literary art) that express that state.”
—sadie084
9. “Be skeptical of government. My parents are self-described ‘compassionate liberals,’ but they can’t seem to grasp that despite all the crazy dystopian things that have happened since 2016, the political stability they experienced growing up as white, middle-class baby boomers has been lost. Despite the overturning of Roe, children being caged at the border, and unchecked monopolies that are now making groceries so expensive, my dad still doesn’t believe Project 2025 is possible. Maybe growing up in the ’60s only allowed him to think of America as the land of the free. But as a Gen Zer who is poor, exhausted, mentally ill and disabled, just like us, I know that political collapse can happen anywhere.”
—23, California
10. “Neither of my parents can figure out how to use their phones in the simplest way. For example, my dad can’t type that fast, so I taught him he can text with voice input. I don’t know if that was a good thing, because now every time he has a question, he asks it through Google Assistant.”
—24, Canada
Walt Disney
11. “My dad passed away without ever knowing how to use call waiting. He’d be like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go! Someone’s calling!’ And he’d hang up and wait for the phone to ring. Lo and behold, he passed away in 2020!”
—stephaniev23
12. And finally, “Most of my dad’s text messages end with, ‘OK Siri, send it. Siri, send it. Did it send it?'”
—jmacxjr
Gen Zers, what other common habits do your parents not understand? Share with us in the comments below!
Some posts have been edited for length or clarity.
