Before You Blame Gen Z, Try Listening to Them

We have a lot to say for young people: the kind of work they do, their cell phones, their politics and their hopes. Perhaps the bigger question is, have we listened long enough to them to hear what they are saying?

It's a phrase that every generation has to learn at some point: “Young people today.”

You're familiar with what to do. The young today don't want to work. Are impatient. They're desperate to succeed right away. They're constantly on their cell phones. They question everything. They don't respect institutions. They switch positions frequently. They will make the world fit their needs.

I've heard many variations of this conversation in the past few years, and have been in a few of them myself. Older generations have their share of gripes and grievances regarding Generation Z. Older generations have things about them that may drive Gen Zs nuts.

But, I have thought about lately whether we spend too much time talking about young people and not enough time talking with them. That distinction matters. But before we conclude that an entire generation has lost its way, maybe we should ask what the road looks like from their point of view.

Before we diagnose a generation, let's hear it!

I am a generation that experienced a time without an extension of itself in the form of a smartphone, without a public conversation that has been rearranged by social networking, and without an AI to create an essay, a computer program, a business proposal in a few seconds. It does not mean that the younger generation is bad. It adds a touch to our lives.

Older adults have the right to instruct young adults in their behavior, but we tend to rely on a world we remember to do so. Work hard. Get some experience. Build your career. Take advice from those above you. You will progress in due course. There's wisdom in that advice, still.

When the first rung of the ladder begins to fall what then?

By 2026, the World Economic Forum found over a third of the world's young workers engaged in medium to high exposure to AI-induced changes in their work. Its research poses an uncomfortable question as to what happens when companies mechanize the very work in which generations of workers learned their trades.

It's not a future that young people of today are preparing for. This is the labor market in which they are entering now. They are training for roles they may not yet have mastered. Now, let's pretend that you are 21 and picking a career now.

It takes years of practice to acquire a skill. When you finish school, AI can take over parts of it. You ask for an entry level position as you need experience but you need someone who already has experience. There is some routine work that traditionally has been done by beginners that can now be done by software. Then someone wonders why young people are nervous about jobs. I would be just like you would be anxious.

AI is not going to replace jobs, rather, it is going to change them. Earlier new technologies have led to predictions of technological unemployment, and each new technology has generated new jobs as well as eliminated or altered others. According to the World Economic Forum, there will be significant job growth and job loss by 2030, and employers are forecasting almost 40% of the skills needed on the job will shift. What I find of interest is that second number, rather than the hype over robots taking everyone's job.

Suppose the job market for the employers can change significantly within a couple years. For those in Gen Z, the lesson is not just about “getting educated.” It's about “get educated, keep learning, keep adapting, and be prepared to reinvent yourself over and over.” That requires resilience. It also needs people in society who are willing to teach them something which society is not discussing enough.

Where are all the Mentors?

We fault youth for not having experience. Fair enough. Experience matters. But who is giving it to them? I have on one occasion considered applications to an "entry level" job that have required extensive experience. The contradiction can tell its own joke. It's not the youth's fault if they don't have enough experience, but it isn't our fault that we aren't letting them have it.

Historically mentorship would occur in part because people stayed in institutions long enough for relationships to form. A colleague who was not as experienced as the younger employee, was observed by the younger employee in handling a challenging client, a crisis or recovery from a mistake. Many of the best professional ideas were never recorded in a book. Transferred from person to person.

The transfer becomes more difficult in an unstable workplace, with careers broken up into smaller pieces, employees constantly moving, and experienced employees themselves overwhelmed.

With AI, mentorship is more than ever essential, it's more than ever. A machine can instruct a young employee in how to do a job. It can't impart judgment completely. It can't tell you what 20 years of wrongs feels like. It will not be able to sit across the table and say, “I did it once, and this is what occurred.” This how man knows. Elderly people have a tremendous amount. More of it should be being given away.

Connected to Everyone, Rooted Almost Nowhere

There is another challenge that young people have that is not as monetary as it is belonging. In what place does community exist today? Earlier generations were often not part of what they considered to be "community infrastructure". Religious groups, neighbourhood groups, trade unions, civic clubs, extended families, sports clubs and regular jobs put people in regular physical contact with each other.

There exist many of those institutions today, but some have weakened, and social connections have shifted.

In 2025, in-person social contacts had tended to decrease over the last 15 years, whereas the use of phones and digital platforms had grown across member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) according to the OECD report. Young people aged 16 to 24 had the greatest increase in loneliness from 2018 to 2022, and also had the lowest levels of social support and relationship satisfaction. I'm sure there's no need for another lecture on phones. The bigger question is what did replace the communities that went away?

A young person might have hundreds or thousands of digital connections and still question, 'Who would be there if things went wrong? This isn't just a mental health issue. This is a question of the community.

Who knows you? Who needs you? What is your purpose in life? The 20's are important because of those questions. They matter at 50. They matter at 80. Maybe one thing Gen Z isn't saying outright is that it isn't the same as connectivity, belonging. They were left with problems with long timelines. There are also issues for young people whose implications are much greater than those of the next election.

I don't just mean that Gen Z cares about the environment, I mean it's an obvious point, the climate is changing. The problem is becoming more and more real. Which industries will expand? Which communities will be more at risk of extreme weather events? Where will migrants go? How will agriculture, insurance, prices for energy and food fare? What competencies will be needed for the green economy?

These are not just environmental questions, but career questions as well. The change is also an opportunity; however, it may largely depend on the skills to access those opportunities. UNICEF's Generation Unlimited has put its stamp on a recent estimate by hundreds of millions of young people who will not have the skills needed to fully reap the benefits of a low-carbon economy. Again, saying to young people that they should just "work hard" would be a poor piece of advice.

Work hard at what? Train for what? For which economy are you preparing? Those are fair ones. What can youth teach us? The talk should be a two-way street. The older ones have experience. There are ways of knowing that are not in the form that we're used to, especially among the younger generations.

See a youth learn a new piece of technology without reading the instructions. Observe the speed at which many move between platforms, develop networks, learn about information and adjust to change in a tool.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) in Kenya identified innovative young people who are creating solutions with Artificial Intelligence (AI) from digital tools to support small farmers to tools to overcome obstacles to online learning. It's a good reminder that AI is not a thing limited to young people. The youth are also driving the future.

This is where the “I'm in charge” attitude of the young generation gets the better of them. When older people think that youth are synonymous with ignorance, we lose creativity. Age is irrelevant unless it is taken as a given by younger age groups that will lose out on experience. Both are costly overspending. Wisdom need not go one way only.

What Writing Stolen Youth Taught Me About Listening

As I've been more focused on this issue while working on my upcoming book, Stolen Youth: How Kenya's Youth are Reclaiming their Future. A focus on the younger generation in Kenya led me to ask more and more questions: how much of the "youth problem" is a failure to listen?

Young people in Kenya face situations specific to them in Kenya, such as unemployment, economic inequality and disillusionment with political institutions. Some of their more profound questions, however, are very universal, and are certainly not exclusively asked by children from Australia. What's my chance? Am I a person? Are the decision makers aware of my life? On what should my life be based in the future?

Youth Kenya's protests in 2024 were an illustration of how things can go when individual frustration goes collective. But from that moment I learned something different: Teens can organize through technology. That is, societies need to learn how to listen first as people are tempted to think that by shouting they can be heard. The discussion must be bi-directional. Listening doesn't equal agreeing with everything Gen Z says.

The young folks tend to be impatient. They can get mixed up on the internet visibility and influence thing. They can underestimate the time it can take for institutions to move. They can reject customs without having an awareness of their genesis. Experience still matters. History matters. Patience matters.

A 23-year-old may more readily grasp new technology than a 45-year-old, but that doesn't necessarily mean he or she knows how to lead, compromise, how to marry or how to have children, or has institutional memory, or even understands the long-term impacts of actions.

“Young people need mentors, in part because no generation should have to learn its lessons again.”

Gen Z should look for older people to learn from and emulate. Have them tell you about how they overcame failure. What do they wish they hadn't done? Ask them what they would change if they did it again. Discuss what compromises had to be made and which were too high a price to pay. Then listen. That's the other side of the deal. Don't talk about them anymore. Begin the conversation With Them. We should not have another generation war. It's time for a generation conversation.

The first-place parents can start is at home. Do not rule out a younger person's career, but ask him/her why it is a good fit for him/her. Employers can cease the mumbo-jumbo about generation Z and engage one young staff member seriously. Universities can help bring students and employers together to talk about what exactly AI can do in the place of entry-level jobs instead of preparing graduates for yesterday's job market.

Political leaders do not need to stop at youth conferences and advisory boards. Delegate meaningful tasks and responsibilities to youth. Include them in the budgeting, policy-making and decision-making process. Through the creation of physical spaces in which community members of different generations meet regularly enough to go beyond stereotypes, community organizations can make a difference.

Gen Z has responsibilities as well. If you think institutions are broken, go into some of them and fix them. Take part in the political process — if it's not your preferred option, vote, organize, get on the ballot, or support a candidate who is. When businesses fail to be well led, develop good businesses. To build up new communities, if communities are disappearing. When older generations do not know your world, tell them about it, but be humble enough that you can learn from others who have been on roads you have not yet gone.

Now this is my challenge. Don't let another boss say that there is a lack of work ethic among Gen Z, mentor one employee. Don't wait for another politician to complain about disaffection among the young, give them a seat at the table. When parents think the kids are making silly picks and choosing, ask what the world looks like from their point of view. And to Generation Z: please don't equate experience with being irrelevant. Discover people who have ridden paths you haven't walked and learn from them, and then create something greater than what you've inherited. The generational divide cannot be bridged by deciding who knows the world better, the young generation or the old.

We can start addressing it when we are curious enough to understand each other, generous enough to share what we know and humble enough to admit what we don't. Having delayed this discussion long enough, it now must be addressed. Ask a genuine question, listen and sit with someone from a different generation. Then construct something together. There, change can start.

Patrick Machayo is a public policy analyst and the author of the upcoming book, Stolen Youth: How Kenya's Young Are Reclaiming Their Future.