The term “Gen Z stare” is popping up all over social media and non-social media this week. It refers to the blank expression that is supposedly common among people between the ages of 13 and 28 years old, noticed especially often among retail workers. Gen Z, it is said, responds to boiler-plate greetings and small talk with an inscrutable stare instead of a smile or nod. While it’s not a new term—this video explaining the phenomena is nearly a year old— it has gone very viral lately. But is this a real shift in cultural behavior or a pointless age-based online carping campaign?
Is the Gen Z stare even real?
Maybe? When it comes to something as amorphous as people online saying, “the barista looks at me funny when I order Starbucks,” there’s no way to know whether it’s a widespread, troubling trait in a broad demographic, or just meme-y way for older people to bag on those damn kids. So until further research is conducted, I’ll say this: It’s probably a small behavioral shift that’s been blown way out of proportion by generational anxiety. Kind of like Millennials killing casual dining (and 100 other things), vocal fry, Jenkem, rainbow parties, switchblades, and the “overly jaunty” rhythm of Bing Crosby’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” (To be fair, that shit is fucking jaunty.)
In the musical Bye Bye Birdie, Mr. Mcafee describes kids as “disobedient, disrespectful oafs” who are impossible to control, then asks asking plaintively, “Why can’t they be like we were? Perfect in every way?” That was written in 1960, but it could have easily been posted by a 35-year-old on TikTok yesterday. A lot of the informal online cultural discourse about the Gen Z stare has the tone of generational critiques that were played out 40 years ago. Millennials are between the ages of 29 and 44 years old, the prime age to be wracked with that “I’m not young anymore” anxiety that so often results in feeling envious at younger people while talking shit about them. So the Gen Z stare is probably mostly that. But on the other hand, there could be some embers blowing up all this smoke.
If the Gen Z stare is real, what causes it?
If Gen Z really is more prone to blank stares, what’s behind it? It depends on who you ask. Forbes rounded up some opinions from “generational experts,” so take your pick:
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Suzy Welch, the director of the NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, chalks it up to Gen Z actively pushing away winning, competition, and status.
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Joe Galvin, chief research officer at Vistage, “The World’s Largest CEO Coaching & Peer Advisory Organization” ascribes the Gen Z stare to “a growing generational disconnect in employee communication and expectations.”
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Sujay Saha, president of Cortico-X, a consulting firm that “helps clients realize meaningful business values through a human-centric approach to business problems,” says the stare became ubiquitous because “Gen Z entered the workforce in an era defined by screens, social distancing and remote communication.”
No offense to these experts (I’m sure they’re fantastic) but if a researcher at a coaching organization, a director of a “Purpose and Flourishing” initiative, and a consultant trying to “realize meaningful business values through a human-centric approach to business problems” tried to explain my generation to me, I’d respond with a blank stare too. A stare requires someone is stared at, and maybe they’re the problem.
The delicate dance between stare-er and stare-ee
Most examples of the Gen Z Stare online describe interactions between customers and consumers or relationships between entry level employees and their boss. Given how some people treat others, maybe they should to be glad that Applebee’s waitress is looking at them blankly instead of, say, stabbing them in the eye with a steak knife. As anyone who has ever worked a “service job” knows, sometimes a blank stare isn’t contempt, it’s disbelief.
What do you think so far?
“We stare when you don’t understand common sense,” explains Caleb Worley, who posted this video to explore the stare-ers point of view:
Another theory: Maybe the Gen Z’s stare is more Meursault in The Stranger than Buddy the Elf in Elf; not a display of witlessness, but a look of fatal indifference because life has reached depths of absurdity that would terrify Camus. Imagine you’re a 22-year-old working a low-wage job in 2025. You spent your “teen years” hiding in your house from a deadly virus, you’re saddled with student debt, ICE agents are carting away your neighbors, and you’ll probably never be able to afford a car, let alone a house. Then the middle-aged CEO of flourishing says, “your problem is you don’t smile enough.”
Or maybe it’s just a face. Either way, it’s not worth freaking out about; I mean, you should see how they look at you behind your back.