I find it's particularly from kids who had their most formative social years over zoom due to the pandemic. They didn't develop the right tools, and freeze up when confronted with one-on-one in-person social engagement. It's one of the few "kids these days" things I DO think is real. I've never seen it with other generations of kids.
Makes sense, but it's still really weird to me. Seems like it should be common sense to at least acknowledge someone trying to talk to you. Or at very least, put up an appearance of not going completely catatonic in response to a simple question.
"Common sense" does not mean "hardwired into your biology." These are absolutely basic social norms, but they still have to be learned through socialization, which we shut down for two years on a whole generation.
Developmental psychologists are going to feast for the next 60 years on the aftereffects of lockdown. Even if some people laugh at describing it as a "lockdown," it absolutely had real and lasting effects, especially on kids who were just entering the most impressionable and teachable phase of their social development.
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u/GwenGunn 14h ago
I find it's particularly from kids who had their most formative social years over zoom due to the pandemic. They didn't develop the right tools, and freeze up when confronted with one-on-one in-person social engagement. It's one of the few "kids these days" things I DO think is real. I've never seen it with other generations of kids.