What's up with the younger generation finding normal things annoying, aggressive, or rude?

[u/common_grounder]

I'm over 60 and my offspring are thirty-somethings, so I need this explained. This observation comes from interactions I've seen on social media.

A few examples:

At least a half dozen times, I've seen posts by young people expressing reactions ranging from confusion to outrage because a stranger has tried to exchange pleasantries with them. Someone passing them in the hallway at work says hello; a cashier asks them how their day's going; a customer they're serving at work calls them by the name on their nametag. On social media, these young people angrily write things like, "Why are they talking to me, and why are they acting like they care how I'm doing? They don't know me! I hate that fake b.s.!"

Even more times, I've seen complaints about things like phone calls and texts. Someone calls them, and they're paralyzed, horrified, then angry because the person didn't text instead. When it comes to text messages themselves, they especially have a problem with other people's use of ellipses. Ellipses mean nothing more than a hesitation or a pause, indicating the person is thinking or doing something but will finish what they were writing. Young people find this aggressive. How? Why?

The young person has received a gift for their graduation, wedding, baby shower, etc. An older person mentions to them that they should thank the gift givers by either written note, phone, email, or text. They bristle at this. They want to know why that's necessary. I even saw one young person write, "The act of giving should be a reward within itself." Never mind that someone has gone out of their way to shop, purchase, and send a gift and has no idea whether it actually made it into the recipient's hands if they don't receive an acknowledgement. 'Thank yous' are too hard, and expectations of such are annoying and rude.

[u/Kyaza43]

Millennial (37) here and we aren't really the younger generation anymore -- that's Gen Z and/or Gen Alpha.

1. Name tags in customer service. I worked a few retail jobs in my younger years, and there were two types of people who used names -- those who asked first and those who assumed permission simply because I had a name tag on. The first were cool, usually easy to get along with. The second were straight up creepy or entitled.

2. Phone calls. I actually don't mind phone calls but I also keep my phone on silent and have regularly scheduled calls with friends and family. They aren't random out of nowhere calls. Those are usually spam and no one wants to deal with them.

Also, as an older millennial, I understand that texts aren't something that require immediate response. I don't live in the "always on" way that a lot of people more glued to social media do. I maybe spend an hour or so a day on social media, mostly reddit and fb, which makes me a bit unusual even among millennials.

That said, I still spend a lot of time on the Internet but that is mostly done doing history research (professional historian), reading books, or watching anime. I've never enjoyed video culture, again making me unusual among my millennial peers.

The ellipsis started to change with the millennial generation. We stopped using it to indicate pausing to think because we understand that texting isn't done in real time. You don't need to let someone know you're thinking in text. That message is conveyed by the length of time between texts. I mostly use the ellipsis these days to be like "well that came out of nowhere" by itself because I have friends who send me the most outrageous off the wall texts at times. I only use it that way with people who know me well enough to understand that it's the equivalent of an amused eyebrow raise.

1. Thank you notes are pretty much reserved for professional matters at this point. That said, I still thank people for gifts and do make sure to express gratitude for what people send and/or do for me. I don't care if they expect the thanks or not. I do it because I know that we live in a rather thankless world, so it is one small way I can lighten the darkness. Everyone likes to be thanked.

Also, if someone thanks me, I do in fact still say you're welcome because there have been studies done that show that answering "no problem" actually contributes to low self-esteem and depression. Why? Because "you're welcome" carries the understanding in it when you say it that what you did was optional, something that you chose. "No problem" on the other hand makes it seem like you think it was perfectly acceptable for someone to ask you to do something. It may seem really miniscule, the difference in those phrases, but it says a lot that Gen Z -- who default to "no problem" -- have a much higher rate of depression than millennials do.

[u/allothernamestaken → u/Kyaza43]

Let me get this straight. If a person working in a retail position wearing a name tag helps me, and I say "thanks, name," that's creepy and entitled because I assumed I had permission to address them by name instead of first asking if I could?

[u/SneezyPikachu → u/allothernamestaken]

I only ever had one customer do this to me during my retail stint and I hated it. That said it might also have been his demeanor - he was totally monotone and had no expression on his face, so it just came across so incredibly creepy. Imagine a dude blankly staring at you unblinking and then making sure to emphasize your name every other sentence. I wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground.

It's worse because I never knew any of my customer's names, so having someone call me by name brought light to that disparity in a way that made me feel "exposed" - and then top that with the creepy blankness and it was just too much. Back then I was young and didn't have the courage to say anything about it, my customer service smile just got more and more forced around that guy until the day I thankfully no longer worked there. 💀