March 28, 2024

8 Things Your Grandkids Don’t Do (and some they do…)

Posted on July 31, 2016 by in Features

56240662 - teenage girl taking photo with mobile phone on selfie stick of herself and her grandfather at home

By Kristen Sturt

Millennials better make way. There’s a new cohort in town. Generation Z — a.k.a. the grandchildren of Baby Boomers — were born after the mid-’90s, and are starting to graduate high school and enter college. They’re realistic, tech-savvy, community-minded, and very different from previous peer groups, in good ways and bad. Read on to discover some surprising differences between your grandkids and the folks who came before them. Because there’s never been a gen like Gen Z.

They don’t leave messages.June2015NoCellPhonesW

No one’s left you a voicemail lately. Your own messages go unanswered. You keep seeing internet articles like “An Open Letter To All The Idiots Still Leaving Voicemails” and “Don’t Leave Me A Voicemail Unless You’re Dying.” Sense a trend?

Here’s the deal: Unless it’s from your doctor, voicemail is passé. Folks under 40 dislike leaving messages, and cite wasted time, spam messages, and performance anxiety as reasons they no longer do so. It’s become so widespread that one New York City etiquette school has to teach professional voicemail skills in class.

The biggest cause, though? Fewer young people make phone calls, period. In a 2012 Pew survey, just 39 percent of teenagers reported talking to friends and/or family on the phone every day. In contrast, 63 percent text daily. As for email…

6250903 - no spam round sign over white

They don’t send emails.

Wondering why it’s been so long since you’ve received an email from your grandkids? You and everybody else.

According to Pew, just 6 percent of teenagers use email daily for casual communication, preferring to text or reach out over social media platforms like Snapchat and Whisper. What’s more, many young people don’t send their first email until high school or college now, when they absolutely have to for school or business. “Overwhelmingly, they [treat] email as a read-only medium,” says The Wall Street Journal scribe Christopher Mims, “until they [have] to use it to communicate with adults.”

They don’t eat poorly.25178915 - teen girl eating an apple

This may come as a shock to those of you with grandchildren in the chicken nugget and PB&J years (a.k.a. ages 2-5), but Gen Z wants fresh food made from scratch, with lots of fruit and vegetables.

Yes, you read that right. Fruit. Vegetables. Home cooking. Your grandkids know lots about nutrition and care about the environmental repercussions of their meal choices, too. They prefer Chipotle (fast casual) to McDonald’s (fast food), and want pancakes (hot and fresh) over cereal (cold and processed) for breakfast. They’re more interested in ethnic meals—especially Mexican—than previous generations, and many consider themselves foodies. All in all, not bad for their health (though maybe a little tougher on your wallet).

ShinglesVaccine2-72They don’t get chickenpox.

Odds are, somewhere on your being is a pockmark—a fleshy divot of evidence that you were among the millions of Americans who caught, survived, and were permanently disfigured by that itchiest of childhood maladies: chickenpox.

Thanks to the varicella vaccine, most of your grandchildren will never know the agony of the scarlet spots, or the weird luxury of bathing in oatmeal. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 3.5 million cases of chickenpox are prevented by the shot annually, not to mention 98 percent of chickenpox-related deaths.

Of course we say “most of your grandchildren” because chickenpox has re-emerged in places like Florida, Indiana, and Michigan, due in large part to the anti-vaccination movement. That’s bad news for infants, especially; they’re too young for shots, and most at risk for catching the illness.

They don’t smoke cigarettes.Cigarette72

In 1997, the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 36.4 percent of high school students smoked cigarettes, and 16.7 were considered frequent smokers.

By 2013, smokers dropped to 15.7 percent, and frequent smokers plummeted to just 5.6 percent.

While this is undeniably great, it’s important to note that use of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, is up. Sixteen percent of high schoolers used the products at least once per month in 2015, a sharp increase from just 1.5 percent in 2011.

Bonus: Your grandkids don’t drink or fight nearly as much as previous generations, either.

21315402 - handwriting font set for useThey don’t write in cursive.

Brace yourselves: Many kids can’t even read the swirly writing style. More than 40 states don’t have a cursive requirement, and teachers say the subject is being crowded out by accelerated testing and more important topics like science and math.

While proponents of cursive argue that it helps hand-eye coordination and improves memory, many see typing as the more important skill given our reliance on computers, phones, and other keyboard-based electronics.

Before you judge, consider this: You might have beautiful handwriting, but your grandkids can probably bang out their homework before you even finish your signature.

They don’t mess around with money.

21073691 - saving concept - vector illustration

Generation Z grew up in strained financial times. They know income doesn’t just happen, and it can disappear as quickly as it was earned. As a result, they’re much smarter about cash flow than previous generations. In one survey of 1,000 kids aged 12-19, 77 percent claimed they save money whenever they have it. What’s more, they tend to:

— research purchases online

— be hyper-aware of being sold to

— stress about college costs

— worry about the job market and want to intern

That said, Gen Z’s job requirements don’t focus on money alone. In multiple polls, they name flexibility and social do-gooding as priorities for employment.

WritingCheckThey don’t write checks.

Confession: We wrote this article because we recently discovered that a twenty-something grandparents.com coworker has never written a check.

According to a survey conducted by commerce experts First Data, she’s not alone.

They found that more than 20 percent of Millennials, “have never even written a physical check to pay a bill.” They’re much more comfortable shelling out cash via the Internet; a whopping 94 percent do their banking online, while 38 percent use apps to pay for goods and services. And while they visit banks for ATM machines, 27 percent of your grandkids say they’d consider using a “branchless digital bank”—or, one with no physical building at all.

Special note to grandparents: Gen Z is still A-OK with receiving checks (especially in birthday cards), so don’t worry about sending ‘em.

Courtesy: grandparents.com, a lifestyle site that celebrates the grandparent community by providing trusted information about family & relationships, health & well-being, travel & retirement, and more. Follow the site on Twitter (@grandparentscom) and on Facebook (facebook.com/grandparentscom).

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