Many people have expressed concerns about Gen Z’s work ethic, both academically and professionally. One woman who admitted she is Gen Z herself confirmed that people have a right to be worried.
It’s pretty common to hear Gen Zers push back against the accusations that they don’t work hard enough. They might be right that it’s unfair to make that kind of blanket statement, but only because it doesn’t apply to every member of the generation. As for the cohort as a whole, she thinks they’re “cooked.”
She collaborated with younger college students on a school project and couldn’t believe their behavior.
Macie, a dance teacher and dance education major, shared her startling experience on TikTok. She did not specify what year of college she’s in, but did say she’s 24, so she is still obviously a Gen Zer. Working with some freshmen from her school showed her she’s probably the odd one out, though.
“I just did a group project with a bunch of freshmen and people who are younger than me in my college,” she explained. “It was quite a disaster. I will let you know how it went by telling you that only six people out of 14 showed up for the presentation.”
While working on the project, Macie said the younger students relied heavily on ChatGPT and treated other, more legitimate resources like Google Scholar as if they were too complex. The actual presentation consisted of them reading scripts written by ChatGPT “verbatim.”
Macie theorized that the pandemic’s impact on schooling is to blame for young people struggling with learning and comprehension.
She was convinced she was “legitimately the only one who even understood what the prompt was,” and her peers’ inability to grasp the most basic concepts seems to prove her point.
“We had to take a stance on art censorship,” she said. “We had to decide if our theoretical government that we had was going to support art censorship or if it was gonna have no role in censoring art.”
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The other students took a stance … sort of. She continued, “They decided that the government should censor art, but then they chose the prompt that said, ‘The government protects the right to all artistic expression.’ They couldn’t understand or interpret or comprehend what that sentence meant.”
Macie attributed her classmates’ confusion and chaos to their previous learning environment. Because she’s a bit older, she said she graduated from high school before the pandemic forced everyone to move to online learning. That’s what she blames for the younger students’ struggles.
Clearly, remote learning did not have the effect it was intended to.
Students who were forced to complete their classes and assignments online during the coronavirus pandemic were lucky in a way because they didn’t have to pause their education during lockdown. But there were a lot of negative consequences as well. One study found that students from families with lower socioeconomic status were hurt the most since they often didn’t have access to the technology they needed.
Remote learning affected students’ mental health, too, with too much screen time and no in-person contact leading to everything from insomnia to depression. Grades and test scores also slipped in many cases.
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The option to learn remotely is a good thing, especially since many students have extenuating circumstances like chronic health conditions that make it hard for them to attend school every day. But it’s not right for everyone, and it’s definitely not something that everyone should be forced into. Unfortunately, there was no other option.
The switch to online learning left students who weren’t a good fit for that model behind. They were stuck in a less disciplined environment with less time spent learning, and they’re still trying to catch up on the concepts that proved problematic for them. It’s not surprising that they’re taking shortcuts like using AI when they never really saw what doing the work should look like to begin with.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.