What is the gen Z stare and what are young people trying to tell us? Experts explain what is happening
Discourse about the "gen Z stare" has taken over social media.
On TikTok and X, people are debating about the stare, which seems to only occur in gen Z.
So what is the gen Z stare and why does it happen and what are young people trying to tell us?
Here's what to know:
The "gen Z stare" is the blank, expressionless stare some gen Zers will give in place of a greeting or small talk, commonly seen in customer service jobs.
According to KnowYourMeme, the first known mention of the gen Z stare appeared on TikTok on July 29, 2024, in a post by @meghan.alessi.
However, the discourse on the stare began to trend on various social media platforms in mid-2025.
The look, likened to a deer in the headlights, can appear emotionless and passive, and the intention is subject to much online debate.
Some say the reaction is given when someone makes a stupid comment.
Others describe the stare as similar to "buffering" to understand what has been asked.
Many are quick to point the finger at increasing screen time, claiming it is impairing social skills.
However, some describe it as a symptom of over-tiredness from working in the demanding and often low-paying retail and hospitality industries.
Gen Z is typically defined as people born between 1997 and 2012.
Key features of this group, according to the Stanford Report, are that they are the first to not experience the world without internet, they value flexibility and diversity, and many spent their early to late teens in lockdowns due to COVID-19.
Social researcher Mark McCrindle said gen Z made up 30 per cent of the workforce and roughly half of the casual retail workforce.
He said that was likely why the stare had become associated with that particular generation.
Many gen Zers finished their high school education during lockdowns, leading to a preference for online study.
Mr McCrindle said their research showed gen Z also had a preference for online shopping and interacting with chatbots rather than call centre staff to solve customer service issues.
"So their own preference is just for the efficiencies of interaction through technology," he said.
"Yet for their paid work, they're having to interact with people face-to-face.
"When that's an older generation, that's where you sometimes get those generation gaps really emerging."
However, psychology lecturer at Edith Cowan University Shane Rogers said there was no definitive scientific evidence that lockdowns had caused any social skill impairment.
But he said it was possible, having spent formative years in "a very strange situation" that was the COVID-19 lockdowns, could have had a lasting impact.
"I do think that that potentially could have contributed to what the current social norms are with the younger generations to an extent," he said.
"But it's probably that plus the more basic level increase of communication via online social media that that generation grew up with."
Gen Zer Grace, born in 1999, is a self-confessed starer.
She said she did not think the stare was purposeful or trying to convey anything in particular.
"It's more just like a disconnect, maybe when things get overwhelming or you're annoyed or there's a lot of pressure on something, it's more it just kind of happens," she said.
To her, it's not a rude response, not even to greetings or small talk.
"I don't find not having a response to small talk as an offensive thing when I'm hanging out with my own age or hang out with someone who's older than me."
She said while she understood how small talk worked, in social interactions with people in her age group, talking to strangers was not a priority.
"We just have a different type of conversation norm that's very different from when I see my parents go to barbecues, for example," she said.
Being part of the generation raised on the web means Grace is also meeting more people virtually.
"Talking on the internet, you skip that initial small talk phase, you're straight to the top of the conversation because someone said something interesting about a TV show you like or someone sent you a meme or someone's reposted something, you're immediately into the specificity of a conversation topic and not the small talk of it.
Mr McCrindle said the stare could also be a disconnect with changing language and expressions. For example, an older customer might try to order a "malted milk" that is now more commonly known as a "milkshake", confusing the server.
This can also occur in emerging styles of stores. For example, frozen yoghurt stores that require self-service and weighing are easy to navigate for a gen Zer, but customers in other generations might have questions on how they work.
To a gen Z server who finds the system simple, the stare could convey confusion as why someone else is having difficulty.
It could be likened to an older person asking a millennial how to print a PDF — an obvious task to the younger person but unfamiliar to the person who grew up before computers.
Within the customer service industry specifically, where previous generations had been expected to be consistently pleasant, it could harbour resentment for the younger generation being less performative.
Mr McCrindle said gen Z valued authenticity, which meant they were not always "prepared to play the game" in customer service jobs, particularly in roles they knew were not long-term.
"They aren't overly dutiful to employers, they're aware of their rights and what they need to do," Mr McCrindle said.
"They might say it's authenticity … but it does come across as being a bit cold or uncaring.
"It's not that they don't care, it's just that they want to be real and not sort of put on the fake voice and the fake warmth."
However, Dr Rogers said the social shift could also be influenced by millennial managers.
"Maybe they didn't like having to do that so much because it felt a bit fake and they're not pushing that onto the younger generation," he said.
Dr Rogers said staring was a natural part of human behaviour and used to convey a variety of different messages.
"It can be used to show boredom. It can be used to sometimes show … apathy or disdain," he said.
He said part of the reason the gen Z stare could feel awkward was a misinterpretation of meaning from the older generations, particularly when they believed it was a message of disdain.
The stare could also be used to pause and consider a response, Dr Rogers explained, where older generations were more likely to instantly respond.
Unique generational behaviours are not exclusive to gen Z.
Millennials (1981-1996) are often made fun of by gen Z for the "millennial pause" — a brief pause at the start of a video recording.
Their predecessors, gen X (1965-1980) labelled millennials selfish, with Time Magazine printing a cover calling them the "me me me generation".
Gen X's elders, baby boomers (1946-1964), have labelled them as "lazy" due to their stereotyped cynicism.
And baby boomers even have their own version of the stare — known as the "lead paint stare", implying baby boomers blankly stare as a result of poisoning from lead-based paints used prior to their ban in the 1970s.
What all these stereotypes have in common is they are observations of other generations.
[shane]
Dr Rogers noted that generation comparisons were being ramped up, particularly on TikTok.
"This has been going on for some time, and the 'gen Z stare' simply seems to be the latest iteration of this," he said.
"Generations have been doing these comparisons for time immemorial, but nowadays there is this medium that allows for those conversations to be ramped up.
"If there were more boomers and gen X that use TikTok, you would probably see more conversations about that as well, but the main users are millennials and gen Z right now, so that is where a lot of the conversation is at."
It might be. The gen Z stare has already had a page created on KnowYourMeme.
Users on X and TikTok have created several memes about the stare.
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