Angsty teenagers claiming that their parents just “don’t understand them” has been a stereotype since the beginning of time. Parents either didn’t like their new goth phase or their sudden need to get a nose piercing, it has been known that older generations don’t tend to understand new aged ideas and vice versa.

However, a gap has never been as openly accepted and quietly denied as the separation between Generation Z and just about every generation before them. Most people see this as a “sign of the times,”, or how new-age technology is “ruining morals.” Yet the gap can be easily explained if the audience was open to digesting it. 

The huge outbreak of social media and new technology completely shifted society as a whole and how we communicate. Causing a huge disconnect from not only peers but changing the power dynamic between parents and children as well. While children had to teach their parents how to create and conduct themselves online, making the child feel more intelligent and independent can cause resentment and disrespect because being so young they lack the life experiences or mental maturity to deal with these emotions. Bringing parents to see their children as self-righteous and wanting unnecessary items or different treatment than they’ve ever seen. This also transcribes mental health as a whole, where parents see it as a normal part of growing up and that their kids have no idea what they’re talking about while children see this response as a lack of care or knowledge. 

This causes children to feel like they can’t go to their parents with their emotions, opinions, feelings, or social situations. As well as with the explosion of social media being so new, there are many experiences that parents simply haven’t dealt with, for example getting hate online or being cyberbullied. This puts the child in a situation where they have to deal with most of their struggles without any guidance or support from what is supposed to be their largest support base. 

This can cause the young kids to idolize figures online, causing a massive outbreak of influencers online changing the culture of role models separating parents and children even more. All of this is without anyone being at fault, it’s simply the repercussions of the world-changing so quickly.