by KELSEY WEEKMAN
More than 50% of Gen Z-ers say anxiety about being cringe has prevented them from opening up emotionally. How did a reign of self-censorship come to define young Americans?
Here’s a nonexhaustive list of things Gen Z finds cringe: drinking, getting a driver’s license, having a boyfriend, going out, not going out, using the wrong emojis, using the wrong slang, parting your hair the wrong way, wearing the wrong jeans. It’s cringe to try and it’s cringe not to try hard enough.
It’s easy to dismiss Gen Z’s particular aversion to cringe as kind of silly — finding things embarrassing is a rite of passage for young people and always has been — but cringe is so much more than a fleeting reaction or a punch line for generational mockery. It’s become the trait that most defines and unites Gen Z-ers, who are now between the ages of 14 and 29.
Their fear of cringe is an internal censor that shapes what they say, post, pursue and even feel comfortable wanting. It’s a prison of young people’s own making as they try to take flight as adults. A new Yahoo/YouGov poll demonstrates how this anxiety has shaped their lives in very real ways: More than half of adult Gen Z respondents said that they have avoided expressing themselves freely online for fear of coming across as cringe. It has also seeped into their lives beyond the internet: 55% say fear of cringe has prevented them from opening up to someone emotionally; large shares say that it has held them back romantically and prevented them from pursuing hobbies and seizing professional opportunities.
“I have avoided sharing stuff with friends and family out of fear of coming off as being cringe,” Charlie, a 19-year-old Connecticut resident, tells Yahoo. “What often happened was my own personal passion for the thing died out and I felt like I was weird for ever even liking it.”
This phenomenon is perhaps a natural consequence of how Gen Z came of age: They were the first to grow up entirely online, with technology in their hands from an early age. They’ve adapted to being constantly surveilled and picked apart by ever more punishing versions of the internet than other generations experienced. Who could blame them for their nerves?
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