Gen Z Trends: Goodbye Cheat Sheets, Welcome Google Translate

Long gone are the days of paper planes and tiny notes carved on erasers. Or funny/scurrilous phrases bouncing up and down on the screensaver of old desktops in the school’s “internet rooms”. Young students today have a brave new world of tools to chat and cheat in class. And it all has to do with their mastery of technology.

The newest ritual among kids at school says it all: exchanging AirPods in class (only one of the pair), writing something on Google Translate, and then using the text-to-speech feature to “talk” with one another. Even better if the other person is in a different room or class. Evolution of the Chinese whispers game, much?

Looking at the online response, Baby Boomers, Gen X, and even Millennials (is that nostalgia for telephones with keys that we are sensing?) seem appalled by this new “distraction” concocted by Gen Z to evade teachers’ punishments for talking in class or exchange precious information during assignments.

Why are these kids allowed to use smartphones and AirPods during school hours? If they are already looking at the phone to type on Google Translate (because smartphones don’t have keys), why can’t they just text? And, of course, is technology ruining their ability to play and enjoy simpler things?

Well, let’s debunk some myths here, and see if Gen Z can actually teach us something.

Students shouldn’t use smartphones during lessons, but teachers can’t confiscate phones either, except if someone violates the school policy governing cell phone usage during school hours. Schools are not more “relaxed” towards insubordinate behaviours than they were in the past: evading school hours or a boring lesson has been a recurring goal of every generation. Just, smartphones and AirPods are often more attractive than crosswords or a comic book under your desk. And much easier to hide.

Secondly, kids can actually type on smartphones without looking (sorry, Millennials with Nokia 3330). All they need is a way to receive messages without catching the teacher’s attention. Hence, the Google Translate ritual, which also doesn’t leave a trace of the words that have been exchanged. In case a teacher wanted to catch a pair chatting.

Lastly, we should stop and analyze our beliefs for a second: are we really buying into the “technology makes young people dumb” trope? Because there are already studies suggesting that claims like “smartphone addiction”, or “depression caused by smartphone” among kids are journalistic exaggerations.

Technology is a part of our contemporary history. When it comes to Gen Z, most of the time, it is not only predominant in their lives: it is pervasive. And maybe we should stop thinking about it as just a “phase”, after which we shall return to paper notes and carrier pigeons. Technology, social media, broadcast communication, are all here to stay and evolve. And Gen Z’s is now the pioneer generation, the one that could understand IT advancements before anyone else and even rethink some of our tech tools’ purposes.

Only last year, news broke that Google Docs had become the hottest chat app among high school students. Young people exchanged messages with friends, even flirted, through the comment feature of the shared Docs, evading the attention of teachers and parents. You click Resolve on a comment, and the text vanishes. Plus, you’re not on a smartphone, you’re on Google Docs on a laptop, so it always looks like you’re working.

Do we really assume that Docs’ creators had thought about that?

So, what would happen if we stopped struggling with the notion that Gen Z is quicker and more efficient than us at understanding tech, and let that sink in? What if we tried to look at their initiatives with tech with an open mind, and start wondering if they can actually bring any good to education itself?

In a world where user-generated content is king (think of the powerful worlds of Google, YouTube, Facebook, and lately TikTok…), maybe talking about a user-generated, or co-designed, school is a little bit far fetched.

But still, what if…?

And what can we do as entertainers and media people to bring the Zoomers’ rituals in our world of stories?

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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values. 

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