Teachers Who’ve Been Around For 20+ Years Share The Biggest Differences Between Millennials, Gen Z, And Gen Alpha
by Aaron Ant · BuzzFeedSchool is back in session, bringing a new generation of kids to the classroom. Naturally, teachers have to adapt to the new personalities and adjust their teaching styles accordingly.
I recently asked veteran teachers with 20+ years of experience from the BuzzFeed Community to detail the major differences between Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha students.
Here's what they said:
1. "Tools in their tool chest to help them weather storms."
"Students today don’t have many sources of strength they can fall back on when the going gets tough, and therefore, they struggle with adversity."
2. "I've taught millennials and Gen Z. Millennials were savvier and had a better understanding of how the world works. Gen Z was more gullible and could be easily tricked."
"As a joke/test, I told my Gen Z students that Ghostbusters was based on a true story and that ghosts were real up into the 1980s. They all believed me! Some even lied and said they already knew that. Thank god I'm not teaching anymore."
3. "I've found in the past ten years, textbooks are becoming oversimplified and contain mostly pictures."
"We were constantly told to challenge the students, and they would learn, but on the other hand, when we failed them for not doing the work, it was our fault. The administrators would override and pass them. My senior reading class was reading on a sixth-grade level and writing on a fourth-grade level, but I was expected to get them up to senior level with them doing nothing."
4. "Gen Alpha struggles to persevere when faced with a challenge. They give up quickly or cry if someone doesn’t do it for them."
"Students often quit if it doesn’t work immediately or the first time. It saddens me because it happens when we do something simple like a STEM project or on the computer. I hope that learning to work through it at a young age will help when they become adults."
–Teacher, grades 1 to 3, 20 years of experience
5. "As an early millennial (1982), I find we’re the bridge generation between boomers, Gen X, and Gen Z. Many of my colleagues are Gen X and are more suspicious of and a bit less savvy with tech for everyday tasks."
"New Gen Z recruits can’t understand why you’d use a pen and paper for a simple task. I had a rotary dial phone with a party line as a child and a cell phone in college – we witnessed a huge acceleration in tech advances and had to adjust along the way, sometimes needing to be familiar with both old and new."
6. "While millennial classrooms have always had some kids with attitude, Gen Z is nearly full of bad apples."
"It’s bizarre to be spoken down to by someone who is very confidently wrong, who cannot even cite the sources of the 'facts' they spew. Gen Z has been the most condescending generation I’ve taught so far, yet they need the most handholding. They are not ready for the real world. The workforce will eat them alive if they try to talk to their bosses like they do with teachers. And that is a valuable lesson their parents can’t try to threaten their way out of."
–Teacher, grade 11, 36 years of experience
7. "Smiles and eye contact. There's a disconnect and indifference about human interaction."
–Teacher, grade 4, 30 years of experience
8. "It's actually more of a difference for teachers. It's no longer 20th-century rote/content-based learning. It's all skill-based. Google and tech killed content-based learning, and it's for the better. Students must learn to think, socialize, work in groups, present a project, and be persuasive. Remembering 12 cities in ancient Egypt isn't the goal. This is the vehicle for their learning skills that will help later in life."
–Teacher, grades 6 and 7, 18 years of experience
9. "They've become increasingly less independent and self-reliant. Gen Alpha is behind compared to students in previous years, socially, emotionally, and academically. And as those generations came through, the NY public education system made poorer and poorer decisions on behalf of students."
–Teacher, grade 9, 27 years of experience
10. "Without a doubt, the biggest overall difference is that students before the digital age (phone/Google etc.) knew they had to find the information somewhere themselves. At the very least, they had to copy it down correctly by hand. Hopefully, they processed what they read and then wrote answers in their own words, and maybe a little learning took place."
11. "Gen Alpha is kinder than previous generations and seems to care about a multitude of social issues."
"Perhaps it’s because of COVID or because more of my students these days are immigrants from Central America and know about how horrible life can be, but these students are genuinely caring and want to make the world a better place. Gen Z and Gen Alpha talk about their emotions and accept people for who they are without as much judgment. Perhaps I'm in the minority of teachers who feel this way, but my students give me hope for the future."
–Middle school and elementary school teacher, 20+ years of experience
12. "Gen Alpha are more apt to read with a critical eye rather than accepting everything they read on the internet as fact. That said, however, they have less general knowledge as the years go on. Why memorize when any answer takes only a few seconds to find? Sometimes, the lack of basic knowledge shocks me. When was the Civil War in the United States? '1920s?' What did you think about the poem we just read? 'How can this be a poem? It doesn't rhyme.'"
–High school teacher, 32 years of experience
13. "Social media and cell phones. 'Screen-agers' is what they are, and instant gratification is the name of the game."
"The idea of working hard to achieve a desired goal is lost on many of them. They also struggle to have face-to-face conversations with each other. They've lost interest in their school community. They've lost interest in learning. Why learn when I can just Google?"
–High school teacher, 21 years of experience
14. "People my age will often chastise students for a variety of hyper-specific gaps in their knowledge. Each generation has its own strengths and weaknesses, so the vast majority of such criticisms have little merit. However, there is one concern I believe is real and substantial: Younger people seem to be reading less. This concerns me because reading is fundamental to every mental ability I can think of."
15. "There’s so much that has changed — most things for the better — because of access to information."
"When millennials were in the classroom, teachers played more of a confidante role: Kids could complain about their parents to teachers, and sometimes teachers became important authority figures for students. Gen Z complains to their parents about their teachers, who generate more evidence against teachers on social media. Gen Alpha is just starting to encounter challenges like homework and difficulties with reading — they haven’t developed their critical thinking skills yet.
These issues work both negatively and positively. Millennials grew up feeling lonely and burnt out. Gen Z is growing up with less accountability but more self-confidence and more consciousness of their mental health. Gen Alpha is taking in everything like a sponge and struggling to find what’s important. Articles like these want the differences, but so much is the same. Kids want to be listened to and know that their words, actions, and time impact their world. They want to know what agency they can have over their future. They actually want to learn, but they have different ideas about how much effort they should have to put in to learn something new."
–Teacher, grades 7 and 8, 20 years of experience
16. "Students in 2024 are much more apathetic than previous generations. In the past, if a student didn't complete an assignment on time, they would be upset and ask for an extension. Now, they simply shrug and accept the zero. Sometimes, I care much more about their grades than they do!"
"Another noticeable difference is the lack of communication and social skills. In the past, if I gave my students a few minutes free at the end of class, they would turn to a person next to them and start chatting. Now, they immediately pull out their phones and put in their headphones, and I can hear a pin drop in the room. I'm struggling to counteract both of these issues and it's very discouraging."
–Teacher, grade 11, 25 years of experience
17. "I remember how excited millennial students were when we got to go to the computer lab and play Oregon Trail on our Apple computers. Oh no — dysentery! Gen Z kids were just getting computers and were so proud when they could print their essays at home — so professional!"
"Gen Alpha's have miniature computers in their pockets all day long with the wealth of the world's knowledge at their fingertip. Yet, they don't read, don't like to write, still misspell common words, and cannot tell time from the face of a standard clock."
–Teacher, grades 7 to 12 English, 34 years of experience
18. "Millenials were raised with respect, Gen Z and Gen Alpha have raised themselves being entertained by social media and technology."
–High school teacher, 24 years of experience
19. "Millennials could engage in conversation, understand humor, exhibit empathy and concern for others, work to solve problems, and communicate far more effectively. Millennials had hobbies and interests of their own and often engaged in those with family and friends."
"Gen Z started to wane in the communication and social skills areas, but they were still mostly intact. They were not as good at problem-solving as millennials but could be guided and encouraged to try it anyway. They had activities planned for them more often, so they were busy but not as engaged in the activities. It seemed they just did what was asked of them.
Gen Alpha is not very well suited for the public, with very few communication skills in both the written and verbal categories. They are fragile but unable to articulate why they are having a meltdown. They are addicted to devices and get very little guidance from their parents. They have odd notions and think the truth can be whatever they want it to be. They are often confused and angry."
–High school teacher, 25 years of experience
Are you a teacher? What do you think of these takes? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Note: some of the submissions have been edited and condensed for clarity.