Man shares the sad and obvious reason behind Gen Z talking faster than Millennials

Gen Z and millennials are always being judged by the older generations for a string of negative traits. But is it truly their fault or do they naturally adapt to their surroundings just like others and respond accordingly? Nathaniel Edward (@nathaniel_edward on TikTok) made a response video to another creator who came up with an interesting question: "Why do Gen Z speak much faster than millennials?" “This is going to sound meaner than I intend it to,” Edward begins in his video and adds, “But hear me out. It's because not everything we millennials do is a performance."

"You see, we grew up in a time, an ancient time, long ago with little social media," he jokes, "What we had was kind of boring when you think about MySpace, the beginnings of Facebook, where you needed to have a college email address and an invite." Edward gives a clear image of the times when millennials came of age and the surroundings used to be way too different compared to the Gen Z people. “The lack of social media interference allowed us [millennials] to develop our own personalities,” he continues, “mostly based on television shows, comic books and cartoons. We synthesized the information that we were taking in and who we wanted to be and we were able to just be ‘humans’ in the world. Kinda nice right?”

Edward mentions that the presence of social media from the beginning of a Gen Z's life has altered their childhood significantly and as a result, many have failed to form genuine identities and connections. "Then came the inundation of social media platforms," Edward continued, naming Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, which are some of the most popular social media platforms, "It all just kept going and going and going. Younger people started to realize that you could have this visible metric for success and likeability.”

He adds that the younger generation measures everything with the likes, followers and reach they get on social media and goes ahead to determine their worth based on it. “The trends and the language of this content. All of it makes its way to the real world. You start acting the way you see online, in the hopes it will get you the same attention in the real world,” Edward remarks, "No one is blaming. No one is hating. But the problem is, no one in the real world wants to talk to someone who is talking like 'this' and trying to get your attention all the time." 

Edward then mimics the way many TikTok and social media creators talk fast and with a lot of energy to capture the attention of the viewers. "It's weird and off-putting and lacks any personality in real life. So the reason we talk this way is because we were given the opportunity to. The reason the other parts of the younger generation talk the way they do is because they weren't given the chance to not having to perform to make friends and that sucks," he concludes. The bitter reality hits the TikTok audience hard, as many of them jump into the comments section to share their opinions about the way Gen Z and millennials converse and behave these days.

@vanessa.lucienne wrote: "Growing up, nobody cared how people older than them acted, talked, dressed, didn’t even know there were names for different gens. Why does Gen Z care?" @_lampetia_ remarked: "To be fair, many of us growing up were parroting movie and show catchphrases to each other. But the lack of eyes on us was a privilege." @mrsmillicent quipped: "I see it in my own Gen Z child. Their personalities are an amalgamation of speech patterns and mannerisms from various types of content creators." @wra_1988 added: "Speaking slowly is great for communicating with children and English language learners. It's a friendly, equitable and accessible way of speaking."