7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people

their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

Sign in

Support us

News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle

The Observer
Interview

Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’
Killian Fox

The linguist and computer scientist discusses her optimistic

assessment of a misunderstood generation – and delves into the
nuanced ways to text ‘OK’

Sat 20 Nov 2021 17.00 GMT

D
r Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer and computer scientist at the Faculty of Linguistics, Oxford, who works at the
intersection of technology and the humanities. With Roberta Katz, Jane Shaw and Linda Woodhead, she is the author of
Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age, which paints an optimistic portrait of a much misunderstood
generation that has never known a world without the internet.

Define Gen Zers.

They are people born from the mid-1990s to around 2010. They’re followed by Generation Alpha, who are aged 10 and under, though
there’s a bit of an overlap.

What unites them?

They’ve grown up in a fundamentally different environment than anyone before them – a digital world, which we’re all trying to
negotiate for the first time. The rest of us have known what the world was like before the internet, whereas this generation doesn’t,

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 1/6
7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

which I think makes them special. And it means that the rest of us can learn from them. With the Covid lockdowns [which have
forced us all to go more digital], it’s shown that the rest of us have only just begun to catch up with them.

What did you and your co-authors hope to achieve?

We wanted to listen to Gen Zers – to let them speak in their own words, to find out more about their view of the world, their mindset,
their attitudes, their values – and then try to describe what we found. It wasn’t a cross-generational study, it was more of a snapshot
of a moment in in time. Then we were then able to put that in a historical frame.

Gen Zers devise People might raise their eyebrows at the thought of four older academics pronouncing about young
social codes for people. How did you get around that?
texting. Full First of all, we didn’t want to rely on one data source, so not just interviews. And when we did the
stops are seen interviews, we didn’t actually conduct them, we trained their peers to do them. That was a really
as expressing important way of avoiding the older lens. We then complemented the in-person interviews with large
hostility and caps national surveys. And I constructed a 17m-word iGen Corpus – a big collection of language from this age
can be shouty group.

What are the biggest misconceptions older people have about Gen Zers?
They might judge them as narcissistic individualists. Which of course is false because they actually love
to collaborate, and they really care about other people.

It’s often claimed that Gen Zers are too relaxed about sharing intimate personal information online, and that they have shorter
attention spans and reduced capacity for deep thinking owing to their immersion in the digital world. What do you make of that?
It’s a lot more complex. We found that the Gen Zers were far more savvy about their privacy and their security online than their
elders are. They are so much better at multitasking – they’ve always got just so many screens open, and they’re engaging across them
all, simultaneously. They’re far better at merging their online and offline life.

There’s a story in the book about students skipping in-person lectures and watching the recorded lectures at home on triple speed.
What was the thinking behind that?
When I was first told that story, I thought that it was a time-saving device, because the students explained how they timed how long
it took them to cycle from their dorm to the lecture, to attend the lecture and then to cycle back – and so they calculated that it was
far easier to just watch the video of the lecture instead. But they were watching it in triple speed because that forces them to
concentrate, because it’s so hard to understand what the lecturer is saying, and they’re not tempted to go and look at their social
media. That’s an example of just how savvy they are about the economy of the internet.

Why are many Gen Zers averse to sending emails?

Because emails are too formal, and not as instant as other forms of communication. So it takes too much time to compose the
messages, and then it’s difficult to get the formal tone correct, which causes anxiety.

But in other, quicker forms of messaging, tone is still a highly sensitive factor.
Gen Zers devise social codes for expressing tone when they are texting. Full stops are seen as expressing hostility and caps can be
shouty. Just communicating “OK” can be a minefield. There are at least five different ways of writing it – “okay”, “ok”, “K”, “kk” and
“k” – and each signals a different tone of voice. “K” is neutral, because you’ve accepted that default capitalisation of the letter. But if
you text “k.”, that means “you’re in trouble”, for two reasons: the first letter is lower case, indicating that you took the time to undo
that default capitalisation, and then there’s a full stop. If you took that extra time to personalise the response in such a way, it
conveys that you’re not happy. Whereas “kk” is a very positive, cheerful way of saying OK – it’s a low-effort way of softening the
curtness of a single letter.

With the iGen Corpus, you created a huge data bank of Gen Z language, drawing from various sources including social media
exchanges. What did it help you understand?
It enabled us to compare the salience of Gen Z language against general language: by finding out what’s known as a keyness measure,
we could calculate how salient certain words and concepts are for this generation compared with the general population. A very
obvious example would be “lol”: you would expect “lol” to occur far more frequently within this age group than outside it, and that
was the case. But there were other examples: “collab”, “collaboration” and “collaborate” are far more frequent. “Relatable”, “friend”,
and words to do with authenticity such as “real” and “true” and “honest”, and therefore “fake” as well, are far more salient. Also, the
first person pronoun “I” was three times more frequent in iGen when compared with the general corpora.

The prevalence of “I” could suggest that Gen Zers are more individualistic and self-obsessed.
It could also be that they’re better at expressing their own opinions.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 2/6
7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

You found that Gen Zers place particular value on collaboration. Why is that, and how does it manifest?
I think that tech has really facilitated collaboration among them since they were young. It has helped them find people who are like
them, it has facilitated community for them, it’s provided platforms for joint activities. It’s how they socialise and find hook-ups, it’s
how they do activism, it is how they learn. We certainly find in the teaching environment that students prefer group projects to
working solo.

Why are matters of identity so charged for Gen Z?

I think it’s probably because gender and sexuality is in flux currently and Gen Zers really recognise that. It’s just very interesting to
them.

With your linguistics class at Stanford, you compiled a dictionary of words relating to sex and gender that they considered unique
or characteristic of Gen Z. Could you pick out a few that you’d never encountered before?
I thought that a “unicorn” was a successful tech startup, not a bisexual woman who non-committally joins a straight couple for sex. I
also wasn’t familiar with much to do with fan fiction, so expressions like “slash shipping”, and “femslash shipping”, which is when
you advocate for romance between either two male or two female fictional characters or celebrities.

What about “sapiosexual”?

I loved that. That’s someone who’s attracted to intelligence.

Do you find that Gen Zers are more inclusive and tolerant of difference than older generations? Or is that just a facet of youth?
I think they definitely are more accepting. They are very sensitive and mindful of other people, and they care about them, and that
can manifest itself in ways that older generations might find surprising. In 2019 the Oxford student union decided that, rather than
clapping after someone speaks, they would do jazz hands, because that was more considerate to people who are neurodiverse, for
whom the noise and the vibration of clapping might be disturbing. And I can remember being part of a conversation where an older
person was saying that she found that ridiculous, but then a younger student said: “It’s no biggie for me to do jazz hands rather than
clap. If it helps someone else, why not do it?”

Gen Z are facing a confusing present and a terrifying future. Did you find a lot of resentment towards older
generations?
We didn’t encounter direct negativity, but they certainly see themselves as having inherited a lot of problems from previous
generations, especially the environmental challenges, and what plays out is scepticism about institutions.

What generation do you belong to, and do you find it’s a useful label?
Interesting question. I’m a Gen X. And I’d probably find that label more helpful if someone had written a book like ours to explain it.
But having said that, I think that there’s something very particular about Gen Z, purely for the fact that they are the first generation to
never know a world without the internet, and that does make them special.

Is there anything about Gen Z that you still find hard to understand?
I guess if I still don’t get something, it’s memes – I don’t get the humour around some of the Gen Z memes.

Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age is published by the University of Chicago Press (£18). To support the Guardian
and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

This article was amended on 22 November 2021. An earlier version wrongly stated that Ogilvie was at Harris Manchester College
rather than the Oxford Faculty of Linguistics

… there is a good reason why not to support the Guardian.

Not everyone can afford to pay for news right now. That is why we keep our journalism open for everyone to read, including in
Thailand. If this is you, please continue to read for free. 
But if you are able to, then there are three good reasons to support us today.
1. Our quality, investigative journalism is a scrutinising force at a time when the rich and powerful are getting away with more and
more
2. We are independent and have no billionaire owner pulling the strings, so your money directly powers our reporting
3. It doesn’t cost much, and takes less time than it took to read this message
Help power the Guardian’s journalism for the years to come, whether with a small sum or a larger one. If you can, please support
us on a monthly basis from just $2. It takes less than a minute to set up, and you can rest assured that you’re making a big impact
every single month in support of open, independent journalism. Thank you.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 3/6
7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

Single Monthly Annual

$3 per month $6 per month Other

Continue Remind me in September

More on this story

‘It’s out of order’: Gen Z ‘What’s my future?’: Out of style: Will Gen Z ‘It took a year to get help’: Generation X
speak up for cancel culture millennials and Gen-Z ever give up its dangerous generation Z on mental risky drinkers
and ‘young illiberal grapple with cost of living love of fast fashion? health decline anything ever
progressives’ crisis to stop?
1 Nov 2022 2 Aug 2022 6 Oct 2021 1 Oct 2021 22 Sept 2021

More from Headlines

Sinéad O'Connor Kevin Spacey Qin Gang Niger UFOs

Singer dies aged 56 Actor cleared of sexually Rumours swirl over Soldiers announce coup US conducted
assaulting four men dramatic fall of Xi loyalist and president’s removal on decade’ secret
national TV program, ex-in
official says
6h ago 8h ago 12h ago 28m ago 6h ago

Most viewed

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 4/6
7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 5/6
7/27/23, 7:06 AM Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’ | Young people | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/20/dr-sarah-ogilvie-generation-z-explained-interview 6/6