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Gen Zers Are Too Scared for Public Speaking… After Years of Zoom Schooling During the Pandemic

by Richard Eldred
22 October 2023 7:00 PM

Generation Z’s confidence has waned during the pandemic, leading to fewer young adults feeling self-assured in public speaking, according to polling data shared with MailOnline. Here’s how the article begins:

Polling carried out by Survation suggests 35.32% of 18-24 year-olds are less confident speaking in public than they were before the global health catastrophe.

Elocution experts believe that many Gen Zers – who would have been aged between 14 and 20 when the pandemic first broke out – have been robbed of formative experiences like giving talks in front of classmates, with most of their communication skills established on video calls during lockdown.

As a result of the years-long gap in their development, experts fear they could suffer professionally or academically, coming up short against older candidates in job interviews or dropping grades in group presentations at school or university.

Experts have called for employers – already using perks like free food to try to coax Gen Z out of their bedrooms and into the office – to give younger workers help with their communication skills to prevent them from becoming a ‘lost generation’.

The Survation poll, commissioned by public speaking agency Speak With Impact, found that around 20% of 18-24 year-olds were “much less confident” in their speaking skills compared with before the pandemic, while 15% were “slightly less confident”.

Gen Z – people born between the middle to late 1990s and the early 2010s – were the only age group to record a net negative score, meaning the relative majority are less confident than they were before. 

In other age groups from 25 to 64, a slim majority of people said they had gained confidence in speaking in front of an audience over Covid; the biggest rise in confidence was among the over-65s.

Gavin Brown, founder of Speak With Impact, told MailOnline he commissioned the survey after hearing a growing number of stories of young people lacking confidence to speak in public.

Mr. Brown said: “We’ve got a real challenge there, for that age group – who were at the tail end of school, some of them probably in the early years of work or university depending on what they did.

“This is a group of people that has never really spoken in public before – and while others have said they’re worried about being back in a room speaking, these are people that have never been in the room at all.

“They’ve not been through those early public speaking experiences at school, or at university, or in your first job, where you make mistakes but you learn quite quickly.

“When you are in the room, all eyes are on you, and you can’t see that all eyes are on you when you’re on Zoom.

“If your formative years were spent doing it on Zoom or Teams, and you’re suddenly going into the room for the first time, that’s probably pretty nerve-wracking.

“It’s not learning to speak in the room again. It’s learning to speak in the room full stop.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Covid responseGen ZLockdown harmsMental HealthPandemicYoung People

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8 Comments
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Heretic
Heretic
1 year ago

The parents are right to be fearful, and this brings to mind the horrific, quite possibly racist/jihadist? murder of ice hockey player Adam Johnson by Matt Petgrave, who will no doubt play the Ethnic Free Pass card to try to get away with it. I hope the police investigators, who have just rebailed him for the third time until the end of June, will not be intimidated by any such attempts. Fortunately the whole thing was caught on video, shocking the ice hockey world, and spurring new regulations on neck guards for players.

Adam Johnson dead: Footage of NHL players incident shows twist as police investigate (foxsports.com.au)

26
-4
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Heretic

I don’t know if the intention was to kill but that never looked like an accident to me and he must have know the damage he could cause.

I would wear a neck guard but I don’t think they should be mandatory.

16
0
Heretic
Heretic
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

“smite at their necks” Koran 47:3-4

Islam: The Politically Incorrect Truth (thereligionofpeace.com)

25
-4
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Heretic

It has to be manslaughter at the least

16
0
Heretic
Heretic
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

UK legal definition of murder: “It involves the specific intent to cause death or serious harm, and this intent is a fundamental element that sets murder apart from manslaughter.”

The intention was there to cause death or serious harm. It was not manslaughter by “diminished responsibility” or other excuses. If you deliberately strike anyone’s neck with a sharp object, especially a blade, you know it will cause death or serious harm.

But no doubt that, even after the police have done their best to establish the truth, corrupt lawyers will get him off.

Last edited 1 year ago by Heretic
16
-4
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Heretic

Ah thanks, I wasn’t aware of the “serious harm” part. It will be interesting to see what they do.

8
0
Heretic
Heretic
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I wasn’t aware of it, either, until I looked it up, but I will be very surprised if his lawyers don’t get him off, despite the best efforts of the police investigators. It often happens that police spend months or even years carefully gathering evidence, but when they present it to the Crown Prosecution Service, it gets thrown out on a technicality.

13
-2
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

Indeed there are serious safety concerns to take note of here. For instance, I read there’s been a significant increase in testicular injuries within women’s sports these last two years.😳

59
0
AEC
AEC
1 year ago

My 62yr old ex Finnish league ice hockey player husband wants to know where he can sign up. And why there are no trans players in the male league.
What a muddle all this is – truly the Sane vs the Insane.

31
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

I guess in general this comes from the top down, administrators at national and global level who have become more like politicians looking for approval and funding than ex-practitioners thinking honestly about the good of their sport and those who take part. Like most people in charge of anything these days they will make a show of being safety conscious so they don’t get sued or get in trouble with regulators. They will know very well how dangerous this policy is but they clearly feel any risk is outweighed by the risk of being seen as “transphobic” and probably reckon correctly that regulators and courts will back them. It comes down to someone needing to stick their neck out and take flak or worse, absent a lead from those who govern us.

21
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Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

Off topic, but this just in. Tragically the policeman in Germany didn’t make it. The brief piece also states the attacker was ”injured”, so some inconsistencies with reporting as I’d read he’d been killed. So how will the German government now spin this to blame the so-called ‘far-right’?

”A police officer who was left in critical condition after a mass stabbing in the German city of Mannheim on Friday has died, local authorities say.
The 29-year-old was one of six people, including anti-Islam activist Michael Stürzenberger, to be wounded by the attacker, who was detained at the scene.
The police officer was stabbed several times in the head.
Despite undergoing emergency surgery, he succumbed to his wounds on Sunday afternoon.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nn8nl8gv3o

29
-2
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Something like this was bound to happen somewhere. Basically the police failed to do their job. Their priority once this piece of rubbish started to try to kill people, successfully it now transpires, was to kill the bastard and not seek to arrest those who had tried to immobilise him.

I do not wish to make light of this but this really is the worst example of ‘go woke, go broke.’

I do hope our authorities will learn the appropriate lessons from this event ie arrest the firkin offenders : JSO, BLM, Queers for Gaza and ‘from the river to the sea mob.’ Once they step out of order arrest the buggers before others are killed or seriously injured.

Not that any lessons will be learned.

16
-1
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Well exactly. That policeman’s life needn’t have been lost if proper policing had taken place. There were several of them, presumably there in case anything kicked off, and not one saw the events unfolding in the background. The knife-wielding maniac was even restrained and on the ground at one point. That was their chance, but where were they? Epic failure on their part, whichever angle you look at it from. This sadly sums it up, but his comrades should be feeling immense guilt over this;

”Sadly, this scene just played out in Germany. Hopefully it can be a catalyst for reversing Europe’s existential immigration crisis.”

https://x.com/QuantumFlux36/status/1797446255423156654

13
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

Does this nonsense only happen in the silly Liberal progressive western world? Are girls in China and Russia being forced to compete in physical sports against boys? ——But all over the world where this is happening it can only be stopped if those suffering from this aspect of the Progressive virus point blank refuse to participate. OK they may have put a lot of time and effort into their particular sport, but if they do not take a stand to wipe out these disgusting practices NOW then they won’t have a sport in future

18
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

The parents of any girl should withdraw them from playing hockey if they are being required to play against a genetic male.

Only by withdrawing from all sport will the assault against women and girls by the trans-lobby be stopped.

26
0
@yorkshirekate
@yorkshirekate
1 year ago

There’s a simple answer: just say no, women and girls will not participate.

12
0

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