Five surprising things I’ve learned about Gen Z college students

September 15, 2025

Back in our college days, we millennials suffered article after article that tried desperately to understand who we were as a generation. They were full of generalizations, inaccuracies, and manic attempts to explain an apparent obsession with avocado toast. That kind of pandering web content was misguided at best and highly irritating at worst.

Anyway, now it’s my turn to do that to the next generation.

In a nutshell…

• They use dark mode
• They often do a “bounce scroll” to see how long a web page is
• They expect library catalogs to be indexed by Google
• They cherish the library’s quiet spots
• They sometimes say “search up” instead of “search”

Read the whole post on Libtech Insights →

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I pen occasional posts for LibTech Insights, a blog about technology in academic libraries from Choice, an ACRL/ALA publisher.