Every Tuesday and Thursday morning last fall, I taught 32 students in a first-year seminar. The behavior of these 18-year-olds was different than I had seen before in a college classroom.
The students were more consumed by anxiety and fear and therefore eerily silent. While this kind of behavior might be expected in the first weeks of any new semester, what was unusual was that it continued all semester long.
First years this fall were markedly different than the Gen Z peers that preceded them. It was as if they were living in a world where speaking wasn't required.
They communicated with their peers in group chats or in Google Docs when they had a team assignment. Also, all their needs for information, products, and food were met by Amazon, Google, and Grubhub where they rarely had to talk directly to another person.
It was not surprising that they seemed offended when called on to answer a question in class since they spent most of their time in a digital existence where speaking wasn't required.
This cohort was numb to the reality that digital addiction was accompanied by anxiety and depression. It was commonplace for them to surrender their viewing and purchasing data to marketers without any concern.
They gleefully followed influencers as trusted friends and blindly accepted five-star product ratings that were rarely if ever audited for accuracy.
The condition has become so acute that it can no longer simply be ignored.
Instructors teaching a first-year general education course these days should set aside class time early in the semester to help students develop verbal skills. That doesn't mean teaching students how to give a better Powerpoint presentation.
Instead, it means helping them understand that their best escape from a lonely digital existence is learning how to converse and share their thoughts with others during in-person conversations.
Educators may not be the best equipped for this job since scholarship sometimes is accompanied by an isolated existence. But unless instructors step up to the task, their jobs may soon be replaced with digital classrooms where human interaction is not even required.
The challenge is not to eliminate the use of digital platforms or tools but to help students better balance their use in an educational environment. Life's lessons are still best experienced in person.
As much as they may wish for it, students cannot order the ideal summer internship from Grubhub and have it delivered to their dorm room in less than an hour.
College students have traditionally discovered their interests and talents with experiences in the classroom and on campus.
What's different these days is they also have an alternative digital life that is easier and more comfortable to hide in than dealing with the realities of higher education, which require hard work and the ability to converse with others.
The good news is that social media use may be on the decline. A recent study by Gartner suggests that a perceived decay in the quality of social media will result in a significant number of consumers limiting their interaction with social platforms in 2025.
In addition, my own research suggests that alumni spend less time posting carefree photos and videos when they are forced to deal with the mundane responsibilities of a full-time job after graduation.
However, the deficient verbal abilities with the current first year students are more alarming and may not be cured with maturity.
Helping to bolster these skills will require a campus-wide commitment beyond a few general education courses. It will also need the assistance of professional and social organizations on campus who probably offer more effective peer-to-peer training.
A 2024 study by Intelligent reports that 84 percent of companies interviewed don't plan to hire recent college graduates in 2025 due to their lack of preparedness for the workforce plus the company's previous high turnover rate of recent graduates.
One of the most frequently cited reasons for failure (39 percent) was poor communication skills.
If the graduating class of 2028 has any chance of future success, they must understand that the real world values digital talents but hires and promotes based on more classical skills like motivation, human communications, and emotional intelligence.
These skills aren't available on Amazon Prime. They are best learned early in a college career that needs to help students find a more appropriate role for their digital behavior.
Bill Bergman is an Instructor of Marketing at the University of Richmond Robins School of Business. He has been teaching a First Year Seminar entitled Digital Communications & Society for the past five years. He also teaches juniors and seniors in upper-level marketing courses including Professional Selling, Marketing & Media Disruption, and Digital Marketing to upperclassmen and women.
All views expressed are the author's own.
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