You ask the young person behind the counter how their day’s going, and you get a polite, blank look back. Online, that look has a name. It’s the Gen Z stare, and it’s turned into a catch-all complaint about a generation that supposedly can’t do small talk.
It’s an easy thing to grumble about. But the research around it points somewhere less comfortable, because plenty of the rest of us are wearing the opposite expression at work. A smile we don’t mean.
Gen Z talks more than you’d think
The best numbers on the stare come from Preply, an online language-learning platform. Its 2026 Global Small Talk Survey of 1,400 adults in the US, UK, Canada and Australia found 58% of Gen Z make small talk in person every day. That’s nearly twice the rate of Baby Boomers, at 31%.
Younger adults are choosier about when they talk, though. The same survey found 87% of Gen Z had avoided at least one live conversation in the past year, and 41% had looked at their phone to dodge one. They’re also far more likely to let a call go to voicemail and text back, at 27% against 7% of Boomers.
Preply spokesperson Madeline Enos reads that as a change in when younger people choose to engage and which conversations feel worth having, not a generation that’s forgotten how to talk. Even the openers differ. Weather is the classic starter for 56% of Boomers but only 28% of Gen Z, who are more likely to talk about weekend plans, restaurants and friends.
Most of us are faking it
Now for the other face. Kickresume, a company that sells CV and job-search tools, surveyed 1,002 workers worldwide in September and October 2026, all reached through its own database. It found 86% had acted more enthusiastic about their work than they felt at least once in the previous week, and 11% said they did it constantly.
It wasn’t only the unhappy ones. Of the workers who rated their job a perfect five out of five, 80% still faked enthusiasm at least once that week. Only 13% said they didn’t need to put on a face because they were genuinely happy at work.
“When 86% of people act more enthusiastic than they feel, a smiling team tells you very little about how people are really doing,” says Peter Duris, chief executive of Kickresume. He says managers who want honest answers need to make it safe to give them.
Both surveys come from companies with products to sell, and neither breaks out New Zealand, so they’re a snapshot rather than the last word. The academic research on faked feeling at work goes much deeper. Psychologists call it surface acting, which means showing an emotion you don’t feel, as opposed to deep acting, where you try to actually feel it.
A 2011 meta-analysis by Ute Hülsheger and a colleague at Maastricht University in the Netherlands pooled 95 studies from three decades of research. Surface acting had substantial links with poorer wellbeing and worse job attitudes. Deep acting had only weak links with poorer wellbeing, and it went hand in hand with more satisfied customers.
Those are associations rather than proof that faking causes harm. But the pattern held across a large body of work.
Age brings a different smile
This part may ring true for anyone with a few decades of work behind them. A 2013 study of 519 service workers aged 18 to 68, by psychologists at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the US, found older workers were more likely to use deep acting and less likely to fake. Emotional intelligence explained part of that link, and the strategy people used was in turn tied to their wellbeing.
It was a one-off survey, so it can’t say whether people learn the knack with age or whether those who stay in service work already had it.
Young New Zealanders are carrying plenty, too. In professional services firm Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which included 301 Gen Z respondents here born between 1995 and 2007, 41% said they feel stressed all or most of the time. That compared with 34% of New Zealand millennials.
None of that means a blank look is a cry for help, or that every smile is a lie.
If you lead people, ask a real question and make it safe to give a real answer. If you’re on the other side of the counter, try asking about their weekend instead of the weather. You might get more than a stare.
