Etiquette went out with the Victorians? Not if you’re gen Z | Barbara Ellen

In my innocence, I thought the very concept of etiquette had long been banished to social Siberia. It would appear not. New York magazine’s The Cut recently published 140 rules on new social etiquette. While some may have responded with giddy excitement, others mocked the guide as a “woke” Debrett’s of generation Z carping and nitpicking. A NY Post columnist lambasted the rules as “deeply infantilising”.

Whatever happened to the freedom of youth? we wailed. Laying the law down on everything from dating, parenting, privilege and misgendering to tipping, mask wearing , posting and hosting, this seemed less generation Z and more generation Zzz, or Generation Take-a-Chill-Pill. With the debate still raging, I wonder: has this list sparked yet another bout of intergenerational misunderstanding?

Some rules are reasonable: “Don’t go into a phone vortex at dinner.” Others are pompous, painful or bizarre. “Don’t use friends as foreplay” disappointingly turns out to be about arguing. Elsewhere, there’s: “Never ask anyone what their job is” (yes, ignore what they spend most of their time doing, that’s only polite). “If you put out bowls of cigarettes, you have to let people smoke inside” (bowls of cigarettes? Has someone been watching Mad Men reruns?). “It’s OK to email, text or DM anyone at any hour” (it isn’t). Vegans and allergy sufferers are instructed not to inform dinner party hosts about it, which sounds risky. “Would you like your anaphylactic shock boiled, roasted or stir-fried?”

Granted, 140 rules is etiquette overkill. However, the rush to fire up the “anti-woke” klaxon seems just as absurd. Isn’t a younger generation permitted to define itself – even about how they tip or use emojis? In retrospect, my generational credo – get smashed, behave atrociously, apologise later (optional) – might have benefited from a bit of tinkering.

At least generation Z seems to be trying to be self-aware and considerate. Still, what a sadness – a weight – there is to this list. Just to see them make such heavy weather of being young, the most carefree and unburdened they’re ever going to be. Then again, are they?

As a parent of a Z-er, it was quite something to watch an entire generation trying to study at home and take exams online during the pandemic. Sixth-formers missing out on parties. University freshers isolating in their rooms. The social, psychological and emotional dysfunction they had to overcome at a crucial point of personal development was immense and unprecedented. Then add: the climate emergency, Trump, the Tories, Putin/Ukraine, the housing crisis, cost of living, UK tuition fees predicted to rise again, to name a few… the relentless churning toxicity of the world they’ve been growing up in.

Generation Z have proved themselves to be far from the spoiled, weak, fun-sponges of legend. Which makes you look again at the 140 diktats. Are they just about posturing and control freakery or is anxiety sloshing about in the mix? The sense of a generation in search of a (more structured, fairer) template for life? I say generation Z deserves to be cut a bit of slack. Just don’t text me at 3am, even if you do have a bowl of cigarettes.